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OpEdNews.com
TeenScreen - Normal Kids Labeled Mentally Ill
August 1, 2006
by Evelyn Pringle

Despite years of public outcry, based on recommendations by President Bush's New Freedom Commission to screen all school children for mental illness, TeenScreen is now being administered in the nation's public school system and children are being regularly diagnosed with one, or more, disorders chosen from the close to 400 listed in the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV" (DSM), also known as the psychiatric "Billing Bible."

The list of mental disorders to chose from when diagnosing children mentally ill with TeenScreen, are "voted" into the Billing Bible by members of the American Psychiatric Association, and include, among others, conduct disorder, avoidant personality disorder, mathematics disorder, reading disorder, disorder of written expression, general anxiety disorder, nightmare disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, and factious disorder.

A mental illness that drew a lot of ridicule recently, is called the "intermittent explosive disorder," for people who fly into occasional but unwarranted fits of rage.

Critics view TeenScreen is a main components in an overall pharmaceutical industry-backed marketing scheme pushed along by the NFC, aimed at recruiting new customers for psychiatric drugs. The NFC's report specifically identifies the target population Big Pharma is after when it states:

"Schools are in a key position to identify mental health problems early and to provide a link to appropriate services. Every day more than 52 million students attend over 114,000 schools in the U.S. When combined with the six million adults working at those schools, almost one-fifth of the population passes through the Nation's schools on any given weekday."

The TeenScreen survey is billed as a suicide prevention tool, but according to former government investigator, Allen Jones, "Teen Screen is a nefarious effort to recruit our children into the quagmire of biological psychiatry."

"The program employs dubious screening tools administered by non-professionals," he states. "It is based on misleading science and diagnostic criteria that would be downright laughable if the stakes were not so high," he adds.

"While the idea of screening kids for mental problems seems like a good idea, it ends up being nothing more than a Drugging Dragnet," says Jim Gottstein, an attorney who represents clients harmed by the psychiatric industrial complex.

"The high rate at which we are drugging America's children with psychotropics," he says, "is a national disgrace."

"This is junk science at it's worst," says Dr Jan Johnson, MD, "follow the money, the trail leads right back to the drug companies."

Activist groups against TeenScreen have posted an online petition and plan to send it to federal, state and local lawmakers. The petition can also be used to educate people about TeenScreen because it conveys many of the facts about mental health screening and can be printed off and presented to school board members or legislators. Persons interested in signing the petition can click on the following link: http://www.petitiononline.com/tscreen/petition.html

As an additional bonus to Big Pharma, Bush set up the overall scheme so that tax payers will foot the bill for the implementation of the TeenScreen program. On October 21, 2004, he signed a bill into law that authorized $82 million to be spent over 3 years for programs like TeenScreen.

From there, the way the scheme is set up, if a child is diagnosed with a mental illness and the family can not afford the expensive regiment of psychiatric drugs, tax payers will fund the purchase of the drugs as well through public health care programs like Medicaid.

The fact is, Bush and most of his Republican puppets in Congress, would not be in office today if not for the financial support of Big Pharma. Drug companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year sending lobbyists to Washington to call in their markers by getting industry-friendly legislation passed.

According to a 2004, report by the consumer group, Public Citizen, drug companies, HMOs, their trade associations and industry-backed advocacy groups spent nearly $141 million on lobbying in 2003, and deployed over 950 lobbyists to do their bidding on Capitol Hill and at the White House.

In 2003, the top 10 drug makers and trade associations spent $55.8 million on lobbying, accounting for 60% of the industry's total lobbying expenditures. A record 24 companies and trade groups each spent $1 million, or more, on lobbying in 2002.

However, spending on lobbying is a drop in the bucket when compared with the $35.9 billion in profits recorded in 2003, by the 10 top companies. The industry soared past all other sectors, with profits five-and-a-half times greater than the median for industries represented in the Fortune 500.

And, the efforts to influence lawmakers have not been limited to lobbying. Since 1997, the top 25 drug companies with the highest lobbying expenditures, also gave $48.6 million in campaign contributions, with 80% going to Republicans.

According to concerned citizen Barbara Becker, "TeenScreen and similar projects are nothing more than a stealth trolling of the general population for drug consumers."

"The roots of these projects," she says, "grow straight from the drooling over additional excessive profiteering by the pharmaceutical industry, with the blessings of too many ever-grateful politicians who also profit from it through enormous pharmaceutical political contributions."

In all fairness, it should be noted that Big Pharma has managed to cozy up to a few Democrats as well. For instance, Senator Joe Lieberman has been known to pal around with lobbyists representing drug companies that provide large contributions to his campaign.

In fact, according to Joe Conason in the July 17, 2006, New York Observer, Mr Liberman, "has literally been sleeping with one of their Washington representatives ever since his wife Hadassah joined Hill & Knowlton last year."

"The legendary lobbying and P.R. firm," Mr Conason explains, "hired her as a "senior counselor" in its "health and pharmaceuticals practice."

One of the firm's clients is GlaxoSmithKline, the manufacturer of flu vaccines, as well as many other drugs, and Mrs Lieberman joined the firm in March 2006.

"In April 2005," according to Mr Conason, "Mr. Lieberman introduced a bill that would award an array of new government "incentives" to companies like GSK to produce more vaccines-notably patent extensions on other products, at a cost of billions to governments and consumers."

Mr Conason noted that the bill drew a critical commentary from Mr Lieberman's hometown newspaper, the New Haven Register, titled, "Lieberman Crafts Drug Company Perk."

The newspaper described the bill as being even more generous to the industry than a similar proposal by Republicans. "The government can offer incentives and guarantees for needed public health measures," the Register said. "But it should not write a blank check, as these bills do," it read, "to the pharmaceutical industry that has such a large cost to the public with what may be an uncertain or dubious return."

In return for industry support, lawmakers have been very generous when doling out tax dollars to fund marketing schemes like TeenScreen. On September 21, 2005, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) announced grants of over $9.7 million in funding for the implementation of the TeenScreen Program.

"The Columbia University TeenScreen Program," the press release said, "provides early identification of mental health problems, such as depression, that can lead to suicide."

TeenScreen uses a voice computer version of the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (DISC ), and claims it can show signs of 30 disorders, according to an article by Reuters on October 13, 2003.

On March 2, 2004, TeenScreen's Executive Director, Laurie Flynn, testified at a congressional hearing and said that in the screening process, "youth complete a 10-minute self-administered questionnaire that screens for social phobia, panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, major depression, alcohol and drug abuse, and suicidality."

The goals mentioned are obviously being reached because kids are "flunking" TeenScreen all over the country. According to Anne Yates, from Colorado, when the program was piloted at two sites in that state, at the high school, "a whopping 50% were found to be at risk of suicide."

"Figures from a homeless shelter," she reports, "were even more outrageous: 71% of the youth screened were found to have "mental disorders."

"You can bet psychiatric drugs were pushed at these kids," Ms Yates says, "TeenScreen is a feeder line to the drug companies."

During an interview with award-winning investigative journalist, Kelly O'Meara, officials from the highly respected Association of American Physicians & Surgeons (AAPS), described suicide screening in schools as "a dangerous scheme that will heap even more coercive pressure on parents to medicate children with potentially dangerous side effects."

Further, they told Ms O'Meara, "even the government's own task force has concluded that mental health screening does little to prevent suicide."

Critics say, TeenScreen asks teens about normal thoughts, feelings and emotions in a way that turns them into symptoms of mental illness. Concerned parent, Dennis McLoth says, "it looks like a way to make more young people dependent on prescription drugs earlier in life when all they really need is to deal with growing up, just like we all did before there was a drug for every ailment and new ailment to justify even more new drugs."

Human rights groups contend children are being diagnosed with disorders based on nothing more than a list of behaviors. Kevin Hall, New England Director of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, notes that "unlike medical illnesses that are found through scientific research and discovery, mental disorders are merely groups of symptoms that are voted into existence by American Psychiatric Association committees."

A May 20, 2006, article on TeenScreen in the National Journal, includes a admission by Steven Sharfstein, President of the American Psychiatric Association, that states: "medical science has no biological or chemical tests that can determine whether a person is depressed, suicidal, schizophrenic, or afflicted with another mental problem. There is no laboratory test that establishes a specific diagnosis."

Psychiatrist, Dr Nathaniel Lehrman says the claim that TeenScreen can reduce suicides is unsupported by any data. "It is impossible," he explains, "on cursory examination, or on the basis of the Program's brief written screening test, to detect suicidality or "mental illness," however we define it."

Another complaint heard often from activists is the fact that TeenScreen labels children mentally ill without testing for possible underlying health problems such as nutritional deficiencies, allergies, or other physical illnesses, before initiating drug treatment.

And, the medications the children end up taking as a result of the screening are the most high-priced and dangerous psychotropic drugs on the market, and include selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor antidepressants (SSRIs), like Paxil, Prozac, Zoloft, and Effexor, and atypical antipsychotics, such as Zyprexa, Risperdal, Geodon, Seroquel, Clozaril, and Abilify, and ADHD stimulant drugs such as Adderall, Dexedrine and Ritalin.

In recent years, the use of these drugs with children has escalated. An examination of prescriptions by Medco Health Solutions in 2004, for 300,000 children ages 19 and younger, concluded that for the first time in history, spending on drugs for behavior problems with kids exceeded expenditures for any other medication category, including antibiotics.

According to Dr Barry Duncan, author of the book, "What's Right With You," more than 150 million prescriptions were written for antidepressants in 2003, with sales worth more than $14 billion. And he goes on to note that the "rates of depression have not changed for thirty years," and "suicide rates, despite the millions taking antidepressants, have not reduced."

In June 2005, the Washington Post reported that despite "a dramatic increase in treatment of psychiatric disorders during the past 10 years, there has been no decrease in the rate of suicidal thoughts and behavior among adults," citing a study by researchers from Harvard Medical school and elsewhere, primarily funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.

The study found that although people who attempt suicide were far more likely to be treated with antidepressants in 2001-03, compared to 1990-92, the rates of suicidal ideation, gestures and attempts remained basically unchanged, the Post said.

TeenScreen is being used as a vehicle to get kids on SSRIs, even though there has been a steady stream of warnings against treating kids with SSRIs for years, and even though the drugs are not approved for use with children. Back on June 10, 2003, British pubic health authorities issued a warning of a two-to three-fold increased risk of suicide in pediatric clinical trials during testing of SSRIs.

A week or so later, on June 18, 2003, Glaxo issued a warning to British physicians against the use of Paxil with children, acknowledging failure of clinical trials "to demonstrate efficacy in major depressive disorders and doubling the rate of reported adverse events - including suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts - compared to placebo."

On August 22, 2003, Wyeth sent warnings to UK and US healthcare professionals stating: "In pediatric clinical trials, there were increased reports of hostility and especially in Major Depressive Disorder, suicide-related adverse events such as suicidal ideation and self-harm."

On December 18, 2003, Eli Lilly issued two letters to British healthcare professionals, indicating that Prozac was not recommended for children - for any use.

During FDA hearings on SSRIs back in February 2004, researchers presented evidence showing SSRIs to be little or no more effective than placebos. Psychologist, David Antonuccio, from the University of Nevada Medical School, was part of a team that analyzed 12 studies and told the committee, "Our conclusions were that the advantages of the antidepressants in children were so small and so trivial as to be clinically insignificant."

"In order to evaluate the cost effectiveness of antidepressant use in children, the committee must consider the benefits, as well as the risks," Dr Antonuccio testified.

"Clinically meaningful benefits have not been adequately demonstrated in depressed children," he said, "therefore, no extra risk is warranted."

"An increased risk of suicidal behavior is certainly not justified by these minimal benefits," he warned. "Neither are the established increased risks of other commonly reported side effects, which include agitation, insomnia, and gastrointestinal problems," he added.

On July 21, 2004, the Journal of the American Medical Association, also reported that there was a significantly higher risk of suicide and suicidal thoughts during the first 9 days of treatment with SSRIs, and that children who were first starting treatment were 4 times more likely to think about suicide, and 38 times more likely to commit suicide and that children as young as five had committed suicide while taking these drugs.

In the fall of 2004, the FDA ordered drug makers to post a black box warning on SSRIs, the most serious warning a drug can carry. The problem is black box warnings do not stop doctors from prescribing SSRIs to children.

"Unfortunately," says Senator Charles Grassley, who has been conducting oversight of the FDA from his position as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, in response to the news of a black box warning on SSRIs, "the poor performance data for these drugs has been coupled with the very compelling and heart-wrenching testimony from parents and other public witnesses who identify the medications themselves as triggering tragic and unexpected suicides and suicidal behavior among users."

"I understand," he continued, "that the testimony yesterday even included discussions about patients who had not been suffering from depression, yet were prescribed these powerful drugs by physicians who may perhaps have been all too ready to medicate their patients."

When reviewing studies that had previously been suppressed, the FDA found one trial on the SSRI, Paxil, with a "possibly suicide-related" risk of 6.5 percent, and a 5.4% risk of suicide attempts, compared to a 1.1% and zero, respectively in patients taking a placebo.

In fact, in 2004, Paxil maker, Glaxo, was sued by New York State Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer, for committing fraud by hiding studies that "not only failed to show any benefit for the drug in children but demonstrated that children taking Paxil were more likely to become suicidal than those taking a placebo."

In September 2005, British public health officials instructed doctors to never prescribe SSRIs to children without providing psychotherapy as well. Physicians were also told to never prescribe the drugs without trying other alternative drugs first, and to not prescribe Effexor or Paxil to children under any condition.

In addition to all the other problems with SSRIs, previously suppressed studies show the drugs are addictive. In June 2003, Glaxo, removed labels that said Paxil was not habit-forming after thousands of patients claimed they had become addicted to the drug.

Experts warn that SSRIs can also cause children to become violent as well as suicidal. According to Dr Julian Whitaker, SSRIs cause akathisia, a mental and physical agitation that sparks self-destructive, violent behavior, and induce disassociative reactions that make patients who take the drugs insensitive to the consequences of their behavior.

This is the type of drug, he says, that Eric Harris was taking when he killed his fellow students at Columbine.

Kip Kinkel was on Prozac, Dr Whitaker says, when he killed his parents and then went to his high school in Oregon, and killed two students and wounded 22 others, and says Joseph Wesbecker was also taking Prozac when he killed 7 people at a printing plant in Kentucky, before taking his own life.

In 2003, seventeen-year-old, Julie Woodward, took a test at North Penn High School, in North Wales, Pennsylvania, that said she was suffering from depression and two doctors convinced her parents, Tom and Kathy Woodward, to put her on Zoloft.

Julie's parents say they watched as her behaviors got steadily worse as soon as she began taking the drug. On the third day, Julie was arguing with her mother, and all of a sudden pushed her mother down to the floor.

Everyone in the family was shocked because Julie had never been violent before. "It was an out-of-character act," Tom Woodward notes.

Over the next few days, the usually calm Julie, became extremely irritable, could not sit still, and began pacing incessantly. She also became reclusive, her parents recall.

Six days after she began taking Zoloft, Julie hanged herself in the family's garage. Since their daughter's suicide, Tom and Kathy have become activists and have worked diligently in attempt to educate others parents about the dangers of SSRIs.

Sue Weibert, is an ardent activist against TeenScreen, and has been investigating the program for well over a year. She recently found that when a school enters into a contract to administer the TeenScreen survey, it must agree to screen a minimum of 200 children per season.

According to Ms Weibert, a recent study showed 33% of the kids screened test positive, and quoting a figure provided by TeenScreen's inventor, Dr David Shaffer, seven years ago in 1999, the study said the cost was about $37 per child per screening.

So all total, 200 times a rounded off fee of $35 would amount to $7,000 in tax dollars just for the screening. After that, the 33% who screen positive are sent for a "further assessment" at an average cost of $250 to parents.

Screening promoters claim that currently, only one out of every 3 children who are mentally ill receives treatment. "That being the case," says Jan Eastgate, the International President of the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights, "with mass screening already in play, if we do not act to prevent this, we can very shortly expect to have 30 million American children prescribed mind-altering drugs."

Parents are beginning to strike back against schools when their children are screened without their consent. Last year, an Indiana high school was sued for subjecting 15-year-old student to mental health testing with TeenScreen and diagnosing the teen with two mental illnesses, without her parents' knowledge or consent.

A Massachusetts department of education investigation recently determined that a counselor at the Thomas Hamilton Primary School violated federal law in April 2005, when a student, who was enrolled in a special education class due to a speech delay, was screened for ADHD, without parental consent.

The investigation followed complaints by the mother that the counselor had pressured her to put her daughter on drugs for 3 years. The mother said she did not give consent for a mental evaluation and pulled her children out of the school because of the incident.

Wilmette, Illinois, attorney, S Randolph Kretchmar, defends patients who are violated by the psychiatric industry, and says he is dead against drugging and labeling children with mental health disorders. "The great crime of psychiatry and the pushers of psychiatric drugs," he advises, "is that they have purposely confused us to sell their products."

"What the drugs do is disable people," he says, "it's just that simple."

"They may disable people from behaving badly," he explains, "but they also disable people in other ways, generally, neurologically."

He points out that a slow reader or difficult middle-schooler is no threat to public safety. "When it becomes popular," he says, "to neurologically disable children from being disagreeable to their teachers and their parents, we descend into some horrific barbarism, and sacrifice the future of the human race."

This month, the CCHR issued a report titled, "The Side Effects of Common Psychiatric Drugs," that explains the various adverse effects of psychiatric drugs and defines the complex medical terms that often makes it hard for readers to understand the side effects. The report also includes the recent FDA warnings about specific drugs, as well as information, they say drug makers have kept hidden for years. Copies of the report can be obtained from their web site.

Evelyn Pringle is a columnist for OpEd News and investigative journalist focused on exposing corruption in government and corporate America.

UK Guardian Unlimited

Tough curbs on Prozac prescribed for children

· Antidepressant only to be used with counselling
· Drug manufacturer must continue to monitor safety

Sarah Boseley, health editor
Monday June 12, 2006

Prozac is to be licensed for treating children over eight with depression, but regulators have imposed an unprecedented restriction on its use, ordering that it may not be prescribed unless talking therapies have failed, and even then a course of the drug must be accompanied by counselling.
The conditions imposed by the European licensing agency (EMEA) are likely to result in Prozac being used less to treat children. While neither Prozac nor any of the other antidepressants of its class had a licence, doctors were free to prescribe them as they liked.

Because of shortages of therapists and because they seemed a quick and easy fix, the prescribing of Prozac and other drugs known as SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) to adults and children soared. The annual number of prescriptions to those under 18 leapt from 13,227 in 1995 to 27,658 in 2003.
While doctors can still theoretically prescribe "off label", they are unlikely to flout the terms of the licence, which will be laid down in the Summary of Product Characteristics and written in the prescribing bible, the British National Formulary.

"Prozac should only be used together with psychological therapy in patients non-responding to such therapy alone after four to six sessions," said the EMEA in its recommendation to the European commission, which will formally grant the licence. If the child does not get better in nine weeks, the drug treatment should be reconsidered, it says.

The move is unprecedented, according to Tim Kendall, joint director of the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health, which formulated the NHS guidelines on the treatment of depression in children. "This is the first time to my knowledge that a drug has been given a licence which includes a period of psychological treatment before and during the drug treatment," he said.

Eli Lilly, manufacturer of Prozac, was specifically asked to apply for a licence by the drug regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA). Prozac is the only antidepressant of the SSRI class the MHRA exempted from its general ban on use in children. Analysis of trial data has shown that the risk children will become suicidal on other SSRIs is greater than the benefit they get from taking the drugs.

With a licence for use on children, Prozac will also be subject to post-licensing surveillance by the MHRA, which will look for reports of troubling side-effects. "I think the MHRA will not take their eye off the ball now," said Dr Kendall.

USA TODAY
New anti-psychotic drugs carry risks for children
By Marilyn Elias

Nancy Thomas remembers the bad old days when she had to wear long-sleeve clothes to church to cover bite marks all over her arms from her daughter Alexa's rages.
At age 8, Alexa was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She was a violent child with sharp mood swings and meltdowns that drove her to tear up the house. Antidepressants and drugs for attention-deficit disorder had only made Alexa more aggressive, Thomas says.

A mix of medicines including so-called atypical anti-psychotics — drugs approved only for adults — finally stabilized Alexa's moods. Now at 15, she is able to live a more normal life — as long as she takes the medication.

Even so, the Russellville, Mo., teen is paying a price: On one of the atypical anti-psychotics, Alexa gained about 100 pounds in a year, putting her at risk for a host of health problems, including diabetes. It has taken her three years to lose a third of that extra weight; she is still struggling with the rest.

Atypicals are a new generation of anti-psychotic drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration for adult schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (manic depression). None of the six drugs — Clozaril, Risperdal, Zyprexa, Seroquel, Abilify and Geodon — is approved for kids, but doctors can prescribe them as "off-label" medications.

Psychiatrists say the drugs can be helpful for children with serious mental illnesses and have been known to save young lives. But diagnosis often is difficult, making appropriate prescribing tricky. And many experts, including behavioral pediatrician Lawrence Diller, author of Should I Medicate My Child?, say there is growing overuse of these powerful anti-psychotics.

Schizophrenia is rare in children under 18: It strikes about 1 in 40,000, as opposed to 1 in 100 adults, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Nobody knows exactly how many kids have bipolar disorder; psychiatrists don't even agree on criteria to diagnose the disease in childhood.

Research on how the drugs affect children is sparse, and experts increasingly are concerned that the drugs are being prescribed too often for children with behavior problems, such as attention-deficit disorder and aggression.

John March, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine, prescribes the drugs to kids in some cases of serious illness when he thinks the benefits outweigh the risks. But he says prescribing them for behavior problems alone may be a mistake. "We have no evidence about the safety of these agents or their effectiveness in controlling aggression," he says. "Why are we doing this?"

At the same time, reports of deaths and dangerous side effects linked to the drugs are mounting. A USA TODAY study of FDA data collected from 2000 to 2004 shows at least 45 deaths of children in which an atypical anti-psychotic was listed in the FDA database as the "primary suspect." There also were 1,328 reports of bad side effects, some of them life-threatening.

Drug companies are required to file any reports they have to the FDA, but consumers and doctors report such events on a voluntary basis. Studies suggest the FDA's Adverse Events Reporting System database captures only 1% to 10% of drug-induced side effects and deaths, "maybe even less than 1%," says clinical pharmacologist Alastair J.J. Wood, an associate dean at Vanderbilt Medical School in Nashville. So the real number of cases is almost certainly much higher.

"We're conducting a very large experiment on our children," March says.

Side effects that linger

Some parents tell stories of serious effects that linger long after their kids stop taking the drugs.

Rex Evans' parents are bitter about what happened to their son. They believe the 13-year-old Colorado Springs boy was harmed permanently by an atypical anti-psychotic he took several years ago. Rex now has a serious case of tardive dyskinesia (TD), suffering daily episodes of involuntary jerking movements and facial grimacing, says Erin Evans, his mother.

Anti-psychotics are known to cause TD, but it's thought to be a rare effect for the newer atypicals.

Despite such reports, outpatient prescriptions for kids ages 2 to 18 leaped fivefold — from just under half a million to about 2.5 million — from 1995 to 2002, according to a new analysis of a federal survey by Vanderbilt Medical School researchers. This doesn't include prescriptions at psychiatric hospitals or residential treatment centers.

And even though the drugs are approved only for adults, the rate of children treated with atypicals "is growing dramatically faster than the rate for adults," says Robert Epstein, chief medical officer for Medco Health Solutions, pharmacy benefit managers.

Medco did an analysis of outpatient prescriptions for USA TODAY and found that, in a sampling of about 2.5 million of Medco's 55 million members, the rate of children 19 and under with at least one atypical prescription jumped 80% from 2001 to 2005 — from 3.6 per 1,000 to 6.5 per 1,000. And that only represents kids who are privately insured, not those in foster care or others on Medicaid.

"We know these are very strong medicines," Epstein says. "You'd want to be absolutely sure the child needs it."

The more serious risks

Because of the nature of the FDA data, they don't prove that these drugs caused the deaths or the side effects. Many side effects for which an atypical is listed as the "primary suspect" occurred in the normal course of using the drug, but the database also includes cases involving drug abuse, overdoses, suicides and homicides. Entries are sometimes cryptic, and the FDA enters verbatim — misspellings and all — what's reported on the form.

Still, the data "can be a useful signaling device" suggesting problems with a drug that warrant conclusive studies, says Jerome Avorn, a pharmacology specialist at Harvard Medical School and author of the book Powerful Medicines.

One-fourth of the cases in the database studied by USA TODAY did not list the patient's age. But in cases that listed an age under 18:

• A condition called dystonia was most often cited as an "adverse event" suffered by someone taking one of the drugs, with 103 reports. Dystonia produces involuntary, often painful muscle contractions.

• Tremors, weight gain and sedation often were cited, along with neurological effects such as TD. Symptoms of TD can vary from slight twitching to full-blown jerking of the body.

• A condition called neuroleptic malignant syndrome, with 41 pediatric cases over the five years, was the most troubling effect listed, says child psychiatrist Joseph Penn of Bradley Hospital and Brown University School of Medicine. It is life-threatening and can kill within 24 hours of diagnosis. It's been linked to drugs that act on the brain's dopamine receptors, which would include the atypicals, Penn says.

The FDA office of drug safety checks the database, "and we haven't been alerted to any particular or unusual concern," says Thomas Laughren, director of the agency's division of psychiatry products. "The effects (in kids) are similar to what we're seeing in adults. We have not systematically looked at the data for children" because the drugs aren't approved for them, he says.

The 45 deaths

Among the 45 pediatric deaths in which atypicals were the primary suspect, at least six were related to diabetes — atypicals carry warnings that the drugs may increase the risk of high blood sugar and diabetes. Other causes of death ranged from heart and pulmonary problems to suicide, choking and liver failure.

An 8-year-old boy had cardiac arrest. A 15-year-old boy died of an overdose. A 13-year-old girl experienced diabetic ketoacidosis, a deficiency of insulin.

More than half of the kids who died were on at least one other psychiatric drug besides the atypical anti-psychotic, and many were taking drugs for other ailments.

The youngest, a 4-year-old boy whose symptoms suggested diabetes complications, was taking 10 other drugs.

The reports don't tell the child's general state of health or other factors that could predispose him to trouble. Also, neither Clozaril, which is rarely used, nor Abilify, the newest atypical, was listed as a primary suspect in any deaths.

All the drugmakers emphasize that their products are not approved for children, and they say the drugs are safe and effective for adults with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder who are monitored for side effects. Still, "there are worrisome questions here," says Avorn. Large, longer-term database studies could provide answers, he says.

There's some evidence that the drugs can help young schizophrenics and may be helpful in treating bipolar disorder in children, says Robert Findling, a child psychiatrist at University Hospitals of Cleveland.

But the data from controlled studies "are too few to guide treatment decisions" on bipolar disorder, concluded Findling's research team in a summary of pediatric studies published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

These anti-psychotics are the most widely used class of drugs to treat disruptive kids who attack others and defy adults, Findling says. Again, there's a paucity of proof that the drugs help.

There are only a handful of carefully controlled, sizable studies testing the drugs for any pediatric disorder, and they're mostly short-term, says Benedetto Vitiello, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at the national mental health institute. The most serious, widespread problem found to be caused by the medicines is weight gain, he says. The effect varies by drug, but kids typically put on twice the pounds they should in their first six months on atypicals.

In the first three months on the drugs, children add about 2 to 3 inches to their waistlines, says research psychiatrist Christoph Correll of Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, N.Y. A lot of this is abdominal fat, which increases the risk of diabetes and heart disease. Obese children are twice as likely as normal-weight children to have diabetes, according to a new University of Michigan study.

"Some patients gain weight on Zyprexa and others do not," says Calvin Sumner, a medical adviser to Eli Lilly Research Laboratories. Lilly makes the drug, which has been associated with weight gains in adult studies. Sumner stresses that Zyprexa isn't approved for kids.

There's no proof atypicals cause diabetes, says Ramy Mahmoud of Janssen LP, maker of Risperdal. He says the FDA added a label warning of increased diabetes risk "to make people aware of the possibility."

One key question about atypicals is whether they will have long-term, unknown effects on the brains of children.

The brain system that the drugs work on develops through childhood and adolescence, says Cynthia Kuhn, a Duke University pharmacologist. "We really don't know the impact of chronically perturbing that system in childhood."

Why atypicals get prescribed

Given all the potential problems, why would doctors prescribe these drugs to children to begin with?

Nobody disputes that the lives of schizophrenic or severely manic children may be saved by anti-psychotics. "I use them myself for patients," says March, the Duke psychiatrist. "I have a 9-year-old who threatened to jump out of a second-story window if her mom didn't give her the car keys to drive down to the 7-Eleven to get a Coke. If I took her off anti-psychotics, she'd disintegrate."

But several factors can lead to misprescribing of anti-psychotics.

It can be difficult to tell one behavioral disorder or illness from another in kids. For example, the aggression and irritability of bipolar disorder can mimic attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder or depression, the mental health institute says. Also, the environment can be a key cause of symptoms that may be mistakenly diagnosed as mental disorders, says Diller, the behavioral pediatrician. Some events in a child's life can trigger acting-out or other symptoms. Adults can explain what happened to them; children, especially the youngest, may be more reticent.

Doctors often face time pressures that prevent them from finding out what's going on in kids' lives, knowledge that might suggest alternative treatments, Penn says. For example, abuse of drugs such as methamphetamine, OxyContin and cocaine is fairly common among teens, he says. Kids begin acting strangely, hearing voices, becoming paranoid. The symptoms can mimic psychosis or behavioral disorders, and doctors can end up giving these children unneeded anti-psychotic drugs, he says.

Insurance coverage rules may encourage the soaring use of anti-psychotics for children, as well. "With some companies, the only thing they reimburse for is prescribing. There's little or no therapy," says Ronald Brown, editor of the Journal of Pediatric Psychology and a dean at Temple University.

Also, kids with serious mental health problems often have at least one hospitalization, but policies cover only a week or two.

It can take a couple of weeks just to get medical records and family histories, Penn says, but insurers often extend time if there's a new medicine started, which encourages drug dabbling for children who are not ready to go home.

In the end, some parents say their children have such severe behavior disorders or mental illness that the benefits outweigh risks.

Parents of children such as Alexa Thomas, who have bipolar disorder, say the atypicals often help. "We were very fortunate," says Alexa's mother, special-education director for the Russellville, Mo., school district. "The medication worked for my daughter. It doesn't work for everybody."

Misdiagnosis common

The Vanderbilt study of anti-psychotic prescribing finds at least 13% of pediatric prescriptions are for bipolar disorder. But there is some concern about over-diagnosis and "jumping to this (bipolar) label too quickly," says psychiatrist Peter Jensen, head of the Center for the Advancement of Children's Mental Health at Columbia University.

Sandra Spencer's son, Stephen, was diagnosed as bipolar at age 6 and put on atypicals. He developed liver abnormalities and obesity, his mother says. "He's been on a smorgasbord of meds," she says. None worked well for very long.

By the time he was in sixth grade, doctors said they weren't sure Stephen was bipolar after all. Now 15, he is on low doses of an antidepressant and mood stabilizer. He's being weaned off both, says Spencer, executive director of the Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health, a support group.

She worries about how the drugs have affected Stephen, who is black: As little psychiatric drug research as there is on children, there's least of all on minority kids. Some drugs are known to affect black adults differently from whites. "He probably had ADHD all along," Spencer says. "Psychiatry is so not an exact science."

Child psychiatrist Barbara Geller, a bipolar expert at Washington University in St. Louis, agrees: "The science is nowhere near where it is in other branches of medicine."

So parents struggle to make the right decisions for very troubled kids. "There's a lot of fear among parents," Spencer says. "You don't know what the effects of these drugs are going to be. You're at the mercy of your doctor.

"I have had to make a lot of decisions, and they were fear-driven. You don't have enough information to make an intelligent decision."

Contributing: Susan O'Brian

Tampa Tribune
Ex-USF Doctor's Plea Deal Terms Set
LENNY SAVINO
Feb 23, 2006

TAMPA - The former chairman of the University of South Florida's psychiatry department was wearing his signature bow tie on Wednesday while pleading no contest to groping a former patient.

In the tiny bustling state courtroom crowded with mostly unkempt traffic defendants, Anthony John Reading bowed his head as Judge Gaston Fernandez set the terms of a plea deal. He said nothing on his own behalf.

Reading is no longer Dr. Reading, the esteemed psychiatrist who spent more than a quarter-century at USF's medical school.

His license to practice medicine is gone, relinquished to the Department of Health for disciplinary actions arising from four former patients with nearly identical allegations. The 72-year-old therapist used goodbye hugs as opportunities to grope their breasts, the women said.

As part of the deal in the case of one of those women - Gail Blanco - the health department dropped the three other complaints. Reading also was ordered to stay away from at least two of the women - Blanco and Tina Logan - who have pending malpractice lawsuits against Reading.
Although none of the four women were in court Wednesday, two expressed bittersweet emotions over the plea.

"I'm not happy or glad he's being punished," Logan said from her job in a West Virginia courthouse. "I think it's necessary for the welfare of his patients. He has more problems than I did."

Logan said the abuse she alleged and the frustration over getting authorities to investigate and prosecute the case made her uproot her young son and leave a good job in Florida she had for 10 years.

"It's pretty disgusting that he would have done those things to patients," said another one of the women, who asked not to be identified.
The judge withheld adjudication, meaning Reading has not been found guilty of a crime. If he violates his probation, he could face a hearing, which could lead to a conviction. He also must undergo a psychiatric evaluation, which his attorney, John Fitzgibbons, said already has been done. Restitution of $7,500 must be paid to Blanco.

"She feels somewhat vindicated and a little relieved," said Blanco's attorney, Ralph Fernandez. "It was difficult for her to stand up to this man whose picture hung at the university. She knew there was a good chance she would have to testify and be cross-examined extensively, but she said, 'I'm going to do it because he's not going to do it to somebody else.'"

Reading declined to comment on his plea deal. In court, his attorney requested that he not be asked to discuss the case.

"There are several malpractice cases pending against my client, and until they are completed we have no comment," Fitzgibbons said.
The judge granted that request.

$65,000 Annual Pension

Reading left USF in January 2005 with a $287,655 deferred retirement benefits payout and a $65,000-a-year state pension. He continued to see patients at the Bay Behavioral Health Center in Panama City, where he now resides.

A felony conviction could have cost Reading his pension, according to Florida law.

Blanco, 35, was treated by Reading for serious depression and anxiety from September 2002 to December 2003. She told investigators that abuse started during her third session. Reading made her feel uncomfortable by staring at her breasts. At the close of the fourth session, she said, he rolled his chair toward her, leaned in, looked down at her chest and said: "Oh, I like that." The abuse advanced to groping her breasts.
In April 2003, Blanco was hospitalized for being suicidal. By September 2003, Reading was taking advantage again, unbuttoning her blouse, removing her bra and fondling her with both hands, a health department order said.

During the final visit, Reading told Blanco she "shouldn't tell anybody" about his conduct, according to the order. In February 2004, Reading had left USF and Blanco was seeing his replacement. She told him about the abuse, which was reported to the health department.

Logan, 36, was the first patient to complain about Reading. On March 3, 2003, she summoned Tampa police to the USF clinic's parking lot, reporting that she had just been fondled by her psychiatrist. It was her second session with him.

The criminal case went nowhere even though Logan passed a polygraph exam about her allegations and Reading failed his. Prosecutors called it a "he said, she said" case with no witnesses or physical evidence.

A third and fourth patient came forward in 2005 after reading about the other two cases in The Tampa Tribune. Both filed complaints with the health department. Those two women asked that their names not be disclosed. The Tribune generally does not name sex crime complainants unless they agree.

Blanco's attorney originally asked that Reading be charged with unlawful imprisonment, a felony, as well as battery, a misdemeanor. Blanco, he wrote to Hillsborough State Attorney Mark Ober, was physically and psychologically unable to stop Reading's advances.

The case revealed a reporting system that was slow to investigate allegations against Reading. Logan said she made three complaints to the health department after she notified police. The first she mailed a few months after telling police. A second letter was sent in July 2004. She didn't make copies. There was no response. In March 2005 she sent a certified letter to then-Health Secretary John Agwunobi, who promised to investigate the case.

Seven months later, the department issued an order barring Reading from treating women. This month, Reading officially relinquished his license.

Hopeful Beginnings

USF hired Reading to chair the psychiatry department in 1975, at a time when the medical school was maturing and many dreamed of making it world-class. Reading was viewed as a pivotal addition.

His bushy moustache and brightly colored bow ties distinguished his presence. After decades of service, he became a medical school icon.
Born in Sydney, Australia, where he earned his medical degree, Reading came to the United States in 1961. After a residency in psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, he was hired by USF.

In 1987, he opened the university's $12 million psychiatric center. He became a driving force to de-stigmatize mental health treatment.

Even after he left USF, Reading's status was symbolized by his painted portrait, which hung outside his second floor office until recently.

"The portrait has disappeared," said Frank Fernandez, Reading's successor. "Someone removed it and has not returned it. The identity of the individual is unknown to us."

Los Angeles Times

January 1, 2006

Psychiatry's sick compulsion: turning weaknesses into diseases
By Irwin Savodnik,
Irwin Savodnik is a psychiatrist and philosopher who teaches at UCLA.

IT'S JAN. 1. Past time to get your inoculation against seasonal affective disorder, or SAD — at least according to the American Psychiatric Assn. As Americans rush to return Christmas junk, bumping into each other in Macy's and Best Buy, the psychiatric association ponders its latest iteration of feeling bad for the holidays. And what is the association selling? Mental illness. With its panoply of major depression, dysthymic disorder, bipolar disorder and generalized anxiety disorder, the association is waving its Calvinist flag to remind everyone that amid all the celebration, all the festivities, all the exuberance, many people will "come down with" or "contract" or "develop" some variation of depressive illness.

The association specializes in turning ordinary human frailty into disease. In the last year, ads have been appearing in psychiatric journals about possible treatments for shyness, a "syndrome" not yet officially recognized as a disease. You can bet it will be in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-IV, published by the association. As it turns out, the association has been inventing mental illnesses for the last 50 years or so. The original diagnostic manual appeared in 1952 and contained 107 diagnoses and 132 pages, by my count. The second edition burst forth in 1968 with 180 diagnoses and 119 pages. In 1980, the association produced a 494-page tome with 226 conditions. Then, in 1994, the manual exploded to 886 pages and 365 conditions, representing a 340% increase in the number of diseases over 42 years.

Nowhere in the rest of medicine has such a proliferation of categories occurred. The reason for this difference between psychiatry and other medical specialties has more to do with ideology than with science. A brief peek at both areas makes this point clear. All medicine rests on the premise that disease is a manifestation of diseased tissue. Hepatitis comes down to an inflamed liver, while lung tissue infiltrated with pneumococcus causes pneumonia. Every medical student learns this principle. Where, though, is the diseased tissue in psychopathological conditions?

Unlike the rest of medicine, psychiatry diagnoses behavior that society doesn't like. Yesterday it was homosexuality. Tomorrow it will be homophobia. Someone who declares himself the messiah, who insists that fluorescent lights talk to him or declares that she's the Virgin Mary, is an example of such behavior. Such people are deemed — labeled, really — sick by psychiatrists, and often they are taken off to hospitals against their will. The "diagnosis" of such "pathological behavior" is based on social, political or aesthetic values.

This is confusing. Behavior cannot be pathological (or healthy, for that matter). It can simply comport with, or not comport with, our nonmedical expectations of how people should behave. Analogously, brains that produce weird or obnoxious behaviors are not diseased. They are brains that produce atypical behaviors (which could include such eccentricities as dyed hair or multiple piercings or tattoos that nobody in their right mind could find attractive).

Lest one think that such a view is the rant of a Scientologist, it is no such thing. Scientology offers polemic to lull the faithful into belief. Doctors and philosophers offer argument to provoke debate.

It's a natural step from using social and political standards to create a psychiatric diagnosis to using them to influence public policy. Historically, that influence has appeared most dramatically in the insanity defense. Remember Dan White, the man who murdered San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978? Or John Hinckley, who shot President Reagan in 1981? Or Mark David Chapman, who killed John Lennon? White, whose psychiatrist came up with the "Twinkie defense" — the high sugar content of White's favorite junk food may have fueled his murderous impulses — was convicted and paroled after serving five years, only to commit suicide a year later.

The erosion of personal responsibility is, arguably, the most pernicious effect of the expansive role psychiatry has come to play in American life. It has successfully replaced huge chunks of individual accountability with diagnoses, clinical histories and what turn out to be pseudoscientific explanations for deviant behavior.

Pathology has replaced morality. Treatment has supplanted punishment. Imprisonment is now hospitalization. From the moral self-castigation we find in the writings of John Adams, we have been drawn to Woody Allen-style neuroses. Were the psychiatric association to scrutinize itself more deeply and reconsider its expansionist diagnostic programs, it would, hopefully, make a positive contribution to our culture by not turning the good and bad into the healthy and the sick.

The last thing the United States needs is more self-indulgent, pseudo-insightful, overly self-conscious babble about people who can't help
themselves. Better, as Voltaire would put it, to cultivate our gardens and be accountable for who and what we are.

Submitted as Guest Editorial:

Eileen Dannemann
Director, National Coalition of Organized Women

Thank you so much for the Savodnick article on Psychiatry's sick compulsion. (LA Times, Jan 1, 2006) My son David, now 21, who has been meditating since he was four; grew up on organic food, received no mandated childhood mercury vaccines, and was point guard of his high school basketball team and a most creative "out of the box thinker" decided to try recreational drugs at the University of Iowa 3 years ago. He had a bad reaction to LSD The Psychiatrists at the U of I Hospital totally disregarded the fact that he was coming off of a recreational trip and labeled him Bi Polar neatly coded by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) enabling him to be locked up and covered by Medicaid insuring that the Hospital would be paid.

The Hospital psychiatrist put David, then age 19, on Lithium, Haldol, Addivan and you name it. He gained enormous amount of weight and became zombie-like. They told him he would have to be on Lithium the rest of his life...that is...the rest of his life. This once brilliant athlete was now shuffling his feet having been condemned to a life of a lawn mower. The diagnosis was based on no tests...no genetic history...no nothing...just the "professional opinion" of a college educated, brainwashed American Psychiatric Association (APA) dweeble who blatantly disregarded the fact that David's symptoms were caused by LSD (one of the first SSRI drugs developed by Pfizer in the early day). Does the DSM have a code for LSD adverse effects? Would "detoxification" have been a more rational first line of treatment? Would Medicaid pay for a hospital stay for "detoxification"? I don't think so, but it sounds like a sorely needed common sense plan for the youth of America, today. s And...to add insult to injury:

One day as David was coming off the Haldol, he hung himself in my back yard. Twitching uncontrollably from a tree, I saved him in the nick of time, shouldering him back up on the ladder from whence he jumped. Today, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued black box warnings for SSRIs: A little late for David or Diane Routhier, a well-educated, beautiful, happily married mother of two who killed herself with a gun after six days on Wellbutin. Or Sara Bostock whose daughter stabbed herself twice in the chest with a large chef's knife after taking Paxil for 2 weeks. (Sleeping in the next room, Sara simply heard a slight yelp and a thump when her daughter fell on the floor). Glenn McIntosh’s 6th grade daughter hung herself with her shoelaces in the school bathroom after being prescribed Paxil/Zoloft. Chris Pittman was 12 years old and on Zoloft when he killed both his grandparents and torched their house.

Yet, Psychiatrists still prescribe these drugs. David "believed" the white coated, diploma laden authorities and so did his father who would piss in the wind if an authority told him to do so. It took David a self discovery journey in and out of mental institutions and hospitals for over two years to realize he was not mentally ill but had become a victim of massive, covert, quasi-legitimate, series of clinical drug trials. The reality is that research hospital psychiatrists are "experimenting' on this generation with a vast array of sketchily FDA approved anti depressant/psychotic medications. University mental hospitals have become the second tier drug trial laboratory for the drug companies. The Bayh-Dole Act passed by Congress in the 80's gave Universities and their researchers full patent rights to drugs they might develop. Since then, universities and associated hospitals have become field laboratories for the drug industry. (See: http://www.fortune.com/fortune/fortune75/articles/0,15114,1101810-2,00.html) Emory College, for example, recently received over $300 million dollars for a drug they developed.

Currently on the radar is TeenScreen, a suicide screening initiative created by Columbia University (emphasis on university). Teen Screen has begun to infiltrate our public schools, using our convenient "educational" network as a channel for the Drug industry. There is so much blind banter going on in the media about the TeenScreen program, but has anyone actually seen a Teen Screen survey? Have a peek. Judge for yourself whether this is science or academic junk. We have a research project currently reviewing a TeenScreen survey on our website www.ProgessiveConvergence.com. In our review, we noticed that there were many questions on the use of street drugs such as marijuana, LSD, amphetamines, etc, but no questions on the use of "prescription drugs". It seemed odd to us that since over eight million children are on psychiatric drugs and many of these drugs have black box warnings in particular for suicide that there were no questions on this survey pertaining to prescription drugs. Marijuana isn't known for causing suicidal ideation, but drugs given to ADD and ADHD kids are. It is quite telling by this blaring omission who is behind the congressionally funded, mandated mental screening of all America's children via public schools initiative. In addition, this initiative has been strategically designed so that it does not require active parental consent. And although Congressman Ron Paul (TX) has fought for parental consent, Congress has failed to support him.

And while we are at it: Why all this concern about mental illness in our public schools? Yes, it is true that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report that 1 of every 6 children has a neurological disorder. Could the 20 years of injecting the generation (via the CDC’s mandated children’s vaccine program) with high levels of mercury (aka Thimerosal) in as many as 22 vaccines between the ages of 1 month and 2 years old have anything to do with the apparent rampant epidemic of mental illness, ADD, ADHD and Autism?

Doesn't it seem odd to anyone that we are advised by our government not to eat fish contaminated with mercury, yet we are asked to stand by while health professionals inject this deadly neurotoxin directly into our children’s bloodstreams? And does it not appear to be even odder… rather than facing this CDC atrocity square on, that Congress is facilitating the dumbing down of our children with anti-depressants, psychiatric, suicide/homicide drugs by funding programs like Teen Screen and the New Freedom Commission. Seems odd to me…the on going government program...shoot ‘em up with mercury, then dumb ‘em down with Zoloft

In conclusion, I wonder how we will all fare when the Dept. of Defense (DoD) calls a Bioterrorism emergency (based on reality or not) and the Human Health Services director, Mike Leavitt mandates the injection of every man, woman and child with untested vaccines. Last week’s passage of the Patriot Act amendments has insured non-liability for Drug companies. How convenient. We might expect either the avian flu pandemic or a bio terrorist attack any time soon now that Drug companies are held harmless for damages.

Eileen Dannemann
Director, National Coalition of Organized Women
www.ProgressiveConvergence.com
www.SlavetotheMetal.org

New York Times
Can Brain Scans See Depression?

By Benedict Carey
October 18, 2005

They seem almost alive: snapshots of the living human brain.

Not long ago, scientists predicted that these images, produced by sophisticated brain-scanning techniques, would help cut through the mystery of mental illness, revealing clear brain abnormalities and allowing doctors to better diagnose and treat a wide variety of disorders. And nearly every week, it seems, imaging researchers announce another finding, a potential key to understanding depression, attention deficit disorder, anxiety.

Yet for a variety of reasons, the hopes and claims for brain imaging in psychiatry have far outpaced the science, experts say.

After almost 30 years, researchers have not developed any standardized tool for diagnosing or treating psychiatric disorders based on imaging studies.

Several promising lines of research are under way. But imaging technology has not lived up to the hopes invested in it in the 1990's - labeled the "Decade of the Brain" by the American Psychiatric Association - when many scientists believed that brain scans would turn on the lights in what had been a locked black box.

Now, with imaging studies being published at a rate of more than 500 a year, and commercial imaging clinics opening in some parts of the country, some experts say that the technology has been oversold as a psychiatric tool. Other researchers remain optimistic, but they wonder what the data add up to, and whether it is time for the field to rethink its approach and its expectations.

"I have been waiting for my work in the lab to affect my job on the weekend, when I practice as a child psychiatrist," said Dr. Jay Giedd, chief of brain imaging in the child psychiatry branch at the National Institute of Mental Health, who has done M.R.I. scans in children Monday through Friday for 14 years. "It hasn't happened. In this field, every year you hear, 'Oh, it's more complicated than we thought.' Well, you hear that for 10 years, and you start to see a pattern."

Psychiatrists still consider imaging technologies like M.R.I., for magnetic resonance imaging, and PET, for positron emission topography, to be crucial research tools. And the scanning technologies are invaluable as a way to detect physical problems like head trauma, seizure activity or tumors. Moreover, the experts point out, progress in psychiatry is by its nature painstakingly slow, and decades of groundwork typically precede any real advances.

But there is a growing sense that brain scan research is still years away from providing psychiatry with anything like the kind of clear tests for mental illness that were hoped for.

"I think that, with some notable exceptions, the community of scientists was excessively optimistic about how quickly imaging would have an impact on psychiatry," said Dr. Steven Hyman, a professor of neurobiology at Harvard and the former director of the National Institute of Mental Health. "In their enthusiasm, people forgot that the human brain is the most complex object in the history of human inquiry, and it's not at all easy to see what's going wrong."

For one thing, brains are as variable as personalities.

In a range of studies, researchers have found that people with schizophrenia suffer a progressive loss of their brain cells: a 20-year-old who develops the disorder, for example, might lose 5 percent to 10 percent of overall brain volume over the next decade, studies suggest.
Ten percent is a lot, and losses of volume in the frontal lobes are associated with measurable impairment in schizophrenia, psychiatrists have found. But brain volume varies by at least 10 percent from person to person, so volume scans of patients by themselves cannot tell who is sick, the experts say.

Studies using brain scans to measure levels of brain activity often suffer from the same problem: what looks like a "hot spot" of activity change in one person's brain may be a normal change in someone else's.

"The differences observed are not in and of themselves outside the range of variation seen in the normal population," said Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, chairman of the psychiatry department at Columbia University Medical Center and director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute.

To make matters even more complicated, many findings are disputed. In people with severe depression, for instance, researchers have found apparent shrinkage of a part of the temporal lobe called the hippocampus, which is critical for memory. But other investigators have not been able to replicate this finding, and people with injuries to the hippocampus typically suffer amnesia, not depression, psychiatrists say.
For problems like attention-deficit disorder and bipolar disorder, the experts say, psychiatrists have much less research on which to base their theories.

Most fundamentally, imaging research has not answered the underlying question that the technology itself has raised: which comes first, the disease or the apparent difference in brain structure or function that is being observed?

For a definitive answer, researchers would need to follow thousands of people from childhood through adulthood, taking brain scans regularly, and matching them with scans from peers who did not develop a disorder, experts say. Given the expense and difficulty, such a study may never be done, Dr. Hyman said.

One investigator has used imaging research to fashion a small, experimental psychiatric treatment.

In a series of studies of people with severe depression, Dr. Helen Mayberg, a professor of psychiatry at Emory University in Atlanta, found a baffling pattern of activity.

Using PET scanning technology, Dr. Mayberg found sharp dips and spikes of activity in about a half-dozen areas of these patients' brains as their moods improved while they were taking either antidepressant drugs or placebos.

The changes were similar in all patients, but it was difficult to tell how the scattering of the dips and spikes were related.

By analyzing the peaks and valleys on the scans as part of a circuit - networked together, like a string of Christmas lights - Dr. Mayberg found that one spot in particular seemed to modulate the entire system, like a transformer or a dimmer.

She confirmed the importance of this spot, called Brodmann area 25, by scanning the brains of mentally healthy people while they remembered painful episodes from their lives: while sad they, too, showed increased activity in this area.

In March, Dr. Mayberg and a team based at the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto reported on six patients who had had electrodes implanted in their brains next to Brodmann area 25.

All had been severely depressed for at least a year, and they had responded poorly to available therapies. The implanted electrodes, often used to treat Parkinson's disease, produce a current that slows neural activity, for reasons scientists do not yet understand.

So far, the researchers reported in the journal Neuron, four of the six people have shown significant and lasting recovery; all four are still on antidepressant drugs but at reduced doses. And all four have returned to work or their usual routines, Dr. Mayberg said.

The widely reported experiment has generated more than 300 requests from people to be considered for the operation, she added.

"It's very important to understand that this is experimental, and the next step is to replicate what we did, with a placebo, and that could send us right back to the drawing board," Dr. Mayberg said in an interview.

The findings so far are encouraging, she said, "but the idea that this is something for every severely depressed patient - well, shame on us if we suggest that. The brain is a very big place and we had better have a very good idea of what we're doing before holding this out as a treatment."
Many people would rather not wait for the science of imaging to mature, however. At clinics in California, Washington, Illinois, Texas and elsewhere, doctors offer brain scans to people with a variety of conditions, from attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, often called A.D.H.D., to depression and aggressive behavior.

Dr. Daniel Amen, an adult and child psychiatrist based in Newport Beach, Calif., said he performed 28,000 scans on adults and children over the past 14 years, using a technique called Spect, or single photon emission computed tomography.

In an interview, Dr. Amen said that it was unconscionable that the profession of psychiatry was not making more use of brain scans. "Here we are, giving five or six different medications to children without even looking at the organ we're changing," he said.

He said the scans had helped him to distinguish between children with attention deficit problems who respond well to stimulants like Ritalin and those who do poorly on the drugs. In a series of books and medical articles, Dr. Amen argued that the images helped convince people that the behavior problems had a biological basis and needed treatment, with drugs or other therapies.

"They increase compliance with treatment and decrease the shame and guilt" associated with the disorders, he said.

At the Brainwaves Neuroimaging Clinic in Houston, doctors use the scans to diagnose and choose treatment for a range of psychiatric problems, according to a clinic spokeswoman. And a variety of doctors advertise the imaging services, particularly for attention-deficit disorder, on the Internet. But the experts who study imaging and psychiatry say there is no evidence that a brain scan, which can cost more than $1,000, adds significantly to standard individual psychiatric exams.

"The thing for people to understand is that right now, the only thing imaging can tell you is whether you have a brain tumor," or some other neurological damage, said Paul Root Wolpe, a professor of psychiatry and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics.
He added, "This imaging technology is so far from prime time that to spend thousands of dollars on it doesn't make any sense."

The big payoff from imaging technology, some experts say, may come as researchers combine the scans with other techniques, like genetic or biochemical tests. By radioactively marking specific receptors in the brain, for example, researchers are using brain scans to measure how brain chemicals known to affect mood, like dopamine, behave in people with schizophrenia, compared with mentally healthy peers.

Imaging researchers are also studying depression-related circuits to see how they may arise from genetic variations known to put people at risk for depression.

And as always, the technology itself is improving: a new generation of M.R.I. scanners, with double the resolution power of the current machines, is becoming more widely available, Dr. Lieberman said.

"With increased resolution, we'll be able to do more sensitive and more precise work, and I would not be surprised if anatomy alone based on volume will be a diagnostic feature," he said. "We have gained an enormous amount knowledge from thousands of imaging studies, we are on the threshold of applying that knowledge, and now it's a matter of getting over the threshold."

But for now, neither he nor anyone else can say when that will happen.

St Petersburg Times
Woman sues her former USF doctor
She says he molested her during counseling sessions at the university's outpatient clinic.

By CANDACE RONDEAUX, Times Staff Writer
Published October 15, 2005

TAMPA - A Tampa woman filed a lawsuit Friday against a former chairman of the University of South Florida psychiatry department, alleging that he sexually molested her and several other female patients during counseling sessions.

The lawsuit states that Dr. Anthony T. Reading made sexual advances to Gail Blanco on several occasions while treating her at the university's outpatient clinic. Blanco claims that Reading fondled her breasts and forced her to touch his genitals under the guise of psychiatric care.

Blanco, treated by Reading from September 2002 to December 2003, also alleges that the university was negligent when it allowed him to keep working despite a sexual misconduct complaint filed with Tampa police by another patient. The university's Board of Trustees has also been named a party in the legal claim.

On March 3, 2003, the other patient told Tampa police that Reading had made sexual advances during counseling sessions. Soon after, a detective contacted the Health Department about the allegations, according to the lawsuit.

No formal charges have been filed against Reading.

Reading, who now works at the Bay Behavioral Health Center in Panama City, was out on sick leave and could not be reached at his office. Attempts to reach Blanco were unsuccessful Friday and her attorney, James W. Clark, could not be reached for comment.

The lawsuit is the latest in a scandal that broke early this year after the Tampa Tribune reported that Reading had resigned as department chairman and director of the university's outpatient clinic. Several months after he retired in late December 2004, Florida Health Department officials put his license on emergency restriction, barring him from treating female patients.

USF College of Medicine spokesman Michael Hoad said he was aware of the lawsuit but that it was too soon to determine the level of the school's liability in the case. Hoad said USF has referred similar complaints from three of Reading's female patients to the Health Department and that a fourth patient had also complained directly to the state agency.

"This is a serious allegation and because we take it seriously we would like to see a full investigation conducted by the Department of Health," Hoad said.

Health Department spokesman Doc Kokol said he could not confirm whether his agency is investigating Reading's conduct. But he said Reading remains on restriction and can only treat male patients.

U.S. Newswire

As FDA Commissioner Resigns 125 Medical Professionals Demand FDA Quit Stalling On Psychiatric Drug Warnings

To: National Desk, Health Reporter

Contact: Julian Whitaker of the Whitaker Wellness Center, 949-851-1550

PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 27 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Protesters today descended on GlaxoSmithKline headquarters demanding a recall of Paxil, citing addiction, violent thoughts and anxiety attacks attributed to the drug.

125 medical practitioners have signed onto a joint letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), renewing a call to take immediate action on issuing stronger warnings for antidepressant and stimulant drugs, as a 3-day protest rages by consumer groups demanding Glaxo recall its $950 million antidepressant Paxil. The same letter, sent to FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford in July, 2005 and signed by 20 doctors, was left unanswered by the Commissioner prompting many to accuse the FDA of bureaucratic foot-dragging and procrastination. Senator Charles Grassley, (R-Iowa) who has spent months investigating the FDA, said the agency "demonstrated a too-cozy relationship with the pharmaceutical industry," and that "the opportunity to name a new commissioner is a chance to take the agency in the right direction."

The doctors' letters join recent efforts by Dr. Ann Blake Tracy, Executive Director of the International coalition for Drug Awareness (ICFDA) and Mrs. Bonnie Leitsch, founder of "Prozac Survivors Support Group" (PSSG) in calling for immediate federal action to warn the public that antidepressants can not only induce suicidality in adult patients - but also acts of violence, pointing out that the U.S. FDA has known of these effects since a 1991 public hearing on antidepressant drugs. Prompted by a spate of recent incidents of mothers murdering their own children while taking antidepressants, Dr. Tracy said, "These are extremely dangerous drugs that should have been banned, as similar drugs were in the past. Federal investigations into the violence- inducing effects of these drugs are long overdue." Mrs. Leitsch added, "In 1991, there was evidence of 500 deaths associated with antidepressants presented to an FDA Psychopharmacological Drugs Advisory Committee hearing investigating Prozac. The FDA's failure to issue timely warnings then has led to more suicides, homicides, school shootings and mothers killing their own children."

Concerned doctors are also pushing for FDA reform and action under new leadership. 25 European countries recently warned that antidepressants should not be used in patients under 18 due to the suicide and violence inducing effects of the drugs and recent clinical studies linked ADHD drugs to hallucinations, violence, psychosis, and suicide. Dr. Julian Whitaker, M.D., and principal author of the letter says the overwhelming evidence of the dangers of these drugs makes further FDA procrastination unacceptable, "It is beyond debate that these drugs have extremely dangerous side effects and that the public is not being kept adequately informed about these dangers," states Whitaker, "It is our hope that the new Commissioner will take immediate and swift action to protect the public from these dangerous and too often deadly psychiatric drugs."

Fueled by $4.5 billion in direct consumer advertising, ADHD stimulant drug sales have quadrupled since 2000 while antidepressant sales have passed the $20 billion mark, prompting many to question how profit-driven vested interests may be involved in the FDA's failure to warn patients of the drugs risks. "With literally billions of dollars of profits at stake, we are not surprised when we hear stories of skewed clinical trials, suppressed study outcomes, pressure placed on reviewers, and a host of other abuses," stated Dr. Whitaker.

As the U.S. becomes infamous for its spate of school shootings, with 8 of the last 13 school shooters taking violence- and suicide-inducing psychiatric drugs, leaving 29 dead and 54 wounded, the letter implores the FDA to "take a leadership role in conducting a soul-searching, completely honest review of the procedures used to obtain approval of any anti-psychotic, stimulant or antidepressant drug."

With over 8 million children and over 30 million adults including new mothers being prescribed violence and suicidal inducing stimulant or antidepressant drugs despite a complete lack of laboratory test to show that any neurobiological or physical condition exists, the beleaguered agency can ill-afford to procrastinate any longer.

The letter to the FDA was signed by a nationwide cross-section of medical personnel, including neurologists, pediatricians, family physicians, anesthesiologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, surgeons and obstetricians.

http://www.usnewswire.com/
© 2005 U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Sunday, September 18, 2005

Fierce opposition arises to mental health screening in schools

By Karen MacPherson,

WASHINGTON -- Back in 2003, a federal commission created by President Bush recommended improving and expanding mental health programs in schools to provide help as early as possible to students with learning problems or those who might turn violent or disruptive.

The commission highlighted one means of early diagnosis, the Columbia University "TeenScreen" program, that allows students -- with parental permission -- to get a mental health "check-up" via a computer-based questionnaire before graduating from high school.

The commission's 86-page report included this suggestion among a long list of recommendations to improve the U.S. mental health system. The report attracted little attention outside mental health circles.

But over the past two years, a cottage industry of fiery opposition has grown up around the proposal to expand mental health programs in the schools and has become a popular rallying cry for conservatives who see it as unwarranted government intervention in family life.

Opponents of school-based mental health programs point to parents who say their children have been misdiagnosed with problems such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and forced to take medication under pressure from school officials.

To these parents, the commission suggestion to "improve and expand'' school mental health programs is the first, inexorable step toward mandatory school mental health screening for all students, and mandatory medication for many, despite repeated assurances by commission members, school officials and congressional experts that this won't happen.

Led by groups like Ablechild.org and EdAction, these parents want to prohibit schools from having anything to do with the mental health of their students, saying it is the job of parents to ensure their children's well-being.

As a first step, the groups are pushing Congress to pass legislation, sponsored by Rep. Ron Paul, R-Tex., and supported by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, to prohibit any federal funding for mental health screening of students without the written consent of their parents.

"If [this legislation] is passed, it will prevent wasteful and potentially devastating federal funding while safeguarding the informed consent rights of all parents in what is a most serious matter -- their children's health and safety," said Patricia Weathers, president and co-founder of Ablechild.org.

The educators and medical professionals on the other side of the debate agree parental consent should be required for screenings. But they also think it's worth studying the idea of promoting voluntary screenings to get help for children who need it as early as possible.

"There is this curious coalition of people who are concerned about stuff that we didn't recommend, and are making a big noise about it,'' said Michael Hogan, director of the Ohio Mental Health Department and chairman of what was then called the New Freedom Commission.

"The core thing that the commission was concerned about is the fact that a lot of these mental health problems are pretty clearly problems of childhood and adolescent onset.... Added to this is the fact that most children never get to see a mental health specialist.

"The fundamental logic of what the commission said is that we should take steps to facilitate access to care where children are.''

The debate over school screenings is just part of a larger discussion over the role schools should play in ensuring children's mental heath. Many educators point to a clear connection between mental health and academic achievement.

"There are a whole slew of intra-personal variables that contribute to a kid's ability to learn and are heavily related to their academic success,'' said Stacy Skalski, public policy director for the National Association of School Psychologists.

"There are also inter-personal variables. Kids don't come into the world knowing how to relate to others. They need to learn that.''

Bruce Hunter, a veteran policy official with the American Association of School Administrators, said it's clear "the education business is tough enough without getting into the mental health business.

"But if a kid is going to beat the hell out of other kids regularly, and is disrupting the classroom, that's a child that needs some mental health assistance. One of the things that our members have expressed is a rising concern about students' mental health, and the ability to get them help when they have a problem,'' Hunter said.

A complicating factor is that the debate over school mental health problems has become enmeshed in the vehement opposition of some people to medicating children for depression, hyperactivity and other problems. These opponents point to the nasty potential side effects of some commonly prescribed drugs, including suicide, and argue that they simply aren't safe for children.

Hogan and others supporters of school mental health programs agree that more long-term testing should be done on antidepressants and other emotion-altering drugs prescribed for children and teens.

"We [commission members] recommended that the scientists and regulatory officials get on top of the safety issue,'' Hogan said.

Weathers, of Ablechild.org, is among those who believe more attention should be paid to children's nutrition and behavior management, instead of "being so quick to prescribe a drug." Her group supports legislation, sponsored by Rep. John Kline, that would prohibit schools from requiring parents to have their children medicated to attend classes.

Kline's bill would expand protections in the Individuals with Disabilities Act, which prohibited schools from requiring special education students to take certain medications, to all students. The bill also would cover more types of medication than in the disability law.

Weathers said she was pressured into medicating her then first-grade son after a school psychologist diagnosed him with attention deficit disorder. The medication eventually made him psychotic, but when she stopped giving it to him the school reported her to state children protective officials for child abuse, she said.

A lawsuit brought by Weathers against school officials is pending; her son, meanwhile, is now 15 and "doing fine," she said.

"We have 1,000 stories like this,'' Weathers said. "Our group is not saying that children don't have attention or behavior problems. Some kids do. But why should we force parents to drug their children so they can attend school?"

(Karen MacPherson can be reached at [email protected] or 1-202-662-7075.)

Indianapolis Star
September 18, 2005

Teen privacy concerns spur suit over psych test

by Ruth Holladay

Conscientious parents concerned that their children perform well on ISTEP starting Monday would be wise to pay attention to a less incisive and more insidious exam creeping into some Indiana high schools.

Called TeenScreen, this computerized Q&A is designed to diagnose mental illness and identify depression and suicidal tendencies in adolescents.

That ambitious agenda, plus a history of giving the test to some students without parental permission, has put TeenScreen in the hot seat. Friday, a lawsuit outlining these complaints was filed in federal court in the Northern District of Indiana in South Bend by a Northern Indiana couple and their 16-year-old daughter.

To read the complete article, click on the link below:

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050918/COLUMNISTS02/509180424/1035/COLUMNISTS

Townhall.com
September 7, 2005

How I cured adult ADHD
Mike S. Adams

One of the toughest things about being a teacher is dealing with all the latest “syndromes” in our culture of victimization. Whenever a real problem like racism diminishes, there is always someone willing to redefine the problem to help maintain the population of “disadvantaged” Americans. This is usually followed by the invention of a new problem that actually increases the population of “disadvantaged” Americans. Consequently, victimization has become a growth industry that supplies more jobs for social workers despite their increasing irrelevance in relation to the real problems of modern society.

Often those fictional problems take the form of “disorders” like adult ADHD. I always know which of my students have been told that they suffer from adult ADHD. They are often late and sometimes leave class early to go potty, unlike most students who go potty before class begins. They blurt out the answers to my questions constantly – always without the courtesy of a raised hand. And, usually, they fall asleep in class (probably from exhaustion) after the fifteenth or twentieth interruption. Later, they are awakened by the cell phone they forgot to turn off before arriving in class.

After being diagnosed with ADHD, two things usually happen to the newly “disadvantaged” student. First, a psychologist tells the victim that he cannot pay attention nor control various impulses. Next, he is given a dosage of drugs. Neither one of these responses actually works. In fact, telling him that he cannot pay attention – rather than that he simply does not pay attention – usually reinforces the problem. The drugs don’t work because, again, the disorder is fictional.

But, fortunately, I have discovered a cure for students with this so-called disorder, which I am now sharing (free of charge, mind you) with my readers. Here’s how it works.

At the beginning of the semester I lay out a few ground rules with my students. For example, they are not to bring cell phones into my class. They are also forbidden from walking into class after the lecture has started. But I don’t just tell students not to do these things. I also make them sign an agreement (on the first day of class) that they will not do these things under penalty of writing a research paper if they break the promise.

The first student to ever violate the agreement was named Chris. After he walked into my class very late one day, then interrupted it approximately fifteen times by shouting out the (usually wrong) answer to a question, then fell asleep in class, then woke up and went potty (thankfully in the restroom, not in his seat), I sent him the following letter:

Chris:

Your research paper this semester will take the form of an interview of either:

a) A teacher, or b) A psychologist.

If you choose "A," you will be asked to conduct an interview on how the teacher’s job is made more difficult when students

1) come to class late

2) sleep in class

3) interrupt the lecture by blurting out answers without a raised hand, and

4) get up and walk out in the middle of a lecture to go to the restroom.

If you choose "B," you will be asked to conduct an interview on the causes of the following behaviors: 1) coming to class late 2) sleeping in class 3) interrupting the lecture by blurting out answers without a raised hand, and 4) getting up and walking out in the middle of a lecture to go to the restroom.

Whether you choose "A" or "B," the paper must be, at present, one page long. It is due with your final exam. Between now and then, one more page will be added to the length of the paper, each time you 1) come to class late 2) sleep in class 3) interrupt the lecture by blurting out answers without a raised hand or 4) walk out of class during the lecture to go to the restroom.

If a medical condition is responsible for any of these behaviors, reasonable allowances will be made.

Dr. Mike S. Adams

Of course, Chris did write back to say that a medical condition – adult ADHD -was responsible for his behavior. But I quickly informed him that his condition was a fiction and that the behavior was fully under his control. Thus, the assignment stood.

Chris made the choice to cooperate. And, wouldn’t you know it, every one of the disruptive behaviors he exhibited disappeared the very next class period. Of course, he made that choice simply because it was easier than writing a 600 page research paper to cover the projected pace of about 600 interruptions he had set during the first few classes.

Psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists, and social workers around the world will surely be angry with this present column – largely because it provides a rather simple solution to a rather simple problem. They will no doubt also be angry over my seemingly calloused attitude towards those who suffer from adult ADHD. But I choose not to pay attention to them – remember, paying attention is a choice for adults – until they answer a few simple questions. For example:

Why did my solution work so immediately and so effectively after, presumably, years of therapy and drug prescriptions failed?
Will you continue to use the term “irresistible impulse” to describe what is obviously merely an impulse not resisted?
Are you at all concerned that other fictional disorders will be exposed by other equally simple experiments?
How can one be a part of a helping profession, if he does not, first and foremost, help people to help themselves?
And, finally, what will happen if you ever win your war upon free will? Will you protect people from the prospect of failure? Or will you deprive people of the prospect of success?

Mike S. Adams (www.DrAdams.org) will speak at Ohio University in Athens, OH, on October 5th. After the speech, he will answer the questions of those who raise their hands.

©2005 Mike S. Adams

The Wall Street Journal
Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Studies could alter treatment for depression, schizophrenia

By Leila Abboud,

The results of the largest studies ever conducted of depression and schizophrenia will be released in coming months, potentially transforming the way patients are treated and shaking up some of the drug industry's most lucrative markets.

The federally funded studies are part of a six-year push by the mental-health division of the National Institutes of Health to come up with reliable scientific data on the differences between drugs and treatment strategies for the major psychiatric illnesses. The project comprises four trials, in serious depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and adolescent depression.

The aim is to fill the information gap that plagues psychiatry, and hurts the quality of care given to patients. Clinical trials that companies do to get drugs approved aren't designed to provide the answers that doctors say they really need. For one, these trials don't compare one drug with another, because they are designed to show only whether a particular drug is effective against an illness. Thus, psychiatrists have little guidance on whether one drug works better than another or has fewer side effects than another.

Also, at eight to 12 weeks long, drug-company trials are too short to reveal how patients fare or what side effects crop up long-term. And, in order to stay focused on a drug's efficacy on one illness, they exclude the sickest patients and people with co-existing diseases.

The paucity of quality information about drugs has been a major issue in recent years as concerns have emerged about side effects, and drug companies have been criticized for hushing up unfavorable study results.

So, the NIH-funded trials aim to compare treatments to discover both positive and negative impacts of the drugs, and to mimic the real world with all of its imperfections. All kinds of patients are included and they are followed for years. The trials -- which include thousands of participants, versus the hundreds in a typical drug-company trial -- are conducted all over the country and include community clinics and primary-care offices, not just academic medical centers. As part of the $140 million effort, the NIH is also collecting data on the cost effectiveness of the various treatments and pitting older drugs, which are available as cheaper generics, against newer blockbusters.

Grayson Norquist, a former NIH psychiatrist who played a big role in conceiving the trials, says they aim to answer the main question doctors face every day. "Of the several drugs I have to choose from," says Dr. Norquist, now at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, "which one should I use for the person sitting in front of me?"

Enormous amounts of money are at stake if the trials reveal differences in the safety and efficacy of various drugs. Antidepressants and antipsychotics are the third- and fourth-biggest classes of drugs in the country after cholesterol and heartburn medicines, with U.S. sales of $20.7 billion last year. Much of that cost is borne by government health-care plans. Both health-care payers and Wall Street investors are anxiously awaiting the results of the two trials in coming months. (Results from the first arm of the project, on adolescent depression, came out in August 2004 and showed that a combination of antidepressants and therapy was the most effective treatment. The study of bipolar disorder ends in September, and results will be published after the analysis is completed.)

In addition to comparing drugs, the trials are trying to fill another gap in the scientific literature: what to do with the many patients who don't get better on their first drug. Psychiatrists do a lot of switching patients from one antidepressant to another and tinkering with drug combinations. None of this is backed up with good evidence, and it can take months to find the right regimen. Practices and outcomes vary widely among doctors.

Steve Miller saw a dozen doctors before finding the drugs that alleviated his schizophrenia. The 45-year-old from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, first had hallucinations as a freshman in college, and took haloperidol, an older-generation antipsychotic, for years. He remained so anxious and depressed he contemplated suicide. A newer antipsychotic, Clozaril, worked better. But it was only when his doctor added Zyprexa to the mix that he finally recovered.

"Clinicians are just basically practicing seat-of-their-pants pharmacology based on their experience with patients," said Jeffrey Lieberman, the principal investigator on the schizophrenia study, which is known as CATIE. "When they look for hard data in the scientific literature to base their decisions on, they can't find it."

The problem is especially acute in depression -- about half of patients don't respond to standard antidepressant therapy. The depression study, called STAR.D, tests whether the subsequent treatment strategies doctors typically use for these patients actually work. It included 3,940 patients across the country who were followed for five years.

All of the patients first take the antidepressant Celexa, from Forest Laboratories Inc., which belongs to a class of drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Those who don't get better can choose whether to try therapy or switch to other antidepressants -- either Pfizer Inc.'s Zoloft, another SSRI, or GlaxoSmithKline PLC's Wellbutrin or Wyeth's Effexor, which work by different mechanisms in the brain. In the third and fourth stages of the study, people who don't get better cycle through various antidepressants and combinations of drugs.

The CATIE schizophrenia study pits eight antipsychotic drugs against each other to determine their comparative effectiveness and safety. About 1,600 patients were enrolled and followed for 18 months.

In the first stage, patients are given either perphenazine (an older, generic antipsychotic medication) or one of four newer drugs: Eli Lilly & Co.'s Zyprexa, Johnson & Johnson's Risperdal, AstraZeneca PLC's Seroquel or Pfizer's Geodon. If they don't get better or encounter side effects, they are switched to other antipsychotics, including the newest, Abilify from Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.

One of the big benefits to patients of the CATIE trial will be high-quality, rigorous information about the comparative side effects of psychiatry medications. Concerns have emerged in recent years that some of the newer medicines, known as atypical antipsychotics, can cause extreme weight gain, worsen cholesterol and lead to diabetes. Although the Food and Drug Administration required that all atypical antipsychotics carry a warning about these side effects, the NIH trial might actually reveal whether certain drugs in the class are worse than others.

The CATIE investigators are now analyzing the results and preparing them for publication in September. But one striking fact has already emerged: nearly 70 percent of patients in the study didn't do well on their first drug, and switched to another.

Christian Communication Network

'Shut Up and Pass the Prozac'
Top Psychiatrist, Pro-Family Advocates Left Out of National Debate on Mental Health

By: Debbie Thurman

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.

Such an insulting slight is beyond the pale, says Debbie Thurman, another outspoken critic of psychiatric over-drugging for so-called brain diseases. Thurman, a journalist, author and Christian family mental health advocate, knows debilitating depression from the inside out .The author of "Outsmarting Depression: Surviving the Crossfire of the Mental Health Wars" also helps other women (and men) recover from it, both individually and in small groups.

"The effectiveness of this type of structured support is as little talked about by the media as complementary and alternative medicine is," says Thurman. Both approaches to mental health care far outstrip psychiatry's effectiveness, but the public perception is something entirely different, thanks to slick pharmaceutical advertising.

Thurman, a contributing researcher of mental health issues to Focus on the Family, cites the overwhelming success of ministries like Celebrate Recovery, originating with Rick Warren's mega-church community in Southern California, as proof that psychiatry is missing the boat in changing lives. "Psychiatry has become a religion unto itself, and Big Pharma is its god" she says. The trouble is, depression and anxiety have increased since the Prozac revolution began in the late '80s. "We have medicated ourselves into a corner; the system is broken."

Psychiatry still suffers from an identity crisis, says Thurman. Only last week, the New England Journal of Medicine ran an editorial by a Columbia University physician that appeared to suggest lobotomies actually might have helped some people. Doctors at Columbia University also formulated TeenScreen, the controversial mood assessment tool that even its own co-director says can't really determine which kids are suicidally depressed.

It is the insidious move within the federal and many state governments to institute universal mental health screening, beginning in our schools, that rankles many pro-family advocates. "The recommendations of the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health would essentially turn our schools into mental health clinics, resulting in a much higher percentage of children on dangerous psychiatric drugs," claims Thurman. Anyone who doubts that assessment needs only to check out the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP), the "model" drugging program gushed over by the New Freedom Commission.

Thurman shares this concern with other prominent conservatives, such as Eagle Forum's Phyllis Schlafly and Concerned Women for America's Beverly LaHaye. Such pro-family advocates are largely ignored by the media in the mental health debate. "I think TV pseudo-journalists, the American Psychiatric Association and Big Pharma are afraid of us," says Thurman, "and they ought to be

The Conservative Voice
July 09, 2005
Cruising Szasz
By: Jeffrey A. Schaler

Actor Tom Cruise created quite a stir on June 25 when he called psychiatry a "pseudoscience," asserted a chemical basis for Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder doesn't exist, and said that anti-depressant drugs masked problems-in-living. He used the actress Brooke Shields as a case in point, citing her postpartum depression, engendering a fair amount of hostility from those who disagreed with him, including Ms. Shields. The New York Times published her rejoinder on July 1. Cruise was criticized by psychiatric apologists and sycophants as irresponsible and dangerous for speaking his mind - and the truth.
A lot of people seem to have misunderstood what Tom Cruise said. It is not necessarily the case that he's a Scientology-brainwashed whacko, or that his ideas about psychiatry even came from the Church of Scientology. Cruise learned a lot about psychiatry from the writings of psychiatric abolitionist Thomas Szasz. Many people around the world consider Szasz an intellectual heavyweight, someone whose ideas about medicine, disease, science, liberty and responsibility should be taken seriously. Cruise has read a lot of Szasz's writings and he admires Szasz a great deal. (See a photograph taken last year of Szasz with his arm around Cruise at http://www.szasz.com/szaszcruise.gif.) His words echo Szaszian ideas. Szasz has upset many psychiatrists over the years because he is a member of the psychiatry and psychoanalysis clubs criticizing its own. In real science this is expected to occur in order to advance scientific knowledge-theories must be falsifiable. In pseudoscience, such criticism is forbidden. The American Psychiatric Association (APA), responding to Cruise's comments on NBC's Today Show, asserts in a press release dated June 27 that "science has proven that mental illnesses are real medical conditions . . . and that it is unfortunate that a small number of individuals and groups persist in questioning its [mental health's] legitimacy." Is this claim by the APA actually true, or is it political rhetoric? Why would the APA be upset with someone who questions its legitimacy, disagrees with its ideas, explanations, and policy recommendations regarding "mental illness?"

Actress Brooke Shields is understandably upset. She responded to Cruise claiming she has a disease caused by changing levels of estrogen and progesterone during and after pregnancy. This disease allegedly kept her from being the "loving parent . . . [she] is today." It is difficult to argue with someone who uses her own experience to prove that something is scientifically correct. If one shows how she is wrong, one can easily be accused of lacking compassion. Compassion has nothing to do with the truth. Critics of psychiatry are frequently accused of lacking compassion. I fail to see how depriving an innocent person of liberty, forcing a person to take drugs she doesn't want to take, and shocking her brain with electricity against her will-all done in the name of treating mental illness-are indications of compassion.

What of the substance of Cruise's arguments? The truth is science has never proven that mental illnesses are "real" medical conditions, anymore than it proved homosexuality is a disease. (Homosexuality was declassified as a disease by the APA in 1973, largely due to the writings of Thomas Szasz.) The truth is standard textbooks on pathology do not list mental illnesses among real diseases like cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, and syphilis. Why? Because only the body can be sick, not behavior. Certainly people exhibit irrational, socially unacceptable and abnormal behavior for all sorts of reasons. But it is wrong to call behaviors diseases. Diseases refer to physical lesions, wounds of the body, not behaviors, conduct, or deportment.

In other words, Cruise is right. The truth is there is no evidence to support the idea that anti-depressant drugs cure or restore chemical imbalances, even though they may certainly help people to feel better about themselves. Szasz pointed this out years ago. These drugs influence chemicals in the body, but then everything we do is accompanied by chemical and electrical changes in the body. This is simply not the same as saying the changes in our body make us do this or that. We cannot tell who is depressed by drawing blood, studying fluid balances, or looking at pictures of the structure and function of the brain. There is no such thing as asymptomatic "mental illness"-yet there most certainly when it comes to real diseases like cancer and heart disease. Szasz is best known for his insistence that "mental illness" is a metaphor, and that we go astray if we take the metaphor literally. Yet belief in mental illness is not his main target. In Szasz's view, individuals should be free to devote themselves to any variety of psychiatric belief and practice.

What Szasz objects to is forcing people to see (or not see) a psychiatrist, to reside or not reside in a mental hospital, to partake (or not partake) of drugs, and to believe (or not believe) in any specific set of ideas. Cruise, again echoing Szasz, rightly objected to the involuntary administration of psychiatric "treatments." One way people try to discredit both Szasz and Cruise is by playing the Scientology-is-a-cult card.

Today, it is as fashionable to criticize Scientologists and Scientology as it was to criticize Jews and Judaism in 1930s and 1940s Germany. Scientology is recognized by our federal government as a religion and demands the same respect and tolerance we show any other religion. Instead of asking why Scientology endorses Thomas Szasz's ideas, we should be asking why other religions do not.

The rule of cults is "thou shalt not disagree." Break the rule and you break the spell. Cruise broke a rule: Thou shalt not criticize psychiatry. Some say psychiatry is a cult. What is most upsetting to those in the psychiatry cult? That someone who attracts a lot of attention should dare to point out that the emperor called psychiatry has no clothes. That is exactly what Mr. Cruise has done. In so doing, his head sticks out above the crowd, to be sure, speaking truth to power, but largely because he is standing on the shoulders of Thomas Szasz.

Jeffrey A. Schaler, Ph.D., a psychologist, is a professor at American University's School of Public Affairs. His latest book is Szasz Under Fire: The Psychiatric Abolitionist Faces His Critics (Open Court, Chicago, 2004). He lives in Ellicott City, Maryland.

New York Times
June 25, 2005
Talk Show Rarity: A True Believer's Candor
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

So that's what Tom Cruise really looks like.

He is a passionate, stubborn, true believer, who can lecture Matt Lauer about the perils of Ritalin, psychiatry and talk-show-host glibness.

Whatever else it may do - or undo - for the movie star, Mr. Cruise's off-message, antidrug performance on "Today" yesterday on NBC cleared up one misconception about L. Ron Hubbard's mysterious church: Scientology does not command loyalty from celebrities by protecting their privacy and whitewashing their image.

Mr. Cruise seemed unbound, and perhaps even a little unsound, but there was something enjoyably bracing and bold about his outburst. It was as jarring as his crazy-in-love ode to the actress Katie Holmes on Oprah Winfrey's show last month, and that was perhaps the most e-mailed video clip since the Howard Dean Scream. But this latest display of kookiness lent the actor new credibility: his over-the-top declarations of love may look to some like a publicity stunt, but there was nothing self-serving or career-enhancing about his rant with Mr. Lauer.

"Matt, Matt, you don't even - you're glib," Mr. Cruise said. "You don't even know what Ritalin is. If you start talking about chemical imbalance, you have to evaluate and read the research papers on how they came up with these theories, Matt, O.K.? That's what I've done."

And, actually, he had a point. Morning talk show hosts are facile and heavily scripted, and too often they recite streams of perceived wisdom as if they were undeniable facts. Mr. Lauer showed grace but not much intellectual skill as he was out-debated by a Hollywood actor who described psychiatry as a pseudoscience and said vitamins and exercise could cure postpartum depression.

But Mr. Lauer was also lucky. Mr. Cruise provided exactly what talk show hosts are supposed to elicit from celebrity guests and so rarely do: sincerity. Viewers have become so inured to the gamesmanship of the celebrity "get," that it is now a running joke, even on game shows.

On Friday, a contestant on Meredith Vieira's daytime quiz show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire " game show was asked to select from a list of celebrities that included Courtney Love and Patrick Swayze the one who had not wept during a Barbara Walters interview. (Answer: Diane Keaton.)

Mr. Cruise has appeared on almost every imaginable talk show to promote his latest film, "War of the Worlds," and he has shed some of his boyish good humor. He sternly confronted a prankster who squirted him with a water toy at the film's London premiere; he grimly shrugs off the skeptics who mock his rapture for Ms. Holmes. (Even on MSNBC yesterday, the daytime anchors played and replayed tape of the couple ostentatiously kissing at the New York opening, and derisively rolled their eyes.)

When David Letterman asked Mr. Cruise the same questions on Thursday night that he used in their last interview on his show last summer, the actor called him on it.

And he went way off on a tangent with Mr. Lauer, veering away from his movie and new fiancée to defend his attack on Brooke Shields. (He reproached her for relying on antidepressants to treat her postpartum blues.) "She doesn't understand the history of psychiatry in the same way you don't understand it, Matt," the actor said. Mr. Lauer sputtered a response, but Mr. Cruise was adamant. "And to talk about it in a way of saying, 'Well, isn't it O.K.?' and being reasonable about it when you don't know and I do, I think that you should be a little bit more responsible in knowing what it is."

It was not the agreeable, affable Tom Cruise that viewers are accustomed to, and that alone made it worth a glance: an actor who has kicked the publicist habit.

TeenScreen - The Law Suits Begin
By Evelyn Pringle

The scheme concocted by the pharmaceutical industry and pushed forward by the Bush administration to screen the entire nation's public school population for mental illness and treat them with controversial drugs was already setting off alarms among parents all across the country. But in the state of Indiana, the alarm just got louder.

Tax payers had better get out their check books because school taxes are about to go up as the law suits against school boards start mounting over the TeenScreen depression survey being administered to children in the school.

The first notice of intent to sue was filed this month in Indiana by Michael and Teresa Rhoades who were outraged when they learned their daughter had been given a psychological test at school without their consent.

In December 2004, their daughter came home from school and said she had been diagnosed with an obsessive compulsive and social anxiety disorder after taking the TeenScreen survey.

Teresa Rhoades always viewed her daughter as a happy normal teenager. “I was absolutely outraged that my daughter was told she had these two conditions based off a computer test,” said Rhoades.

Attorney John Price, who is representing the Rhoadeses, confirmed that he had sent a notice of tort claim to both the school and Madison Center, which worked with the school system to administer the test.

This action means that the Rhoadeses are declaring their intent to file a lawsuit against both entities. Price said state law requires a notice of claim to be sent to any governmental agencies, including schools, before a lawsuit can be filed against them, according to the June 9, South Bend Tribune.

In the notice, Teresa and Michael Rhoades claim the survey was erroneous, improper, and done with reckless disregard for their daughter's welfare and that they did not give the school permission to give the test.

The parents allege that when their daughter took the test, she was improperly diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder and social anxiety disorder. That diagnosis, they claim, caused both the teen and her parents emotional distress, and the family intends to seek the "maximum amount of damages."

The Indiana child was diagnosed with two disorders in one crack but there are many more.

If a teen doesn't like doing math assignments, parents should not worry. TeenScreen may determine that the child simply has a mental illness known as developmental-arithmetic disorder.

There's also a diagnosis for those children who like to argue with their parents, they may be afflicted with a mental illness known oppositional-defiant disorder.

And for anybody critical of the of the above 2 disorders, they may be suffering the mental illness called noncompliance-with-treatment disorder.

No kidding, these illnesses are included in the more than 350 "mental disorders" listed in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the insurance billing bible for mental disorders.

Tax Dollars Already Being Funneled To Pharma

In addition to lawsuits, tax dollars are already funding TeenScreen and many of the drugs purchased by the new customers it recruits.

While promoting TeenScreen to Congress, its Executive Director, Laurie Flynn, flat out lied when she told members of congress that TeenScreen was free and its website statement that "The program does not receive financial support from the government and is not affiliated with, or funded by, any pharmaceutical companies," is also a blatant lie.

On Oct 21, 2004 Bush authorized $82 million for suicide prevention programs like TeenScreen and a report in Psychiatric Times said the administration had proposed an increase in the budget for the Center for Mental Health Service from $862 million in 2004 to $912 million in fiscal 2005. TeenScreen is sure to get a cut of those tax dollars.

Federal tax dollars are also being funneled through state governments to fund TeenScreen. On Nov 17, 2004, Officials at the University of South Florida Department of Child & Family Studies said $98,641 was awarded to expand the TeenScreen program in the Tampa Bay area.

In Ohio, under the governor's Executive Budget for 2006 and 2007, the Department of Mental Health has specifically earmarked $70,000 for TeenScreen for each of those years, reports investigator Sue Weibert.

On June, 2002 the Update Newsletter published by the Tennessee Department of Mental Health, reported that 170 Nashville students had completed a TeenScreen survey. The Newsletter said the survey was funded by grants from AdvoCare and Eli Lilly. Last I knew, Eli Lilly was a pharmaceutical company.

The great news for Pharma was that 96 of the 170 students who took the survey ended up speaking to a therapist which no doubt resulted in the recruitment of 96 new pill-popping teens.

Tax Dollars Spent On Drugs

Unbeknownst to many, tax payers are already paying an enormous price as a result of marketing schemes designed to get students hooked on antipsychotic drugs. A list of drugs that must be prescribed for kids is already set up, modeled after a list used in Texas since 1995 called the TMAP. The list contains the most expensive drugs on the market.

In 2002, national sales of antipsychotics reached $6.4 billion in 2002, making them the fourth-highest-selling class of drugs, according to IMS Health, a company that tracks drug sales, in the May 2003, New York Times. By 2004, sales had jumped by over $2 billion with antipsychotics sales totaling $8.8 billion -- $2.4 billion of which was paid for by state Medicaid funds, according to the May/June 2005 issue of Mother Jones Magazine.

Here's how this part of the scheme works. The drug companies bribe state officials and donate money in the form of "educational grants" to the states to approve and implement these TMAP drug programs, and then in return, state Medicaid programs fund the cost of the drugs with tax dollars.

For instance, in Texas, Pfizer awarded $232,000 in grants to the Texas department of mental health to "educate" mental health providers about TMAP, and in return, the Texas Medicaid program spent $233 million tax dollars on Pfizer drugs like Zoloft.

Johnson & Johnson (Janssen Pharmaceutica) gave grants of $224,000 to Texas and Medicaid spent $272 million on J & J antipsychotic drug, Risperdal.

Eli Lilly awarded $109,000 in grants to "educate" state mental health providers and as a result, Texas Medicaid spent $328 million for Lilly's antipsychotic drug Zyprexa.

The TMAP was approved in Texas in 1995, and by February 9, 2001, an article in the Dallas Morning News, titled State Spending More on Mental Illness Drugs reported: “Texas now spends more money on medication to treat mental illness for low-income residents than on any other type of prescription drug.”

In addition to covering nearly 40% of the drugs for Medicaid recipients, the state also spends about another $60 million a year on "hundreds of thousands of prescription drugs for other state-funded programs at the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,” the paper reported.

By the time the 2002-2003 budget was established, Texas lawmakers had to increase the amount of money allocated to the department of health and human services by $1 billion with a significant portion earmarked for prescription drugs, according to Texas officials.

In 1999, Ohio adopted its version of TMAP and by 2002 Ohio's Medicaid program was spending $145 million on schizophrenia medications alone.

California spent over $500 million on the Atypicals Risperdal, Zyprexa and Seroqual in 2003.

In 2002, Missouri Medicaid spent $104 million on three TMAP drugs alone. The three topped the list of all other medications covered by Medicaid, including HIV, cancer, and heart drugs.

Chickens Come Home To Roost

Pennsylvania taxpayers are now saddled with PennMap, its own version of the Texas list of expensive drugs, for the treatment of mentally ill, as a result of a the pharmaceutical scheme used to infiltrate public institutions and influence state officials and treatment practices.

It has since been revealed by whistleblowers Allen Jones and Stefan Kruszewiski that the Pennsylvania officials who approved the drugs for PennMap were receiving improper or illegal financial rewards from drug companies involved in promoting the program.

Dr Stefan Kruszewski was hired as a psychiatric consultant for the Pennsylvania Department of Health and Human Services. He was in charge of the state's mental health and substance misuse programs to protect against fraud, waste, and abuse. He was fired after he uncovered corrupt relations between Pennsylvania politicians and pharmaceutical representatives and has since filed a Whistleblower suit against the state.

Allen Jones was an employee of the Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General, and revealed that state officials with influence over the PennMap program received financial benefits from drug companies that had a stake in getting PennMap accepted. Jones was fired after he made his discoveries known to the BMJ and the New York Times when his superiors ordered him to stop his investigation. He also has filed a Whistleblower suit.

Well, it looks like the chickens have finally come home to roost in Pennsylvania.

One of the officials that Jones named was Steven Fiorello. On April 15, 2005 the Associated Press reported that Pennsylvania's top pharmacist repeatedly took money from Pfizer and other outside sources, violating ethics laws, a government panel found.

The State Ethics Commission fined Fiorello more than $27,000 and referred the case to the state attorney general's office for possible criminal prosecution.

The commission cited repeated conflicts between Fiorello's unofficial activities and his official duties, which included serving on a panel that decides which drugs may be given to patients at the nine state mental hospitals. The report also cited repeated failures to disclose his income from drug companies, Pfizer and Janssen, and other outside sources.

It seems Fiorello became a member of Pfizer's "advisory council'' around the same time he joined the PennMap panel. The council held annual meetings, apparently "to solicit input from health-care professionals to help Pfizer define its commercial strategies for its products," the commission said in the report.

The ethics committee also discovered a "Medical Director's Education Account," which was funded by unrestricted educational grants from pharmaceutical companies and that Fiorello himself had solicited funds for the account.

It was recently announce that these "educational" grants that have benefited state officials who were in positions to approve the TMAP lists are finally going to be investigated by a senate committee.

On June 10, 2005, Senators Chuck Grassley and Max Baucus issued a Press Release that said they have asked a number of large drug makers to explain a marketing practice where the companies give money to state governments and other organizations in the form of grants. The drug companies call the awards educational grants, but the senators are concerned that the dollars are more focused on product promotion than education, the release said.

Grassley is chairman and Baucus is ranking member of the Senate Committee on Finance, which has legislative and oversight responsibility for the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

In addition, on June 9, 2005, the senators sent a letter to drug companies that states in part, "The Committee seeks further information on this topic so that it can assess how educational grants are used, in what contexts and for what purposes, and who receives them."

It was sent to the following drug makers: Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co, AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Amgen, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Eli Lilly, Sanofi Aventis, Eisai, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Schering-Plough Corporation, Hoffman-LaRoche, Forest Pharmaceuticals, Abbott Laboratories, Genentech, Biogen Idec, Genzyme Corporation, Chiron Corporation, Serono, and TAP Pharmaceutical Products.

The Senators said their inquiry is based on reports that some companies have awarded these grants to health care providers as inducements to those providers to prescribe medications the companies produce. In other cases, such grants to state agencies may have prompted those agencies to develop programs leading to over-medication of patients at the expense of patient health or to unnecessary expense for taxpayers.

"We need to know how this behind-the-scenes funneling of money is influencing decision makers," Grassley said, "The decisions result in the government spending billions of dollars on drugs. The tactics look aggressive, and the response on behalf of the public needs to be just as vigorous."

This committee was needed because Pennsylvania is merely the tip of the iceberg. Many of the same tactics have been used in other states like Florida with Jim McDonough, Director of the Florida Office of Drug Control, who is listed as an “advisor” to TeenScreen on its website. TeenScreen gifted McDonough's office with $180,000 to get TeenScreen set up.

However, Executive Director, Laurie Flynn, is now crying foul because she doesn't feel the money has been put to good use since McDonough failed to get the program in all the schools as promised, in large part because he met his match in Ken Kramer.

In Ohio there's Mike Hogan, Director of the Ohio Department of Mental Health. He's hooked in with Parexel Medical Marketing, a front group that takes Pharma money to set "advisory panels" for Pharma. The panel memberships are made up exclusively of Mental Health, Medicaid and other Directors from the various states. Michael Hogan is listed as an advisory board member.

The panel members are treated to trips, first class accommodations and other perks in exchange for showing up and listening to a spiel by Janssen sales personnel who direct the course of the meetings. The same kinds of meetings that Fiorello attended.

Hopefully will be just a matter of time before the new senate committee disbands this gang of pharma-backed government pill-pushers.

Trying To Save The Children

Dire warnings against mass mental health screening are coming from every segment of society, including parents, physicians, academics, journalists, and human rights groups because the influence of the pharmaceutical industry in this scheme is so patently obvious.

People are particularly worried about saving the children from senseless and dangerous drugging. According to long-time anti-child drugging advocate, Doyle Mills, "Psychiatry has a long history of abject failure. Psychiatric treatments - drugs, electroconvulsive therapy, lobotomies - have harmed millions and robbed them of any hope of a normal life."

Expert records researcher, Ken Kramer, has been fighting against child drugging for years has conducted a research project on child suicides in Florida that determined that medicating kids with the types of dangerous mind-altering drugs on these lists is causing suicide. He helped defeat TeenScreen's attempt to gain access to schools in 2 of Florida's largest counties. Ken has a TeenScreen website at http://www.psychsearch.net/teenscreen.html

Dr Karen Effrem, a pediatrician and strong opponent of mandatory screening recently warned, "Universal mental health screening and the drugging of children ... needs to be stopped so that many thousands if not millions of children will be saved from receiving stigmatizing diagnoses that would follow them for the rest of their lives. America's school children should not be medicated by expensive, ineffective, and dangerous medications based on vague and dubious diagnoses."

In a letter to the editor in the Washington Times on October 31, 2004, Effrem summed up the dangers of using tax dollars to fund mass mental health screening of children:

"Given the very real problems of already existing coercion, subjective criteria, dangerous and ineffective medication, and the failure of screening to prevent suicide ... Congress would be wise to withhold the $44 million requested for state grants."

The nation's first law suit has been filed and let it serve as a warning to other schools across the country to think twice before allowing the TeenScreen recruitment scheme to zero in on their students.

*************
Evelyn Pringle [email protected]

(Evelyn Pringle is a columnist for Independent Media TV and an investigative journalist focused on corruption in government)

Actresses Kirstie Alley and Kelly Preston pleaded with lawmakers Tuesday to prohibit schools from denying services to students who won't take mood-altering drugs to treat mental disorders.

Alley sobbed as she told members of the House Education Council the stories of children who committed suicide or died after taking psychotropic drugs.

"Here's an example of parents who didn't know what could happen who just blindly went along with referrals and information," Alley said before holding up blown up, color photos of children she said died after being prescribed medicines like Zoloft and Ritalin. "None of these children were psychotic before they took these drugs, none of these children were suicidal before they took these drugs."

Both actresses are Scientologists and after the meeting said they were opposed to any child taking psychotropic medication.

Children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder can be eligible for special education programs for students with disabilities, including curriculum adjustments, alternative classrooms and increased parent and teacher involvement. The bill would prohibit schools receiving state money to deny those services if those students don't take prescribed drugs to treat the condition.

Alley's pleas, though, came after the committee stripped language from the bill that would have required schools to tell parents that there is no medical test to diagnose a mental disorder and that they can refuse a psychological screening for their children.

The committee also removed part of the bill that would have required schools to inform parents that physical conditions may be the cause of mental and behavioral problems, that they should consult with a medical doctor about such problems and that a diagnosed mental disorder will stay on a student's permanent record.

Committee Chairman Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, said the language was written in such a way that schools may feel they can't refer students for psychological evaluation. He agreed that the medications are overprescribed, but said that they help children when prescribed properly.

"For certain patients, it's absolute magic the order it brings to their life," he said.

The bill's sponsor, Gus Barreiro, criticized him, saying he was interfering because his son is a psychiatrist.

"I would never vote on a bill that affects my family member," said Barreiro, R-Miami. "Stripping out complete disclosure from the parents and complete choice for the parent is wrong."

Earlier Preston also asked lawmakers to keep the disclosure language.

"I cannot comprehend how anyone would oppose a bill that ensures parents are given all the information needed to make an informed decision for their child," she said.

Once the language was taken out, the bill (HB 209) passed unanimously.

The Church of Scientology supports the bill and has backed similar measure in other states.

"There's always another solution," Alley said. "Vitamins, nutrition, allergy testing, chemical sensitivity ... find what's really, really going on."

She added that she was proud that it's an issue taken up by Scientologists.

"You would be hard pressed, of these 8 million children on these drugs, to ever find one that's the child of a scientologists. Because we have real information, alternative information about what can you do," Alley said.

Preston added, "It's not a religious issue. It's a bipartisan issue. It has nothing to do with your religion, your race, your sex - nothing. It is an issue about parents and parents rights."

They also testified before the Senate Education Committee, which also stripped the disclosure language before passing the Senate version of the bill (SB 1766).

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
LET'S STOP DRUGGING KIDS
by Keith Hoeller
Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Another teenager has shot and murdered schoolchildren, and those who believe that "mental illness" is the cause of all our social problems have offered the standard explanation and usual solution: This child suffered from a mental illness, and if only someone had seen the symptoms and notified mental-health authorities, he would have received an accurate diagnosis and the proper medication, and the tragedy could have been prevented. If only Red Lake High School student Jeff Weise had been placed on antidepressant medications, psychiatrists say, then this murder/suicide would never have happened. The story is usually followed by calls for more mental-health screening and treatment of our nation's schoolchildren.

In most of the recent cases of school shootings, however, the signs were noticed: The child was reported to mental-health authorities, received a psychiatric diagnosis, was put on medications and was taking them when he pulled the trigger. It was true with Eric Harris of Columbine and Kip Kinkel in Oregon, as well as 10 other youths. This may be the tip of the iceberg, because this information is often kept confidential and out of the papers, even when a murder occurs.

Now news reports indicate Weise, who murdered nine in Red Lake, Minn., before turning the gun on himself, had been suicidal and was committed to a mental hospital. He began taking an antidepressant last summer, and his dosage had been increased a week before the shootings, according to the New York Times.

In 2003 Britain banned antidepressants for use in children and adolescents, and last year Health Canada issued a stern warning about these drugs, noting "clinical trial and post-marketing reports (of) ... severe agitation-type adverse events coupled with self-harm or harm to others."

This year, the Food and Drug Administration has mandated a black-box label on antidepressants warning of the potential for increased suicidal thoughts and behavior with children and adolescents. Yet, as Vera Sharav of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, has said: "Journalists continue to be beguiled by speculative scientific hypotheticals which psychiatrists discuss as though they have been proved. Misinformation is transmitted to the public about unproven 'chemical imbalances' in the brain of depressed people - - when, in fact, no evidence exists demonstrating any chemical or structural brain abnormality in people diagnosed with a mental illness."

Indeed, the papers are full of quotes of psychiatrists claiming that depression is a serious medical disease caused by a serotonin imbalance in the brain. But no conclusive scientific evidence exists to support this theory. In "Blaming the Brain: The Truth About Drugs and Mental Health" (Free Press, 1998), neuroscientist Eliot Valenstein says, "Although it is often stated with great confidence that depressed people have a serotonin or norepinephrine deficiency, the actual evidence contradicts these claims. It is not now possible to measure norepinephrine and serotonin in the brains of patients."

Not surprisingly, psychiatrists have never developed any physical test to detect depression or any mental illness, and all diagnosis is done based solely on symptoms. In other words, antidepressants and all other psychiatric medications are not in fact being prescribed to treat bona fide diseases.

Yet, whenever anyone criticizes the drugs, psychiatrists shout about the increased risk of suicide if patients stop taking their antidepressants, despite the fact that no antidepressant has ever been tested on suicidal patients and therefore never approved by the FDA as safe and effective in preventing suicide.

President Bush included an unprecedented call for mandatory mental-health screening of schoolchildren in his recent budget. Violating the rights of parents to just say "no" to psychiatric diagnosis and treatment of their children, this idea originated in the president's New Freedom Commission.

According to a study last year in the Lancet, U.S. psychiatrists, pediatricians and family practitioners wrote 11 million prescriptions for antidepressants for children in 2002. All the signs indicate this method of dealing with our children is not working. It is high time for both parents and schools to find a different method of dealing with troubled children. To paraphrase Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," the fault is not in our children's brains or genes, but in ourselves. It is to our own treatment of children that we must look to find an answer to their problems -- and ours.

Associated Press
February 1, 2005, Tuesday
5:41 PM Eastern Time

24,000 Possible Criminal Acts by Practitioners Go to Prosecutors
BY DAVID ROYSE
Associated Press Writer

TALLAHASSEE, FL — State Health Secretary John O. Agwunobi said Tuesday that 24,000 disciplinary cases investigated by the department since 1992 are being sent to prosecutors for determination of whether any criminal acts should be pursued.

The move follows a report released last week by the Department of Health's inspector general that found the department apparently failed to formally refer to prosecutors cases in which doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other health practitioners may have committed criminal acts.

Agwunobi said that hopefully in many of those cases, police and prosecutors would have already been aware of the alleged misconduct, because often the allegations would have been reported first to police.

Under state law, when the agency is notified about questionable behavior by a health care professional it licenses, it is supposed to determine whether there's probable cause to proceed with discipline. Then, if there's reason to believe a crime may have been committed, it is supposed to notify prosecutors.

The department couldn't show it did that in many cases, the inspector general found. The law has required reporting of potential criminal violations by health care practitioners since 1992, but the responsibility was in other agencies until 2002, when it was given to the Health department.

Still, Agwunobi said in an interview that his agency had a "clear obligation" to do it and didn't. He said he was "embarrassed, not a little angry, and very disappointed" about the failure to do so.

Agwunobi said department officials decided to refer to prosecutors all 24,000 cases in which officials had found probable cause of some sort of misconduct since 1992, rather than trying to parse out ones where they believed criminal violations may have occurred.

He said all the cases were being sent because prosecutors can better determine whether a crime may have been committed and if so, whether the statute of limitations may have run.

About 80 percent of the cases had been referred as of Tuesday, and the rest will be on Wednesday, department officials said.

From now on, any case where there's probable cause of misconduct will be referred to prosecutors, said Agwunobi.

He said that in many of the past cases, the health care professionals accused of the most serious wrongdoing - such as sexual misconduct against a patient - would likely have been sanctioned by the agency and may have been unable to continue practicing.

"But they should have also been subjected to the criminal system," he said. "A crime's a crime."

The inspector general's investigation was prompted by a member of the public, who requested information about psychologists accused of sexual misconduct and asked for documentation about referrals to prosecutors. That documentation couldn't be produced by the Health department in many cases.

The Tampa Tribune last week identified the person who sought the records as Ken Kramer, a researcher for the Citizens Committee on Human Rights, an organization founded by the Church of Scientology in Clearwater, which opposes many tenets of modern psychiatry and psychology.

Kramer told The Tribune that the committee's primary mission is to monitor misconduct by psychotherapists.

Agwunobi said the Health department was still reviewing how and why it failed to report cases to prosecutors.

TAMPA TRIBUNE
Published: Jan 29, 2005

Health Agency Stonewalled Investigator 
By LENNY SAVINO

An investigator trying to get an early gauge of a scandal engulfing the Florida Department of Health ran into so much waffling and evasiveness that he threatened to begin questioning staff members under oath, documents show.

"Unless my questions are answered fully, completely and in the very near future,'' wrote the investigator, Dan McCall, ``I intend to place as many staff members as necessary under oath to obtain the facts related to this complaint.''

The issue was whether the department had been complying with a state law requiring it to notify local state attorneys whenever an allegation lodged against any of the thousands of health professionals the state regulates appeared to be criminal in nature.

As The Tampa Tribune reported Thursday, a public records request from a private citizen revealed that the department had failed to notify prosecutors of more than 100 instances in which psychiatrists, psychologists and others had been accused of committing sexual improprieties with patients.

The law requiring such notification had been on the books since 1992, and its contents had been embraced and emphasized in a written health department policy adopted in 2002.

Investigation Begins

McCall, an investigator assigned to the office of the health department's inspector general, was assigned to the case last fall.

One of his first steps was to send an e-mail to Charlene Willoughby, head of the health department office that was supposed to be notifying local state attorneys of such cases. It's called the Medical Quality Assurance Consumer Services Unit.

McCall's e-mail asked whether the responsibility for making the referrals was assigned to ``any specific positions, individuals, boards or the CSU.''

"No, as all staff performed the function for their assigned profession,'' Willoughby replied.

McCall found Willoughby's answer unsatisfactory.

"The question does not relate to what the policy has been,'' he wrote in a subsequent e-mail. "If getting an answer to that question requires placing MQA staff members under oath, then that is what I intend to do.''

Then he asked whether Willoughby's staff or anyone else had reported potentially criminal acts to prosecutors.

"If so,'' he wrote, "please provide me a list of the case numbers, dates reported, etc.''

"Yes, since joining DOH in 2002, it is our policy to report criminal acts to the respective state attorney,'' Willoughby replied.

But records of this were "not kept in a data base,'' Willoughby continued. If McCall wanted the information, she said, ``you are welcome to hand search all the complaint files since 2002 to create such a list.''

Getting Some Answers

McCall also sent copies of Willoughby's responses to her boss, Amy Jones.

"At this point, I have not been provided any evidence to show that the reporting function has been performed by anyone,'' McCall told Jones. "I had hoped that management staff could and would provide this information voluntarily; however that does not seem to be the case.''

And McCall e-mailed his own boss, Acting Inspector General Charles Van Page.

"I e-mailed Charlene Willoughby with a couple of questions relative to rules, policies and procedures related to reporting criminal acts,'' McCall wrote Van Page. ``She avoided answering my questions, indicating that Linda [Keen] had already handled the problem.''

Keen is a deputy secretary in the health department.

McCall eventually questioned Willougby in person and in the presence of Jerome Worley, his immediate supervisor, on Dec. 13, records show.

Her answers were more to the point this time and are described in notes attached to a report on McCall's investigation.

Willoughby was asked how many cases her unit had referred for prosecution.

"Some cases were reported but she does not know how many,'' the notes say.

Willoughby said responsibility for this was assigned to individual investigators in 1999 or 2000, the notes add. And investigators were reminded of this in a meeting in October 2002, shortly after the office Willoughby headed was moved to the health department's control from another state agency, the notes say.

Why hadn't investigators complied?

Because nobody followed through to make certain they were, Willoughby said. "Managers and supervisors did not check to see that individual investigators were reporting criminal acts,'' she said.

No effort had been made to identify or discipline the investigators, Willoughby added.

Complaint Review Ordered

Florida law makes it a felony punishable by up to 5 years in prison for a psychotherapist to have sex with current or former patients.

The law was passed to discourage health practitioners from taking advantage of their patients; people with mental and emotional problems are widely presumed to be more vulnerable than others.

All the therapists in the 100- plus cases discovered so far escaped criminal prosecution because the ball was dropped. And the majority can no longer be tried because the statute of limitations in their cases - the three-year deadline by which most criminal cases in Florida must be tried - has expired.

Last week, Health Secretary John O. Agwunobi demoted Willoughby and transferred her to a nonsupervisory job.

He also has ordered a sweeping review of disciplinary complaints brought against the thousands of other licensed health professionals the department regulates, to see whether any others should have been referred to prosecutors but weren't.

About 24,000 of these have been investigated since 1992. The review could take months.

Finally, Agwunobi ordered a "work group'' formed to review policies and procedures and ensure that criminal cases are properly referred for prosecution in the future. It's to report back to Agwunobi by Friday.

Agwunobi was traveling and not available for comment Friday, his secretary said.

McCall and Willoughby couldn't be reached for comment Friday, either. But as a matter of policy, health department spokeswoman Lindsay Hodges said, investigators with the inspector general's office do not comment on cases.