Difference between Psychiatric Disorder and a Medical Disease

Shooting - Prozac Induced?

Decide for yourself, check out this article with the following in mind - Prozac is an SSRI with side effects of suicidal thoughts and violent behavior. SSRI withdrawl symptoms include the above two side effects as well.

Why do we have people on such destructive drugs? Aren't mental health experts supposed to be protecting society against those who would be dangerous to themselves and others - not causing depressed people to become dangerous to themselves or others via drugs?

What do you think?

Schoolboy Suffers from Suicidal Side Effect of Ritalin

This article reports the tragic death of 15 year old Anthony Cole, who hung himself after being on Ritalin for 6 years. From the report, it seems like it was a premeditated suicide - days before his suicide he had asked about how to write a will and about life insurance, an hour before he was found dead he had cuddled his parents and told them that he loved them.

My heart goes out to his parents, his brother and sisters, his friends and extended family. I don't understand why parents are still allowing their children to take these drugs, I can only guess that it's because the side effects are not being taken seriously. They are very real and very serious.

If you know someone on Ritalin, please make sure they know the side effects and have fully evaluated their decision to take it.

FDA Approves Abilify for Kids

*Warning – Excessive Sarcasm*

Great, just what we need - another psychiatric drug. This one's even approve for kids. The FDA recently approved Abilify for "Pediatric Bipolar Illness".
The facts are these: The symptoms for "Pediatric Bipolar Illness" sound like the growing pains most children go through. Here are the symptoms, and you can decide:

- An expansive or irritable mood (so if the kid is overly happy or overly irritable, they are mentally ill)

- Extreme sadness or lack of interest in play (if the other kids hate him or her - or vice versa)

- Rapidly changing moods lasting a few hours to a few days (ever seen a kid go from 0-60 in 1.3 seconds when they are hungry or tired? Could it be that it's a deficiency in food or sleep?)

- Explosive, lengthy, and often destructive rages (No tantrums allowed!)

- Separation anxiety (You can't love your parents and be worried that the people who have been around you constantly for the past five or so years are now leaving you with strangers)

- Defiance of authority (You must all be mindless drones)

- Hyperactivity, agitation, and distractibility (If you don't understand what your teacher is saying, so you get bored or distracted, you must have a mental illness)

- Sleeping little or, alternatively, sleeping too much (Who judges what "sleeping too much or too little" is in a child?)

- Bed wetting and night terrors (You know when you watched Terminator the other night? You now have a mental disorder. Enjoy.)

- Strong and frequent cravings, often for carbohydrates and sweets (Have a sweet tooth?! You MUST be crazy)

- Excessive involvement in multiple projects and activities (Can you multi-task? Can't have that. You might grow up to be capable of thinking for yourself)

- Impaired judgment, impulsively, racing thoughts, and pressure to keep talking
dare-devil behaviors (You react to peer pressure? You want to find out how high you can climb up that tree? Nutcase)

- Inappropriate or precocious sexual behavior (Your parents were too embarrassed to explain what your body is or does, so you are trying to figure it out? or You react to peer pressure? Off to the nuthouse with you! or better yet, let's give you a drug to make it all better)

- Delusions and hallucinations (hmmm... can't do much commenting on that one)

- Grandiose belief in own abilities that defy the laws of logic (ability to fly, for example) ( I guess R. Kelly is mentally ill then) - Note, the first comment in parentheses is not mine, it is actually on the list of symptoms. My comment is the R. Kelly one.

Okay, I know that this post is far more sarcastic than what I've posted before, but it makes me so mad I could spit that the FDA would approve a drug to "cure" kids of some specious disease. Look at the side-effects this drug has:

- Extrapyramidal Disorder (common extrapyramidal disorders are diseases like Parkinsons and they often cause strokes). Five percent of people who take Abilify got extrapyramidal disorder.
- Thoughts of hurting yourself
- Restlessness
- Headache or Anxiety
- Seizures
- Urinating less than usual or not at all
- Jaundice
- Insomnia
- Jerky muscle movements you cannot control
- Nausea
- Drowsiness, Dizziness or Weakness
- Choking or trouble swallowing
- Feeling faint

The list goes on. Look over these side-effects and look what the drug is supposed to cure. Do they look similar to you? Would you put your child on a drug like this?
Also, does anyone know if any studies done or any proofs presented with regard their being a connection between childhood "mental illness" (which, as I said above, sound a lot like growing pains to me) and adult "mental illness"?

Great Links About Psychiatry

Here are some great links that I'd love to post about, but others have already done so:

Psychwatch reports on A BBC Documentary created to show the history of psychiatry in history and how it's affected democracy.

ScientologyAgainstDrugs posts a great article on ADHD. Very thought provoking!

Psychwatch reports on a psychiatrist having an affair with a mentally ill patient

Indystar reports Eli Lilly settling 900 more claims against Zyprexa, with 1100 still to go.

Psychdata reports Another Drug Company is Being Sued (My goodness! Are all the drug companies so messed up? You'd think they'd learn not to make stupid and deceptive marketing campaigns, but I suppose they're just chasing that buck.)

A Hilarious fake drug campaign is going on in Toronto for a "drug" called "Obay". LOL!

Woops - Lawyer Spills the Beans on Secret Eli Lilly Court Case

I read this news article and had to laugh. It seems that Eli Lilly was marketing a drug called Zyprexa improperly. Zyprexa has serious side effects, such as diabetes, hypoglycemia and more and is only approved to treat people with schizophrenia and severe bipolar disorder (like they need diabetes on top of all that?). Some documents from Eli Lilly revealed that they were pushing doctors to prescribe the drug for other disorders like age related dementia and mild bi-polar. Because of this, Eli Lilly will have to pay federal and state governments more than 1 billion dollars. This fine is in addition to the 1.2 billion dollars Eli Lilly has already paid in lawsuits from people who say they developed diabetes because of Zyprexa (which apparently is not a rare side effect of Zyprexa).
All this information and more was leaked to the New York Times in an email screw up by one of Eli Lilly's lawyers. He was trying to send an internal document to another lawyer, but ended up sending it to a press agent with the same last name. Woops!

Ritalin - Leading to Drug Abuse

Ritalin - also known (when abused) as "Kiddy Cocaine" is a highly addictive substance that can that can lead to substance abuse later in the user's life.

This drug that is supposed to "focus attention" by virtue of being a Schedule II narcotic (meaning in the same class as drugs like cocaine, morphine, methamphetamine, opium and others). So, of course it focuses attention - so does speed and cocaine. It's also highly addictive, like speed or coke.

Now, I highly doubt anyone would want to give cocaine or speed to their kid. So, why would they want to give Ritalin to their child?

The Lobotomist

There's a new PBS American Experience called "The Lobotomist" out. It's about Walter Freeman who is considered the father of the lobotomy. For those of you who don't know what a lobotomy is, it's basically a barbaric practice with very serious side effects in which the "doctor" (I'm sorry, but I can't bring myself to call someone a doctor who does this) takes an ice-pick like instrument and a mallet, and after knocking the victim out - usually by using electroshock treatment - inserts the ice-pick through the bone of your eye and slashes the lobes of the front of your brain. It's really disgusting and it's actually making my stomach turn just writing about it. Anyway, the PBS special is very interesting, check it out if you have the stomach for it.

Which Drugs Have Black Box Warnings?

If you are researching psychiatric medication for any reason, it's important to know which drugs have black box warnings, or warnings of increased risk of suicidal thinking and behavior. The FDA has published these. This link also has links to any revisions in product labeling as well as current news on these drugs. It's important to research the side effects and studies on any psychiatric drug as it has been found in a recent study that the studies drug companies and medical journals publish have been exaggerated to make antidepressants seem more effective then they really are. Many doctors depend on medical journals and drug companies to give them up-to-the-minute information. They don't always check out what the FDA has to say about the drug. So, take some time to do an in-depth research of the subject before making any life-changing decisions regarding these drugs.

Falling Out of Love - Yet Another Side Effect of Anti-Depressants

Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (or SSRIs) are drugs like Zoloft and Prozac. These drugs have many side effects - they've had black box warnings put on them as these drugs have shown to increase suicidal tendencies in kids and teens. Now it's been found that it can cause people to no longer be in love with their significant other. This makes me wonder - if these anti-depressants make someone no longer in love with another person - what is there to prevent the drug from making the user fall out of love with other things? In my opinion, the opposite of being depressed is being happy. Would you be happy if a drug made you no longer love your significant other? Wouldn't that make you wonder if the drug was making you no longer love other things or activities that you used to enjoy? How does that make someone less depressed?

ADHD Drug Affects on the Hearts of Kids

This article talks about the effects that ADHD drugs are having on kid's hearts. Apparently, the drugs are causing increased heart rate and other issues in kid's hearts. With heart disease being one of the top killers in the US, I don't see how this is not a big deal. Also, who knows what the long term effects such drugs can have on the hearts of children. What happens when they become adults? This question remains unanswered.

"The Father of American Psychiatry"

Dr. Benjamin Rush - also known as the "Father of American Psychiatry" was alive from 1745-1813. Just before he passed away - in 1812 - he published the first American textbook on psychiatry.
In this book, masturbation and too much blood to the brain were considered causes of madness. Treatment involved cauterizing the spine and genitals or encasing the patient's private parts in plaster to prevent masturbation. (Oddly enough, in present time masturbation is considered and needful activity which prevents madness.)
Rush's recommended treatment included:

• Dropping "patients" into a well, on the basis that "if the patient nearly drowned and then brought back to life, he would take a fresh start, leaving his disease."
• Blistering the ankles to draw blood away from the "overheated head."
• Bleeding as much as "four-fifths of the blood in the body" to relieve the "excessive action" in the patient's brain.

None of his ideas about the brain being the cause of insanity has ever been medically proven, and psychiatrists still forward this fallacy today to market their mind-altering drugs.

To end this segment about American Psychiatry's "Father", here as a quote from him about his invention - the "Tranquilzer Chair" pictured about two posts below this one:

"It binds and confines every part of the body. By preventing the muscles from acting...the position of the head and feet favors the easy application of cold water to the former and warm water to the latter. Its effects have been truly delightful to me."

Johann Christian Reil, 1800-1808

Johann Christian Reil coined the term "psychiatry" in 1808. The word literally means "healing the soul" from Greek "psyche". Yet Reil had already concluded in 1803 - without evidence - that mental disturbances were of the brain, not the soul. He advocated punishment, intimidation, loud noises, flogging and opium as treatments, describing them as "non-injurious torture." For a man that suffered "delusions about the purity of the female sex," Reil recommended "a prostitute who will cure his delusions."

1700s-1800s

Here's a continuation of our history. I last left off on the 1700s. Here are the "advances" psychiatry made from 1700-1800:

Throughout the 1700s and 1800s, patients were chained naked to walls, beaten with rods and lashed into obedience. French asylum director Philippe Pinel abolished the use of chains in Paris' Salpetriere Institution in 1793. In their place he instituted straitjackets and threatened patients who misbehaved with "10 severe lashes".

I can't say that there were any huge advances or changes made in psychiatry during this time, it was pretty much the same torturous treatment as in the 1600s-1700s. None of the above is not nearly as awful as what the "Father of American Psychiatry" Benjamin Rush did to his patients. I'll share that with you next time, but just to leave you with an idea of his attitude, here's a quote from Dr. Benjamin Rush regarding one of his inventions - the "Tranquilizer Chair", which was used to keep the patient in a state of discomfort and pain for hours on end:
"It binds and confines every part of the body. By preventing the muscles from acting...the position of the head and feet favors the easy application of cold water or ice to the former and warm water to the latter. Its effects have been truly delightful to me."
Here's a pic of the chair:

Psychiatric drugging behind school shootings

29 people have been killed and 62 wounded by school shooters taking violence and suicide inducing psychiatric drugs. These notorious school-yard crimes include, among others, the 2005 Red Lake Indian Reservation shooting by Jeff Weise on Prozac, the 1999 Columbine shooting by Eric Harris on Luvox, and a 1998 shooting in Springfield, Oregon by Kip Kinkel on Prozac.

Including this morning's murder in a one-room schoolhouse in Pennsylvania, three shootings have occurred within the last week. One of these three shootings occurred at a school in Bailey, Colorado, less than an hour's drive from Columbine. Rocky Mountain News reports that outside Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colorado, antidepressants were recovered from shooter Duane Morrison's jeep, after he took several girls hostage and killed one of the school girls before taking his own life.

The U.S. FDA warns that antidepressants can cause suicidal ideation, mania and psychosis. The manufacturers of one antidepressant, Effexor, now warn the drug can cause homicidal ideation. This month, a study came out in the Public Library of Science-Medicine journal, conducted by David Healy, director of Cardiff's University's North Wales department of psychological medicine, which found that the antidepressant Paxil raises the risk of violence. Though the study focuses specifically on Paxil, Healy reasoned that other antidepressant drugs like Prozac, Celexa and Zoloft, most likely pose the same risk of violence.

"We've got good evidence that the drugs can make people violent and you'd have to reason from that that there may be more episodes of violence," Healy said.

This morning another community was torn by the irrational murder of multiple school children. Violence and suicide inducing psychiatric drugs are taking a huge toll on our children and our community. School shootings are plaguing the nation. With three in the last week alone, investigators must look into the causes for this psychotic, suicidal behavior, and they should start at the most obvious place.

Was Charles Carl Roberts IV, who murdered Amish schoolgirls before shooting himself, on these behavior-altering drugs, like so many of the school shooters? Go to www.cchr.org to learn more about the connection between violence and antidepressants, or read the Report on Escalating International Warnings on Psychiatric Drugs, published by the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights, a psychiatric watchdog group.

Electric Convulsive Therapy

Here's a video on Electric Convulsive Therapy aka "Shock Treatment" aka ECT.

What's being in a Mental Hospital like?

Involuntary Commitment

You may wonder, how easy is it to be involuntarily commited to a psychiatric hospital? It's so easy that in the United States, a person is involuntarily committed every 1 1/4 minutes. It is similar throughout the entire world.

Click here for more info.

What is Psychosurgery (aka Neurosurgery for Mental Disorders)?

I'd like you to keep in mind that the following still occurs in mental hospitals today:

The roots of psychosurgery can be traced to a medieval treatment called “trepanning” (cutting out circular sections of the skull). Ancient doctors believed this liberated demons and bad spirits from a person.

However, modern psychosurgery can be traced to an incident in 1848 when an explosion drove an iron rod through the cheek and out the top of the head of railway worker Phineas Gage. Before the accident, Gage had been a capable foreman, a religious man with a well-balanced mind and a shrewd business sense. After the rod was removed and he recovered, Gage became fitful, irreverent, grossly profane, impatient and obstinate.

That an alteration in behavior could be achieved by damaging parts of the brain without killing a person did not go unnoticed, and in 1882 Swiss asylum superintendent Gottlieb Burckhardt became the first known psychosurgeon. He removed cerebral tissue from six patients, hoping “the patient might be transformed from a disturbed to a quiet dement.” Although one died and others developed epilepsy, paralysis and aphasia (loss of ability to use or understand words), Burckhardt was pleased with his now quiet patients.
So was born a new mental “treatment.”

On November 12, 1935, Egas Moniz, a professor of neurology in Lisbon, Portugal, performed the first lobotomy inspired by an experiment in which the frontal lobes of two chimpanzees were removed. Moniz conducted the same operation on humans, theorizing that the source of mental disorders was this part of the brain.

A 12-year follow-up study observed that Moniz’s patients suffered relapses, seizures and deaths. Yet this did not deter others from following in his footsteps.

On September 14, 1936, U.S. psychiatrist Walter J. Freeman performed his first lobotomy. Using electric shock as an anesthetic, he inserted an ice pick beneath the eye socket bone into the brain with a surgical mallet. Movement of the instrument then severed the fibers of the frontal brain lobes, causing irreversible brain damage.

Between 1946 and 1949 the lobotomies increased tenfold. Freeman himself performed or supervised approximately 3,500 procedures, producing armies of zombies. By 1948, the death rate from lobotomies was 3%. Yet Freeman toured from city to city, promoting his procedure by lecturing and publicly lobotomizing patients in theatrical fashion. The press dubbed his tour “Operation Ice Pick.”

Today, under the sanitized name of “neurosurgery” for mental disorders (NMD), psychosurgery advocates such as the Scottish Health Secretary propose that lobotomies — performed by burning out the frontal lobes — be used on patients without their consent. In Russia between 1997 and 1999, Dr. Sviatoslav Medvedec, director of St. Petersburg’s Institute of the Human Brain, admitted to overseeing more than 100 psychosurgery operations given mainly to teenagers for drug addiction. “I think the West is too cautious about neurosurgery because of the obsession with human rights...” he said.

In 1999, Alexander Lusikian was admitted to the “Brain Institute” at St. Petersburg, Russia, where he was to receive psychosurgery to cure his drug addiction. The operation was performed without anesthesia. Four holes were drilled into his head during a four-hour operation and sections of the brain were cauterized (burned) with liquid nitrogen, causing excruciating pain. After he was released, the wounds on his scalp festered so badly that he needed to be re-hospitalized. Within a week of the psychosurgery, Lusikian was craving drugs and within two months, he had completely reverted to drugs.

Frances Farmer 1914-1970
Upset over a string of failed relationships, Hollywood actress Frances Farmer was arrested in January 1943, after a bout of heavy drinking. Refusing to cooperate with psychiatrist Thomas H. Leonard, she was committed to an institution. For the next seven years, she was subjected to 90 insulin shock treatments and numerous bouts of electroshock. She later told of being “raped by orderlies, gnawed on by rats, poisoned by tainted food, chained in padded cells, strapped in strait jackets and half drowned in ice baths.” By the time of her release, she was withdrawn and terrified of people. After three years, she was up to working again—sorting dirty laundry. Her career and life were ruined.

This was exerpted from this Citizen's Commission for Human Rights link.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)

There is The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which includes every single mental disorder, statistics in terms of gender, what the age of onset is and prognosis as well as some research concerning the optimal treatment approaches.
This book is considered the "bible" of any modern-day psychiatrist.

In this press release it states that not only have psychiatrists never run blood tests on their patients to enable them to diagnose such mental illness, they vote each disease in the "bible" into existence and they are allowed to vote it out if it causes them too much trouble! These are the people who are considered "doctors" when it comes to mental illness! How can they be allowed to carry on as they are, when all they do to "locate" mental illness is to get together and vote on it?

Please take a look for yourself. Don't let people who would take a vote on your sanity be in charge of mentally ill patients.