Psych in Fued vs Injured Neighbor

Jean Pierre Villar, a man in a fued with his neighbor, psychologist Holli Bodner, has run into financial problems when Bodner tried to have Villar commited for a forced mental exam under Florida Law.

On Nov. 14, Villar filed a complaint with the Sheriff's Office, alleging that his neighbor, psychologist Holli Bodner, lied on the form she filed to have him committed under the state's Baker Act. Deputies took him to Manatee Glens and then to Blake Medical Center, but he was released before being evaluated. Since then, he's hired a lawyer to prepare a suit against the Sheriff's Office and Bodner.

Jean Pierre Villar moved to Florida more than a year ago to get surgery and rehabilitation for a long-ignored work-related back injury. The incident with sheriff's deputies took place within weeks after the surgery.

After he was committed through the Baker Act, Villar's workers' compensation payments were cut off. The insurance company said his new injuries do not appear to be related to his construction work-related injury, but appear to be caused by the commitment, Bruce Zeidman, Villar's workers' compensation lawyer, said last month.

Villar says the deputies bent him over to restrain him, further damaging his back. The nerve damage spread from one leg to two and is attacking his left arm, causing uncontrollable shaking and "horrible pain," he said.

One wonder's watch the psych said to the cops to have a man in such obvious pain treated so roughly.

New Zealand's black market for children's Ritalin

New Zealand parents of children prescribed methylphenidate for ADHD are selling it to supplement their state benefits. There is anecdotal evidence that children had been selling it at school. "There's quite a brisk illegal market for Ritalin. Methamphetamine and Ritalin are the biggest trend in drug use, and would be second behind cannabis."

New Zealand's use of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) drugs such as Ritalin is spiralling. Figures from government drug-buying agency Pharmac show 17 per cent more methylphenidate – commonly known at Ritalin and Rubifen – was dispensed in the 12 months ended July than in the previous year. Thirty-three times more methylphenidate is now dispensed to treat children with ADHD than there was a decade ago when estimates suggested only 242 patients were receiving the drug. Many patients are now likely to be prescribed both short- and long-acting strengths and hold two prescriptions. Now Pharmac estimates 5550 patients are taking ADHD drugs – up 15 per cent on last year.

Health experts spoken to by The Press are unconcerned at the increased prescribing of methylphenidate but do worry about its illicit use through the black market. Parents selling drugs prescribed for their behaviourally troubled children are fuelling the black market trade in Ritalin.

National Addiction Centre director and psychiatrist Associate Professor Doug Sellman said the more methylphenidate was used for ADHD, the more families would trade it. "The temptation to sell Johnny's medication is stronger in poorer families, and ADHD tends to be found more in lower socio-economic families."

Psychopaths twice as likely to re-offend after treatment

According to this article in the Telegraph, psychopaths such as serial killers are twice as likely to reoffend after treatment in British prison rehabilitation programs as psychopaths who do not take part in such programs.

Dr Robert Hare, a Canadian professor of psychology who has studied psychopaths for 35 years, believes that participating in such courses actually increases the chances that a psychopath will reoffend when he gets out.

Within two years of their release, psychopaths who go on such courses reoffend at almost twice the rate as those who do not. More than 80 per cent of the psychopaths who complete therapeutic courses reoffend soon after release. However, fewer than half of those who do not undergo such courses go on to reoffend.

Yet the offenders who had been on the therapy courses had convinced prison and psychiatric staff that they had "genuinely addressed their own offending behaviour", and were "responding positively to therapy". Indeed, those offenders who were most successful at convincing their therapists that they had gained insight into their own behaviour and changed for the better actually went on to reoffend at the highest rates.

{...}

"The psychiatric profession and its associates are very reluctant to admit they are wrong or that they have made a mistake, let alone to accept that they have been conned by a psychopath," says Dr Hare. "Therapists tend to insist that their diagnosis was right at the time and on the evidence they had - even when that is manifestly disproved by subsequent events."

So it looks like they just get really good at learning the psycho-babble jargon, and thus are more expert at manipulating the therapists.

This speaks volumes about the effectiveness of the therapists and the "science" they practice.

New Expensive Drugs no better than Old Inexpensive Drugs

As seen in the New Hampshire Telegraph

An older, inexpensive drug is as effective/ineffective at treating the symptoms of schizophrenia as a newer, more popular drug that costs about 100 times more, according to a new report. The study, published in Wednesday’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, also found no difference in quality of life between those given the newer drug, olanzapine, and those given the older drug, haloperidol, plus another drug to control side effects. Haloperidol treatment was $3,000 to $9,000 cheaper per patient in annual costs, depending on how expenses were measured.

So we see that the major advantage to the newer drugs is their benefit to the corporate profit margin.

Health Workers kept silent due to fear for their lives

Five workers who made false accounting entries during a huge fraud at HealthSouth Corp. kept silent out of fear after realizing the company was buying guns, grenades and spy equipment, according to testimony Wednesday at the first sentencing in the case.

While not specifically a psychiatric fraud case, it does reveal the criminal nature of some in the health care industry. Read the full story here.

Utah State Psych Hospitals Unsafe?

The Deseret News has this report on the safety issues at state psychiatric hospital facilities in Utah. One on the major elements is that the facilities are not really trying to help people, but are acting more like prisons in disguise instead. The story offers extensive details on the horror story. This is about dangers to both the patients and the staff. Do they even know what they are doing?

More clinical and counseling psychology practices are going out of business than ever before

According to this new article on About.com, more clinical and counseling psychology practices are going out of business than ever before. This, combined with increasing numbers of graduates in the filed, leads the website to offer cautionary advice to people looking to psychology as a career path. While the author is not ready to recommend people avoid studying psychology as a career path, he recommending that people look at other areas to help keep their career options open.

Psychiatric Malpractice in Hawaii

This special report in the The Honolulu Star-Bulletin just came to our attention

Robert Kratzke initially believed that psychiatrist Martin H. Stein was "trying to do the best" for him, his wife and family. But less than five years after Stein began treating them with dozens of psychiatric drugs, Robert's wife, Anita, was dead, Robert had gone from a top engineer to "a vegetable on the couch with a chemical lobotomy" and Chris, his youngest son, had been on 23 prescribed drugs in five years.

Mr. Kratzke and his sons are recovering, and have filed a malpractice lawsuit against Stein over Anita's death.

Asia's mental heath centers

Asia's mental heath centers look more like prisons than hospitals. Everyone should check out the Time Asia photoessay which exposes this travesty.

Read the story here

It is truly a hell hole.

Psych Drugs of 4 patients switched without OK

A follow up to the earlier story:

A doctor at a state mental health facility changed patients' medications last year so that they would be eligible for a study of a new psychiatric drug, violating basic guidelines for research on human subjects and causing dangerous side effects in a 43-year-old man with schizophrenia, a state investigation has found.

The Disabled Persons Protection Commission uncovered numerous ethical violations at the Solomon Carter Fuller Mental Health Center by Boston Medical Center physicians contracted to treat patients there.

According to a DPPC report, patients' medications were switched without informed consent and without a clear medical need, the changes were made more than two months before the human-studies review boards approved the research protocol, and the patients involved were clearly not eligible under the criteria for the study, which specified that subjects be outpatients.

One of the four patients whose medication was switched, a man who had been stable for 10 years on the drug Clozaril, became so ill and acutely psychotic that he spent months in and out of hospital wards. He was diagnosed with neuroleptic malignant syndrome, a rare, sometimes lethal side effect of medication changes, according to the commission's report.

The names of doctors involved were deleted from the commission report, but Department of Mental Health officials and Hughes acknowledged their identities. According to the Globe story the Doctors involved are Dr. Douglas Hughes and Dr. Valentina Jalynytchev.

The rapid decline of a patient under psych care

This story in today's Boston Globe cite the rapid decline of a patient under psych care

Medical records from the Solomon Carter Fuller Mental Health Center tell the story of a profoundly disabled patient who was ushered into a clinical trial during a single conversation: On Oct. 31, 2002, Dr. Valentina Jalynytchev sat down with the 43-year-old patient and, as she noted in a progress report, "discussed . . . clinical trial of [Risperdal]," and agreed that he would participate, according to a state report. [...]

In her notes of Oct. 31, Jalynytchev concludes that the patient was enthusiastic about starting Risperdal, which does not require regular blood tests, as Clozaril does: "He will start Risperidone . . . any time soon [it is his treatment plan], but for the study his guardian . . . needs to sign a consent form."

In fact, his treatment plan included other antipsychotic medications but not Risperdal. No call was made to his guardian. But he was started on Risperdal five days later, on Nov. 4, 2002. [...]

Which was just the start of a long, sad, horror story.

The switch in medications was the beginning of a long slide. [...] When the patient returned to the Fuller [after a trip to the emergency room] in March, he was so sensitive to antipsychotic medication that he could take only tiny doses. Doctors prescribed electroconvulsive therapy.

A Look at the Mental Health Agenda

Berit Kjos has an interesting collection of of well documented articles investigating the agenda of the mental health crowd. She entitles it the Does Your 'Mental Health' Meet Global Standards? Series.

Article One: Legalizing Mind Control
Article Two: Legalizing Mind Control 2

Therw are links to other articles as well. While you may not agree with her particular biases, the quotes are well documented, and raise the interesting question of whose global standards are they, anyhow? As she notes:

Good medical doctors naturally encourage prevention. They would want their patients to maintain health and strength. But when socialist "change agents" step into the picture with their psycho-social brainwashing strategies -- calling their agenda "prevention" in order to gain your approval -- they bring oppression instead of peace.

It gets into questions like: What agenda are they pushing. and whose should it be? She introduces one of her articles with a quote from Betrand Russle, from a book published back in 1953:

"...the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology.... The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen. As yet there is only one country which has succeeded in creating this politician's paradise."[2] -- Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1953); page 30.)

So whose agenda is it?

Eugenics and the Nazis -- the California connection

As seen in the SF Chronicle

the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power. California eugenicists played an important, although little-known, role in the American eugenics movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing. [...]

Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They were all in league with some of America's most respected scientists from such prestigious universities as Stanford, Yale, Harvard and Princeton. These academicians espoused race theory and race science, and then faked and twisted data to serve eugenics' racist aims.


a worthy read

Nearly one in four French people on Psych Drugs

Nearly one in four French people are on tranquillisers, antidepressants, antipsychotics or other mood-altering prescription drugs, according to an alarming report published this past week. It revealed that an average of 40% of men and women aged over 70 in France were routinely prescribed at least one of this class of dependence-creating drug, as well as some 4% of all children under nine. The French are plainly not sicker than anyone else: according to recent survey, while 9% of them were prescribed antidepressants in 2000, only 4.7% could be clinically diagnosed as suffering from depression.

So what gives?

Psych reverses murder testimony

A psychiatrist who helped prosecutors sentence a Charlotte, NC man to death for killing his aunt has retracted her testimony. Las Vegas psychiatrist Cynthia White said her testimony was erroneous and that the state withheld information from her. White testified against convicted murderer John Daniels. Her latest statements were from an affidavit released by Daniels' lawyer on Thursday.

Psych Center Worker faces 27 charges of Sexual Assualt

A former worker at a Las Vegas psychiatric center has plead innocent to fondling a teenage girl under his care. Police say 29-year-old Barry Bergmann faces 27 charges of sexual assault after a girl transferred from the Spring Mountain Treatment Center to another facility and told counselors there that Bergmann fondled her and had her remove her clothes. Authorities say the girl is under 16 years old. A Spring Mountain official says Bergmann no longer works there.

Eli Lily and Walgreen's sued over promo packages of Prozac

A marketing scheme that involved sending unsolicited fluoxetine (Prozac) in the mail has led to a lawsuit in the US state of Florida against a local hospital, the drug’s manufacturer (Eli Lilly), and Walgreen, a major US pharmacy chain. We missed this in the states. This report is via the British medical Journal

Forcing Psychiatric Treatment on Individuals Not Successful

Forcing individuals to undergo psychiatric treatment in and of itself will not lead to use of fewer health services or reduce the risk of readmission, reported researchers at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, held October 30th to November 2nd in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The study, which included all community-based and inpatient psychiatric services in Western Australia, examined whether community treatment orders (CTOs) had any effect on the use of mental health services. Study participants were matched on discharge date, socio-demographic factors, clinical features and psychiatric history.

End result? The researchers found that CTO cases (forcebly treated) had significantly higher readmission rates (73%) compared to the other two groups (57% and 65%),

So if the commitment is forced, the readmission rate is much higher.....

Psych charged in another sex attack

A psych jailed for a depraved sex attack has been charged with indecent assault weeks after being freed pending his appeal. Psychiatrist Darren Holdsworth was arrested after being released from prison where hewas serving three years for attacking a teenage girl.

Holdsworth, 37, is alleged to have carried out thelatest assault in a Glasgow pub. Hewas let out of jail in August after launching anappeal against the sentence he received last November. Hewas jailed for three years andtold hewould beplacedundersupervision for two years after his release.

Marketing reps targeting doctors to prescribe drugs for off-label

This story in the Tallahassee Democrat details the efforts of marketing reps to expand the markets of drugs like Prozac by handing out samples to regular physicians who are not familar with the side effects. By offering specialty drugs to nonspecialists, sending salesmen to doctors' offices and medical conventions, and touting their drugs' benefits on the slimmest of evidence, pharmaceutical companies have sent off-label retail sales soaring. Documented is one case where a heart specialist gave a man Prozac, with the man committing suicide less than 2 weeks later, to the horror of the heart specialist.

Australian Psychologist accused of inmate sex

Australian Psychologist Susan Maureen Robinson, of Sherwood, has been referred to the Health Practitioners' Tribunal by the Psychologists Board of Queensland to answer allegations of unsatisfactory professional conduct. As a former prison psychologist, she could have her licence cancelled or suspended after being accused of having an improper sexual relationship with a former inmate. The Australian Psychological Society code of ethics states a minimum of two years must pass between the end of a professional client-practitioner relationship before the start of an intimate relationship, and the psychologist must prove the relationship does not exploit the former client.

Probe as 62 patients fall on Psych ward's 'slippy' floor

Health and safety experts have been called in at Wishaw General Hospital [in England] after 62 falls were recorded in one ward in just 10 months. The safety probe centres on Ward 3, which houses around 23 elderly psychiatric patients. Official hospital figures show 47 patients suffered falls on the ward during a five-month period in 2002.

A spokesman for Lanarkshire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, said: "Discussions have been taking place with the Health and Safety Executive but there has been no instruction to remove the flooring in Ward 3, which is the same throughout Wishaw General."

One hospital worker said: "Most of the staff think there's a problem with the flooring. The patients there are extremely frail and I have lost count of the number of serious falls that have been recorded. It will cost the taxpayer a fortune if the flooring is found to be dangerous." An investigation has now been launched to find out whether the condition of the floor is putting patients and staff at risk.

Developmental problems in frogs and fish exposed to minute quantities of common antidepressants

University of Georgia researchers have discovered developmental problems in frogs and fish exposed to minute quantities of common antidepressants that can pass from humans through sewage treatment systems into rivers and streams. The scientists have been studying the toxicity of a widely used group of antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which are commonly prescribed for depression, anxiety, panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, eating disorders and social phobia. Some of the drugs, including Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and Celexa, have been found in low concentrations in surface water, particularly wastewater.