Depression is NOT caused by low serotonin levels and most drugs used to treat it are based on a myth, leading psychiatrist claims

As Reported in the Daily Mail

• David Healy is head of psychiatry at the Hergest psychiatry unit in Bangor
• Claims the idea low levels of serotonin causes depression is a fallacy
• Marketing of SSRI drugs like Prozac has been 'based on a myth', he claims
• Experts refute his claims saying 'SSRIs work in the real world of the clinic'

The belief that the most popular antidepressant drugs raise serotonin levels in the brain is nothing more than a myth, a leading professor of psychiatry has claimed.

David Healy, head of psychiatry at the Hergest psychiatric unit in Bangor, North Wales, said the misconception that low levels of serotonin were responsible for depression had become established fact.

He suggested that the success of so-called SSRI drugs – which include Prozac and Seroxat – was based on the ‘marketing of a myth’.

The emergence of these serotonin reuptake inhibiting (SSRI) drugs in the late 1980s came after concerns about tranquilliser use to treat depression.

Even though they were weaker than old-style tricyclic antidepressants, they took off because of the idea that SSRIs restored serotonin levels to normal, ‘a notion that later transmuted into the idea that they remedied a chemical imbalance’.

In an editorial in the BMJ, Professor Healy said that in the 1990s, no one knew if SSRIs raised or lowered serotonin levels but there was no evidence that treatment corrected anything.

[...]

The full BMJ editorial "Serotonin and Depression" is available in PDF format here

Much of the article was taken up by people trying to refute the attack on their paychecks.

More Evidence Antidepressants Might Induce Sexual Dysfunction Even After Stopping Them

From the Website "Mad In America"

A retrospective study in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry identified 183 possible cases of people who suffered sexual dysfunction that endured even after stopping taking SSRI antidepressants. Of these, the Israeli researchers identified "23 high-probability cases" of "Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction" (PSSD).

"Possible cases were subjects with normal pretreatment sexual function who first experienced sexual disturbances while using a single SSRI/SNRI, which did not resolve upon drug discontinuation for 1 month or longer," wrote the researchers. "High-probability cases were also younger than 50-year-olds; did not have confounding medical conditions, medications, or drug use; and had normal scores on the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale."

"Limitations of the study include retrospective design and selection and report biases that do not allow generalization or estimation of incidence," noted the researchers. "However, our findings add to previous reports and support the existence of PSSD, which may not be fully explained by alternative nonpharmacological factors related to sexual dysfunction, including depression and anxiety."

The website RxISK has been tracking cases of apparent post-SSRI sexual dysfunction.

Ben-Sheetrit, Joseph, Dov Aizenberg, Antonei B. Csoka, Abraham Weizman, and Haggai Hermesh. “Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction: Clinical Characterization and Preliminary Assessment of Contributory Factors and Dose-Response Relationship.” Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology, March 2015, 1. doi:10.1097/JCP.0000000000000300. (Abstract)

Of course, this side effect has become another medical condition to treat.

SSRI Pushers under Fire

We now have another excellent story by Evelyn Pringle, as seen in the Scoop Independent News, and elsewhere.

SSRI Pushers under Fire

By Evelyn Pringle

Throughout the 1990's, most doctors who attended conferences, medical seminars and other events were not aware that the so-called "key opinion leaders" encouraging them to prescribe the new generation of antidepressants for everything under the sun, including to children as young as infants, were nothing more than highly paid drug pushers for Big Pharma.

For years, the research that showed SSRI antidepressants (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) were dangerous and practically useless was kept hidden, while the studies published and presented to potential prescribers painted a glowing picture of success. These days, a person would be hard pressed to find someone who does not have a family member or friend labeled mentally ill and taking drugs like Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Lexapro and Celexa, or their chemical cousins Effexor, Cymbalta and Wellbutrin.

About once a year, a new round of headlines about all the money made by the SSRI pushers comes and goes; but nothing really ever seemed to stick, until now.

The Senate Finance Committee, with the ranking Republican, Senator Charles Grassley, leading the charge, is investigating GlaxoSmithKline regarding new revelations in a report filed in litigation showing that the company manipulated the numbers on adverse events related to suicidality in clinical trials back in 1989, to make it appear that Paxil did not increase the risk of patients experiencing suicidal behavior when, in fact, trial subjects on Paxil were eight times more likely to attempt or commit suicide than patients taking placebos.

Quite a few of the top pushers are also under investigation by the Committee due to revelations that millions of dollars has changed hands between the SSRI makers and the academics who signed off on some of the most fraudulently reported research in the history of modern medicine. A full list of names is easy to compile by scanning the literature on SSRI studies conducted on children. The same names appear repeatedly.

In alphabetical order, the Fortune 500 team of pushers, at a minimum, includes Drs Joseph Biederman, David Brent, Jeffrey Bridge, Daniel Casey, David Dunner, Graham Emslie, Daniel Geller, Robert Gibbons, Frederick Goodwin, Martin Keller, Andrew Leon, John Mann, John March, Charles Nemeroff, John Rush, Neal Ryan, David Shaffer, and Karen Wagner.


Truth Buried in Litigation Graveyard

On February 6, 2007, the world famous historian on psycho-pharmacology, Dr David Healy, published a commentary entitled, "Why you should never trust new wonder drugs," in the UK's Daily Mail stating:

"Ten years ago, I sat faced with boxes and boxes that contained a dirty secret. Inside were thousands of confidential internal company documents about Prozac."

"The secret they revealed was that public statements about the safety of the drug were a lie; that the company knew Prozac was responsible for a raised risk of suicide and was only slightly more effective than a placebo."

Several years later, Dr Healy recounts, he was faced with the secrets of Paxil. "No one outside the two companies, and few within them," he writes, "knew what those boxes contained; I saw them because I was an expert witness in a court case."

"Documents prised out of companies by American court cases," he says, "have become the main way we have of discovering the truth about some of our best-selling drugs."

"The scientific literature, the very place doctors would look for a warning," he writes, "contained barely a hint of problems.”

"What's more, no one seems likely ever to have to answer for what appears to be fraud," he points out.

"In other organizations when evidence of disregard for public safety emerges, heads roll," Dr Healy said. "But there have been no resignations following these drug disasters - barely a flicker of embarrassment."

The UK's medicines “watchdog,” the British Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, he reports, "has never taken any action against the academics who make fraudulent claims in ghostwritten articles, nor doctors working for the companies who repeat such claims, even when they have been shown to be untrue."

"And no one in Britain," he points out, "has any means of finding out why their husband or child might have died."

Seven years before Dr Healy wrote this commentary, in a Prozac case for which he served as an expert witness, the plaintiff's legal team learned that Eli Lilly had withheld evidence in a jury trial when the May 7, 2007 Boston Globe reported that Lilly had agreed to pay $20 million for the rights to a patent on a new version of Prozac that would reduce "akathisia," the very side effect long believed to increase the risk of suicidal behavior, three months before the trial began.

While testifying under oath, Lilly researcher, Gary Tollefson, had told the jury, "there is absolutely no medically sound evidence of an association between any antidepressant medicine, including Prozac, and the induction of suicidal ideation or violence."

When in fact, the wording in the patent for the new formula stated "fluoxetine (Prozac) produces a state of inner restlessness (akathisia), which is one of its more significant side effects," and the "adverse effects which are decreased by administering the R(-) isomer of fluoxetine include but are not limited to headaches, nervousness, anxiety, insomnia, inner restlessness (akathisia), suicidal thoughts and self mutilation."

Patients who lived to talk about a failed suicide attempt have described the SSRI-induced akathisia, as being so unbearable that their only option for relief seemed to be death.


America’s Most Wanted

Dr Daniel Casey was a major player in the SSRI drug-push and useful in many ways to the companies promoting the drugs. He was the chairman of the very first FDA advisory committee that met in 1991, to decide whether a warning about the increased risk of suicide should be added to the label of Prozac, the first SSRI approved in the US, and voted it down. He was also the chairman of the advisory panel that voted to approve Zoloft for Pfizer later that same year.

Bob Sorenson was a sales representative for Pfizer for 21 years. He moved to Oregon shortly before Zoloft was approved. During the first week at his new location, Pfizer’s chief of marketing at the time told him he needed to start calling on a doctor by the name of Dr Daniel Casey at the V.A. in Portland because he was very important to the company.

Dr Casey worked at the V.A., but never treated patients for depression, Mr Sorenson says. "His expertise [was] psychotropic drugs and experimentation."

The chief of marketing said he was interested in finding out what Dr Casey thought of the company's new drug, Zoloft. The company tried to call on him that day, but Dr Casey was not in. Mr Sorenson called on him later in the week and learned that Dr Casey was the lead investigator on Zoloft, which was up for approval by the FDA advisory committee Dr Casey chaired.

"He said I shouldn't be there, but I did ask how it looks for the drug and he said very well," Mr Sorenson recalls.

Dr Casey ended up making a ton of money from Zoloft. "He told me personally one time that he made enough from Pfizer in one year to purchase two cars," Mr Sorenson reports.

Dr Casey became a member of Pfizer's Advisory Board for Zoloft, which meant "all expense paid trips," including honorariums, to anywhere Pfizer wanted him to advise, at any location in the world, Mr Sorenson explains.

"Many speakers were sought out that would only give lectures that put Zoloft in a positive light," he notes, "there was no room for a balanced lecture."

"Dr Casey later became one of the most sought after speakers for the Pfizer promotion of Zoloft," he says, "the reps loved him because of his positioning of Zoloft."

Mr Sorenson was often told to take information to speakers, "including Dr Casey, to have them add the information to their lectures," he reports. "I look back at it now and see how wrong it was," he states.

"As far as the suicide issue," Mr Sorenson says, "the standard company line was that parents and doctors should be monitoring these kids because after being on Zoloft they finally feel good enough that they can carry out their suicide tendencies."

"Another tactic was to blame Paxil and Effexor," he recalls, "it was those drugs that caused suicidal tendencies, not Zoloft."

"Finally," he notes, "the statement was made that if they didn't take Zoloft, they probably would have committed suicide anyway."

Sales reps would practice and rehearse these statements at sales meetings to be able to respond to concerns or objections raised by Doctors about Zoloft’s relationship to suicidality, he says. "There would be contests as to who could detail the drug the best with objections," he recalls.

Pfizer was able to get rid of employees and still keep them quiet, he says, by offering severance packages of up to a year's salary, while forcing them to sign a confidentiality agreement, in which they promised not to sue, or speak adversely about Pfizer, as part of the deal.

Many people were so surprised at being terminated that they felt forced to sign because Pfizer kept the pressure on, he explains. They feared they wouldn’t find another job before financial problems set in, but regretted signing the agreement later, he says.

Mr Sorenson did not sign an agreement when he was fired. His young son had developed cancer, but Pfizer expected him to continue to attend out-of-town meetings and refused to believe that his son was terminally ill, he recalls. After 20 years with the company, Mr Sorenson was let go when he insisted that he needed to remain near his dying son and distraught wife. The Sorenson's son passed away on April 1, 2005.


Going rate for Legal Drug Pushers

SEC filings for Cypress Bioscience provide a good source for estimating how much money legal drug pushers can make each year, from each company, because the names of several appear in these filings. According to its website, “Cypress Bioscience is committed to developing and commercializing pharmaceutical products and personalized medicine laboratory services that allow physicians to serve unmet medical needs.”

Drs Martin Keller and Charles Nemeroff, two of the most prolific depression-mongers, have served on the company’s board of directors, on its scientific advisory board and as consultants for this company. Under their 2004 Consulting Agreements, Cypress was required to pay them $50,000 per year for services rendered up to and including “two days per fiscal quarter.” In addition, the company could request additional services at a rate of $5,000 per day.

During 2003, Dr Nemeroff was paid $19,000 for additional services under his agreement, and Dr Keller was paid an extra $18,000. But they were only making $2,000 per day that year. As members of the Psychopharmacology Advisory Board, Dr Nemeroff earned $19,000 and Dr Keller $18,000 in 2003.

For their service as directors of the company in 2002, they each received $24,000. They were also offered stock options regularly. Cypress is only company. A bio on Dr Keller in a July 25, 2002 agenda for an annual meeting states that he is also a consultant to, "Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Forest Laboratories, Janssen, Merck, Inc, Organon, Otsuka Pharmacia/Upjohn, Pharmastar, Pfizer, Inc. and Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories."

It also shows he serves on the scientific advisory boards of, "Bristol-Myers Squibb, Cephalon, Cyberonics, Inc., Eli Lilly, Forest Laboratories, Merck, Inc, Mitsubishi, Organon, Pfizer, Sepracor, Scirex, SmithKline Beecham, Somerse, Vela Pharmaceuticals and Wyeth-Ayerst."

Dr David Dunner and a few more of the usual suspects appear in the Cypress SEC filings as advisory board members as well.

Dr Nemeroff's role in the prostitution of research is legendary. In April 2004, Shannon Brownlee, author of, "Overtreated," wrote an article in the Washington Monthly entitled, "Doctors Without Borders," after he was caught failing to disclose his financial ties to the companies whose treatments he promoted in a paper in Nature Neuroscience, and noted:

"With financial ties to nearly two dozen drug and biotech companies, Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff may hold some sort of record among academic clinicians for the most conflicts of interest.

"A psychiatrist, a prominent researcher, and chairman of the department of psychiatry and behavioral science at Emory University in Atlanta, Nemeroff receives funding for his academic research from Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Wyeth-Ayerst--indeed from virtually every pharmaceutical house that manufactures a drug to treat mental illness.

"He also serves as a consultant to drug and biotech companies, owns their stocks, and is a member of several speakers' bureaus, delivering talks--for a fee--to other physicians on behalf of the companies' products."

Dr Nemeroff stood to "reap as much as $1 million in stock" from just one company that manufactured one of the products in his Nature Neuroscience paper, she noted.

"But the drug industry's most powerful means of boosting the bottom line is funding research," Ms Brownlee writes, "which allows companies to control, or at least influence, a great deal of what gets published in the medical journals, effectively turning supposedly objective science into a marketing tool."

She notes how companies are able to routinely delay or prevent the publication of data and specifically how the majority of studies which found antidepressants to be no better than placebos, "never saw print in medical journals."

In conclusion, she states, "I'm struck more than anything by the apparent lack of shame among clinicians when it comes to this issue."

Two years later, on July 19, 2006, the Wall Street Journal reported that the journal, Neuropsychopharmacology, published by the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP), planned to publish a correction of a favorable review of a new depression treatment device because it failed to list the ties of the eight academic authors to the device maker, Cyberonics, including lead author Dr Nemeroff, the editor of Neuropsychopharmacology at that time. The FDA had approved the VNS device in July 2005 over the objections of "more than 20" FDA scientists, Bloomberg reported a day earlier on July 18, 2006.

"This is about as classic an example as you'll ever find of conflict of interest and manipulation by thought leaders who are beholden to corporations," Dr Bernard Carroll, a member of the ACNP, told Bloomberg. "This article is a piece of a slick, skillfully coordinated PR campaign directed by the corporation," he said.

Ten days before the Wall Street Journal article, Cyberonics had sponsored a little noticed symposium on treatment-resistant depression at the annual Collegium Internationale Neuro-Psychopharmacologicum Meeting. The main presenters at the July 9, 2006 event were Drs Nemeroff, Dunner, and Keller (the lead author of the infamous Paxil “Study 329” on adolescents).

"In recent years, new treatment modalities have emerged, among them, the only FDA-approved treatment option specifically designed for this patient population, VNS Therapy," Dr Dunner stated in a press release for the event.

Dr Dunner was one of the authors vouching for the new device in the Neuropsychopharmacology paper. However, a “stamp of approval” from this guy should be taken with a grain of salt. Back in March 1995, he also vouched for Paxil as lead author of a study titled, "Reduction of suicidal thoughts with paroxetine in comparison with reference antidepressants and placebo," in the journal of European Neuropsychopharmacology. However, he later admitted that he never reviewed any of the actual data from that study.

Dr Nemeroff apparently learned nothing from the public embarrassment of the previous scandals. Last week, he was forced to step down as Chair of Emory’s psychiatry department. According to a December 23, 2008 posting by Ed Silverman, on the popular blog, Pharmalot:

"Under pressure from a US Senate Finance Committee investigation, renowned psychiatrist Charles Nemeroff is giving up the post he held for 17 years and must follow new restrictions on his outside activities, according to an Emory University statement.”

“Emory’s own investigation found Nemeroff received more than $800,000 from Glaxo, which paid Nemeroff more than any other drugmaker, but he never reported the fees. There were more than 250 speaking engagements between 2000 and 2006.”

"Moreover, Emory will not submit any National Institutes of Health grant or other sponsored grant or contract requests in which Nemeroff is listed as an investigator or has any other role for a period of at least two years,” Pharmalot reports.

All total, Dr Nemeroff earned more than $2.8 million from drug companies between 2000 and 2007, but failed to disclose at least $1.2 million to Emory, according to the Senator.

Dr Keller’s disclosure records are under investigation as well He also appears center stage in a new book by former Boston Globe reporter, Alison Bass, called, "Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower, and a Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial," The book contains a treasure trove of insider revelations with specifics on Dr Keller's endless conflicts of interest, along with other academics on the take. However, Ms Bass first broke the Keller story back on October 4, 1999, in the Globe, when she reported that he was forced to forfeit "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in state grant money in 1998.

She explained how in the same year that Dr Keller authored a review article in "Biological Psychiatry," and concluded that the newer antidepressants Zoloft, Bristol-Meyer’s Serzone, and Wyeth’s Effexor were more effective, he received $77,400 in personal income and $1.2 million in research funding from Bristol-Myers, as well as $8,785 in personal income from Wyeth.

In "Side Effects," she notes that Dr Keller did not report any income to the IRS from Glaxo for 1998, but says he did receive money from the Paxil maker, and also earned $62,500 from Celexa maker Forest Labs that year.

Dr Keller published 3 studies, "with colleagues," in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, touting the efficacy of Zoloft in 1998, and received $218,000 in personal income and more than $3 million in research funding from Pfizer the same year, Ms Bass reports.

The "colleagues," referred to include the all-time champion of child drugging, Dr Joseph Biederman, the main promoter of the bogus epidemic of childhood bipolar disorder. He too is under investigation for taking $1.6 million from drug companies between 2000 and 2007, and only disclosing a fraction of that amount to Harvard. On December 30, 2008, Harvard’s teaching hospital, Massachusetts General announced that Dr Biederman was no longer participating in several industry-funded trials and had agreed to “not to participate in any outside activities that are paid for or sponsored by industry, such as consulting activities or speaking engagements.”

In most of the SSRI trials conducted on children, "colleagues," will also include Dr Graham Emslie of Prozac fame, and the Zoloft Czar, Dr Karen Wagner, both from the University of Texas.

Back in April 2004, the British Medical Journal published a paper by a research team led by Dr Jon Jureidini, head of the department of psychological medicine at Women's and Children's Hospital in Australia, after a review of the clinical trial data on the safety and efficacy of antidepressant use with children. The review included the published trials, along with some unpublished data made public by the Committee on Safety of Medicines in the UK.

The Australian team was extremely critical of the published papers on the major trials of Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft, with Emslie, Wagner and Keller listed as lead authors. "In discussing their own data," the team wrote, "the authors of all of the four larger studies have exaggerated the benefits, downplayed the harms, or both."

"It is vital," they wrote, "that authors, reviewers, and editors ensure that published interpretations of data are more reasonable and balanced than is the case in the industry-dominated literature on childhood antidepressants."

Seven months later, the New York Times ran a report by Barry Meier on November 29, 2004, throwing another spotlight on the trail of corruption within the SSRI research factories, and zeroed in on Dr Wagner. He noted that, from 1998 to 2001, she was one of several researchers participating in more than a dozen industry-funded pediatric trials of antidepressants and other drugs, and that some of the results were published, but many were not.

In her Zoloft study, Dr Wagner acknowledged that she had received "research support" from several drug makers including Pfizer, which paid $80,000 to the center in connection with the test, Mr Meier reports. But she did not state that she received “sizable payments” from Pfizer for work related to the study, he says.

The same month that patients were first recruited for the Zoloft trial, in a financial filing with the school in December 1992, Dr Wagner reported that she received more than $10,000 from Pfizer, with no further details. A lawyer for the school told Meier that Dr Wagner said Pfizer had paid her $20,500 during the course of the Zoloft trial. But records for payments she received in speaking and consulting fees could not be located.

In September, Dr Wagner’s name was added to the Senator Grassley’s investigative roster, along with Dr John Rush. Between 2000 and 2005, Glaxo alone paid Dr Wagner $160,404, but only $600 was disclosed to the University, according to the Senator. She was also paid over $11,000 in 2002, by Eli Lilly, and that money was not disclosed either. Lilly paid Dr Rush $17,802 in 2001, but he only reported $3,000, Senator Grassley said.

Dr Emslie’s financial trail to the drug makers gained media attention last summer due to his prominent role in the “Texas Children's Medication Algorithm Project,” and the creation of a drug formularies for children. He was chairman of the panel that wrote guidelines instructing doctors to prescribe SSRIs off-label to kids for depression in 1998. On August 18, 2008, the Dallas Morning News ran the headline: “Conflict of interest fears halt children's mental health project.”

“A state mental health plan naming the preferred psychiatric drugs for children has been quietly put on hold over fears drug companies may have given researchers consulting contracts, speakers fees or other perks to help get their products on the list,” the News reported. University disclosure forms indicate that Dr Emslie “has made at least $130,000 in drug company speakers fees and consulting contracts since 2002,” the paper noted.

In discussing the investigation of Dr Wagner on the Senate floor, Dr Grassley pointed out that she was a co-author on Paxil Study 329. In 2001, when the study was published, Glaxo “reported paying her $18,255,” he said. “Study 329 was cited in a New York case where GlaxoSmithKline was charged with ‘repeated and persistent fraud,’” the Senator added.

Dr Emslie was also a co-author on the Paxil study and a check of the full list for 329, reveals that 5 of the co-authors appear with Dr Emslie on the guidelines for the “Children's Medication Algorithm Project,” including Karen Wagner, Boris Birmaher, Barbara Geller, Neil Ryan and Michael Strober. Dr Rush’s name is also on the Texas guidelines but he moved to Singapore last August.

********

Evelyn Pringle

epringle05@yahoo.com

(Written as part of the SSRI Litigation Round-Up, Sponsored by Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman’s Pharmaceutical Litigation Department at http://www.baumhedlundlaw.com)

(Evelyn Pringle is a columnist for Scoop Independent News and an investigative journalist focused on exposing corruption in government and corporate America)

Antidepressants may damage male fertility

As reported via Reuters

Common antidepressant drugs may reduce some men's fertility by damaging the DNA in their sperm, according to scientists.

A study of 35 healthy men given paroxetine - sold as Paxil or Seroxat by GlaxoSmithKline - found that, on average, the proportion of sperm cells with fragmented DNA rose from 13.8 percent before treatment to 30.3 percent after just four weeks.

Similar levels of sperm DNA damage have been linked to problems with embryo viability in couples trying to have children. The research by Peter Schlegel and Cigdem Tanrikut of the Cornell Medical Center in New York was reported in New Scientist magazine and is due to be presented in November at a meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

A copy of the study abstract was made available to Reuters.

"The fertility potential of a substantial proportion of men on paroxetine may be adversely affected by these changes in sperm DNA integrity," the experts concluded.

The study adds to concerns voiced by the same doctors in 2006, after finding that two men had developed low counts of healthy sperm following treatment with two different selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).

SSRIs like Paxil/Seroxat and Eli Lilly's Prozac, both of which are now available generically, are the most commonly prescribed class of antidepressant.

Glaxo said it was reviewing the investigators' findings, since the study was not conducted by the company.

"These medicines remain an important option, in addition to counselling and lifestyle changes, for treatment of depression and this study should not be used to cause unnecessary concern for patients," a spokeswoman said.

"Patients should discuss their situation with their doctor before stopping use of their medicine."

Allan Pacey, Senior Lecturer in Andrology at the University of Sheffield, said the apparent increase in sperm DNA damage was "alarming", although he noted the level at which damage becomes clinically significant was open to debate.

"It is a shame that the authors appear not to have conducted a randomised controlled trial which would be the most scientific way to investigate the drugs effects, but I agree that the results are of concern and need to be investigated further," he said.

SSRIs have long been known to depress libido in some men and previous research has also found that women taking the medicines are more likely to have a low birth weight baby.

America, Your Kids Are Over-Medicated

As seen on Scientific Blogging

American children are approximately three times more likely to be prescribed psychotropic medication than children in Europe, according to a new study published Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health. The study claims that the differences may be accounted for by regulatory practices and cultural beliefs about the role of medication in emotional and behavioral problems.

Julie Zito led a team of researchers from the USA, Germany and the Netherlands who investigated prescription levels in the three countries. She said, "Antidepressant and stimulant prevalence were three or more times greater in the US than in the Netherlands and Germany, while antipsychotic prevalence was 1.5 to 2.2 times greater".

The use of antidepressants, like Prozac, and stimulants, like Ritalin, in children has been the subject of a great deal of controversy and this study quantifies the differences in practice between the US and Western Europe. The authors claim that the differences may be partly due to different diagnostic classification systems, "The US trend of increasing bipolar diagnosis in children and adolescents does not reflect European practice".

The authors also mention government cost restrictions in Europe, the larger number of child psychiatrists per capita in the US and the use of two or more different psychotropic drugs in a single year in US children as possible explanations.

Zito concludes that, "Direct to consumer drug advertising, which is common in the US, is also likely to account for some of the differences. The increased use of medication in the US also reflects the individualist and activist therapeutic mentality of US medical culture".

Prozac Nation No More?

Newsweek has a feel good interview with a psychiatrist who is against the use of Prozac.

In a new book, psychiatrist James Gordon explains why he believes there's a more effective and drug-free way to treat depression and anxiety. James Gordon, founder of the Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington, D.C., says there's a better way to treat depression—through diet, exercise and meditation. Roll your eyes all you like. He's used the approach for 35 years with a wide range of patients, from runaway children and middle-class adults in Washington, D.C., to victims of war in Bosnia, Kosovo, Israel and the Gaza Strip.

We remain skeptical about psychiatry in general. But we are pleased that someone did not fall for the marketing madness

How Prozac sent the 'science of depression' in the wrong direction

An Article by Jonah Lehrer, as seen in the Boston Globe (Highlights given below)

Note: Of course, maybe the drugs aren't the cure in the first place, because the actual problem is not being addressed at all.

Given the numerous side effects of drugs like prozac, maybe the best therapy would be a national health and exercise program. Not that anyone would actually want to get this into law.

UpDate: Psych Central has also picked up on this

Although researchers have known for years this not to be the case, some drug companies continue to repeat this simplistic and misleading claim in their marketing and advertising materials. Why the FTC or some other federal agency doesn’t crack down on this intentional misleading information is beyond me.

Here are some original snippets from the original article as seen in the Globe:

---

Prozac is one of the most successful drugs of all time. Since its introduction as an antidepressant more than 20 years ago, Prozac has been prescribed to more than 54 million people around the world,

[...]

For decades, researchers struggled to identify the underlying cause of depression, and patients were forced to endure a series of ineffective treatments. But then came Prozac. Like many other antidepressants, Prozac increases the brain's supply of serotonin, a neurotransmitter. The drug's effectiveness inspired an elegant theory, known as the chemical hypothesis: Sadness is simply a lack of chemical happiness. The little blue pills cheer us up because they give the brain what it has been missing.

There's only one problem with this theory of depression: it's almost certainly wrong, or at the very least woefully incomplete. Experiments have since shown that lowering people's serotonin levels does not make them depressed, nor does it does not make them depressed, nor does it worsen their symptoms if they are already depressed.

In recent years, scientists have developed a novel theory of what falters in the depressed brain. Instead of seeing the disease as the result of a chemical imbalance, these researchers argue that the brain's cells are shrinking and dying. This theory has gained momentum in the past few months, with the publication of several high profile scientific papers.

[...]

These discoveries are causing scientists to fundamentally re-imagine depression. While the mental illness is often defined in terms of its emotional symptoms - this led a generation of researchers to search for the chemicals, like serotonin, that might trigger such distorted moods - researchers are now focusing on more systematic changes in the depressed brain.

[...]

The progress exemplifies an important feature of modern medicine, which is the transition from a symptom-based understanding of a disease - depression is an illness of unrelenting sadness - to a more detailed biological understanding, in which the disease is categorized and treated based on its specific anatomical underpinnings.

In the 19th century, the "fever" was a common medical illness. Of course, doctors now realize that a fever is merely a common symptom of many different diseases, from the flu to leukemia.

Likewise, when Richard Nixon declared a "War on Cancer" in 1971, scientists largely defined cancer in terms of its most tangible characteristic: uncontrolled growth leading to a tumor. As a result, every cancer was treated with the same blunt tools. Over time, of course, scientists have discovered that cancer is not a single disease with a single biological cause. Breast cancer, for instance, can be triggered by a wide variety of genes and environmental risk factors. Because doctors can look beyond the superficial similarities of the symptoms - all tumors are not created equal - they are able to tailor their treatments to the specific disease.

Neuroscience is only beginning to catch up. Thanks to a variety of new experimental tools, such as brain scanners and DNA microarrays, researchers are now refining their understanding of mental illness. In many instances, this means recategorizing disorders, so that patients are no longer diagnosed solely in terms of their most obvious symptoms.

"We used to think there was only one kind of anemia," says Arturas Petronis, a scientist at the University of Toronto who investigates the underlying causes of schizophrenia. "But now we know there are at least 15 different kinds. We'll likely learn the same thing about many mental illnesses."

[...]

It is jarring to think of depression in terms of atrophied brain cells, rather than an altered emotional state. It is called "depression," after all. Yet these scientists argue that the name conceals the fundamental nature of the illness, in which the building blocks of the brain - neurons - start to crumble. This leads, over time, to the shrinking of certain brain structures, like the hippocampus, which the brain needs to function normally.

In fact, many scientists are now paying increased attention to the frequently neglected symptoms of people suffering from depression, which include problems with learning and memory and sensory deficits for smell and taste.

Other researchers are studying the ways in which depression interferes with basic bodily processes, such as sleeping, sex drive, and weight control. Like the paralyzing sadness, which remains the most obvious manifestation of the mental illness, these symptoms are also byproducts of a brain that's literally withering away.

"Depression is caused by problems with the most fundamental thing the brain does, which is process information," says Eero Castren, a neuroscientist at the University of Helsinki. "It's much more than just an inability to experience pleasure."

This new scientific understanding of depression also offers a new way to think about the role of drugs in recovery. While antidepressants help brain cells recover their vigor and form new connections, Castren says that patients must still work to cement these connections in place, perhaps with therapy. He compares antidepressants with anabolic steroids, which increase muscle mass only when subjects also go to the gym.

"If you just sit on your couch, then steroids aren't going to be very effective," he says. "Antidepressants are the same way: if you want the drug to work for you, then you have to work for the drug."

Teaching kids to study works better than Ritalin

As seen in the Mercury News. Here's the essential tidbit:

"12-year-old Ryan was having trouble paying attention to the home-school tasks his mother, Cindy Withers of San Jose, set for him. Determined to avoid drugs such as Ritalin, Withers opted for brain-training instead.

At his psychologist's office, Ryan's treatment included specialized video games that responded to his brain waves. By remaining focused, the boy was able to propel digital spaceships or race cars. His mother says the therapy gave him a "can-do" attitude and improved his school work."

As noted elsewhere:

So here's the AMAZING CONCLUSION: Turns out that teaching your kids to pay attention works better than drugging them into submission. Amazing!

It's for the Kids: Three major advocates of antidepressant use in children got millions of dollars from drug makers.

From Wired Science

Three prominent advocates of antidepressant use by children received millions of dollars from antidepressant manufacturers, casting into question the integrity of their already-controversial research.

The New York Times reported Saturday that Harvard University psychiatrists Joseph Biederman and Timothy Wilens received $1.6 million each from drug companies between 2000 and 2007. Thomas Spencer, another Harvard psychiatrist, received $1 million.

The payments were uncovered by Congressional investigators searching for conflict-of-interest violations. Federal law requires researchers who receive National Institutes of Health funding to report annual outside earnings above $10,000 to their universities. Biederman, Wilens and Spencer all took NIH money, but never reported the full extent of their drug company income.

That the researchers' results were influenced by the payments isn't clear, but the situation is ugly. Biederman has a very high profile; as the Times describes, he

is one of the most influential researchers in child psychiatry and is widely admired for focusing the field’s attention on its most troubled young patients. Although many of his studies are small and often financed by drug makers, his work helped to fuel a controversial 40-fold increase from 1994 to 2003 in the diagnosis of pediatric bipolar disorder ... and a rapid rise in the use of antipsychotic medicines in children.

Childhood antidepressant use is hotly debated by scientists: it's not clear whether they work as well in kids as in adults, and the drugs may have profound effects on still-developing brains.

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), leader of the Congressional investigation, has pushed for a national registry of commercial payments to researchers.

As one columnist has noted

Drug companies make drugs

Drug companies want to sell those drugs to the largest market possible

Doctors make research

Doctors make research that shows drugs are beneficial for use in children

Drug companies profit

Doctors profit

Any questions?

Nearly 20% of the U.S. Army in Afghanistan is on Prozac

Snippets from a much larger article in Time Magazine, much of with seems to be in a factual feel good tone. The wonders of modern medicine, etc.

What is bothersome is the fact of troops coming home with a variety of mental problems to begin with, and the extended problems of nasty side effects from a large variety of psychiatric drugs. The combination of the two factors is suspicious, and certainly needs more investigation

[...]

For the first time in history, a sizable and growing number of U.S. combat troops are taking daily doses of antidepressants to calm nerves strained by repeated and lengthy tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. The medicines are intended not only to help troops keep their cool but also to enable the already strapped Army to preserve its most precious resource: soldiers on the front lines. Data contained in the Army's fifth Mental Health Advisory Team report indicate that, according to an anonymous survey of U.S. troops taken last fall, about 12% of combat troops in Iraq and 17% of those in Afghanistan are taking prescription antidepressants or sleeping pills to help them cope. Escalating violence in Afghanistan and the more isolated mission have driven troops to rely more on medication there than in Iraq, military officials say.

At a Pentagon that keeps statistics on just about everything, there is no central clearinghouse for this kind of data, and the Army hasn't consistently asked about prescription-drug use, which makes it difficult to track. Given the traditional stigma associated with soldiers seeking mental help, the survey, released in March, probably underestimates antidepressant use. But if the Army numbers reflect those of other services — the Army has by far the most troops deployed to the war zones — about 20,000 troops in Afghanistan and Iraq were on such medications last fall. The Army estimates that authorized drug use splits roughly fifty-fifty between troops taking antidepressants — largely the class of drugs that includes Prozac and Zoloft — and those taking prescription sleeping pills like Ambien.

In some ways, the prescriptions may seem unremarkable. Generals, history shows, have plied their troops with medicinal palliatives at least since George Washington ordered rum rations at Valley Forge. During World War II, the Nazis fueled their blitzkrieg into France and Poland with the help of an amphetamine known as Pervitin. The U.S. Army also used amphetamines during the Vietnam War.

[...]

[...]

And yet the battlefield seems an imperfect environment for widespread prescription of these medicines. LeJeune, who spent 15 months in Iraq before returning home in May 2004, says many more troops need help — pharmaceutical or otherwise — but don't get it because of fears that it will hurt their chance for promotion. "They don't want to destroy their career or make everybody go in a convoy to pick up your prescription," says LeJeune, now 34 and living in Utah. "In the civilian world, when you have a problem, you go to the doctor, and you have therapy followed up by some medication. In Iraq, you see the doctor only once or twice, but you continue to get drugs constantly." LeJeune says the medications — combined with the war's other stressors — created unfit soldiers. "There were more than a few convoys going out in a total daze."

About a third of soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq say they can't see a mental-health professional when they need to. When the number of troops in Iraq surged by 30,000 last year, the number of Army mental-health workers remained the same — about 200 — making counseling and care even tougher to get.

"Burnout and compassion fatigue" are rising among such personnel, and there have been "recent psychiatric evacuations" of Army mental-health workers from Iraq, the 2007 survey says. Soldiers are often stationed at outposts so isolated that follow-up visits with counselors are difficult. "In a perfect world," admits Nash, who has just retired from the Navy, "you would not want to rely on medications as your first-line treatment, but in deployed settings, that is often all you have."

And just as more troops are taking these drugs, there are new doubts about the drugs' effectiveness. A pair of recent reports from Rand and the federal Institute of Medicine (iom) raise doubts about just how much the new medicines can do to alleviate PTSD. The Rand study, released in April, says the "overall effects for SSRIs, even in the largest clinical trials, are modest." Last October the iom concluded, "The evidence is inadequate to determine the efficacy of SSRIs in the treatment of PTSD."

Chris LeJeune could have told them that. When he returned home in May 2004, he remained on clonazepam and other drugs. He became one of 300,000 Americans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and suffer from PTSD or depression. "But PTSD isn't fixed by taking pills — it's just numbed," he claims now. "And I felt like I was drugged all the time."

So a year ago, he simply stopped taking them. "I just started trying to fight my demons myself," he says, with help from VA counseling. He laughs when asked how he's doing. "I'd like to think," he says, "that I'm really damn close back to normal."

Since two-year-old children are naturally calm and attentive, the playful and unruly ones are starting to receive ADHD drugs

We have this report from Australia

Toddlers as young as two are being diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed drugs including Ritalin.

Figures obtained by The Daily Telegraph reveal 311 children in NSW aged five and under depend on controversial medication, including 58 four-year-olds and 13 three-year-olds.

Health Department figures show that, nationally, doctors have prescribed ADHD drugs to five toddlers aged only two, despite possible side effects.

The mother of one four-year-old who has been on Ritalin since the age of three said she knew there could be long-term effects but the change in her son's behaviour was worth the risk.

"At first I was hoping he didn't have ADHD and I didn't want to put him on medication but I thought I should give it a go and there has been a big improvement," the single mother of two told The Daily Telegraph.

But the disturbing figures tell only part of the story.

They cover scripts subsidised under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme - only a proportion of the young children on ADHD drugs.

With Australia's ADHD rates among the highest in the world, the federal Department of Health said prescriptions paid for without PBS subsidies "are a significant portion of the total scripts".

It has no corresponding data for them.

The most widely prescribed drugs for the youngest children, according to the figures to March this year, continue to be Ritalin and the longer-lasting associated drug, Concerta, which was added to the PBS last year.

Dexamphetamine is the next most popular while Strattera, a longer-lasting non-stimulant, is less popular and prescribed mainly for children aged six and older.

As well as the three and four-year-olds, there are 240 five-year-olds on subsidised ADHD drugs in NSW. There are 6692 6- to 10-year-olds, 9006 11- to 15-year-old and 2584 16- to 18-year-olds.

The figures follow the State Government's ADHD review which found there was no overprescribing of drugs.

But child psychiatrist Jon Jureidini said he was disappointed at the number of preschoolers on the list.

"I would be confident that they (the drugs) are being inappropriately used in most cases of preschool children," Dr Jureidini said.

"ADHD is not a good explanation for putting these children on drugs.

"I have seen children of that age displaying very disturbed behaviour but it is usually a medical problem or significant family circumstances that are undermining their well-being."

However paediatrician Dr Michael Kohn, the treating doctor for the four-year-old, said he was not surprised at the number of children on ADHD medication.

Dr Kohn, a senior staff specialist in paediatrics at The Children's Hospital at Westmead, said the prescribing of ADHD drugs to children aged four and less was strictly controlled in NSW.

Specialists needed the permission of the state's Stimulant's Committee with the committee having to meet on each individual case.

Many Popular Drugs Linked to Suicide

From News Inferno.com

Suicide is common in the US, representing the fourth leading cause of death for those aged 18 to 65 and the third leading cause for those aged 15 to 24. Add to those figures the complexity of medications. In recent years, disturbing reports have suggested that side effects of some popular drugs - such as Chantix, Accutane, Singular and Paxil - include suicidal thoughts and behavior.

Reports have been filed with drug makers and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on at least six drugs or drug classes that may be linked to suicide or suicidal thoughts. Recently, the FDA released notices about several such medications including Singlulair; Epilepsy drugs including carbamazepine, gabapentin, felbamate, lamotrigine, levetiracetam, oxcarbazepine, pregabalin, and valproate; and the smoking-cessation drug Chantix. Reports have been filed on SSRI antidepressants including Paxil and Prozac, the influenza drug Tamiflu, and the acne medicine Accutane. “The brain is a complex organ, and most of the drugs are complex as well,’’ says Dr. Thomas Laughren, head of the division of psychiatric products at the FDA. “It’s not unreasonable to think that a drug that gets into the brain may have effects other than you hope they would.’’

Kelly Posner, principal investigator at the Center for Suicide Risk Assessment at Columbia University in New York, is working with the FDA to determine suicide risks and at-risk categories; Posner’s quantitative tools and questionnaires are being applied to drugs on the market and in testing. “We know that whether or not these drugs actually cause suicidal thought or action is a question we have to answer, but up until now, none of the clinical trials for the drugs were set up to address the question,’’ says Posner.

There are theories, says Jason Noel, director of clinical pharmacy services at Rosewood Center in Owings Mills, Maryland. Asthma medication Singulair has a similar chemical pathway to steroids, which can affect behavior and mood and an asthma diagnosis can trigger suicide or depression because it adversely affects daily living. Fatigue is a symptom of depression, the initial benefit of antidepressants is increased energy, and improving depression can take weeks; therefore, some may use extra energy to act on suicidal thoughts. Suicidal thoughts in patients taking epilepsy drugs have been reported in patients on such medications for epilepsy, depression, or other psychiatric conditions; however, not generally in those on the drugs for migraines. Chantix blocks pleasure pathways that make nicotine so satisfying, which suppresses other pleasure and happiness, leading to depression. But, stopping smoking can be a risk factor for depression and smoking is a risk factor for suicide.

Finding links has risks. When the FDA discovered an increase in suicidal thinking in children and young adults taking antidepressants, warnings were added to Paxil and Prozac labeling. “Use of antidepressants went down and the suicide rate went up,’’ says Dr. Paula Clayton, medical director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention in New York.

Meanwhile, Congressman Bart Stupak (Democrat-Michigan) reported his teenage son B.J. killed himself in 1999 after several months on Accutane and said in 1998, the FDA publicly noted reports of depression, psychosis, and suicidal thoughts and actions with Accutane; in 1999 when B.J. was prescribed Accutane, their doctor did not inform them of the risk and the prescription’s patient information did not include it.

The great depression swindle - British tests for depression worse that useless

As seen in the Daily Mail

The test GPs use to diagnose depression is worse than useless, according to new research. Under the latest government guidelines, doctors are paid extra to ask patients two simple questions. Your answers are supposed to show if you are depressed or not.

But, a study has found that 62 per cent of patients diagnosed as depressed weren't in fact depressed at all.

As a result, doctors and psychiatrists could be seriously over-estimating the number of people who are depressed - and prescribing drugs to thousands who are healthy, says the study's author, Dr Alex Mitchell, a consultant psychiatrist at Leicester General Hospital.

Under current guidelines, with mild to moderate depression are meant to be offered talking therapies - psychological treatments which help people change their attitudes or behaviour patterns.

Research by the mental health charity SANE has found that only [...] two per cent of patients were having cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and more than 80per cent of patients were being treated with medication.

Anti-depressants come with a range of side-effects. About 25 per cent of patients have problems when they try to stop taking them and studies have found they can cause a rise in suicidal thoughts and actions. Patients also report a loss of libido.

Two recent studies have linked the drugs with a drop in bone density leading to osteoporosis and a dramatic fall in the number of sperm a man can produce.

Given all this, you would expect those two questions, approved by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) in 2004, to be exacting.

In fact they are absurdly simplistic and, worryingly, if you answer yes to both you could be put on Prozac.

The two questions are:

• During the past month have you been bothered by feeling down, depressed or hopeless?
• During the past month have you been bothered by having little interest or pleasure in doing things?

The GPs' two-question test isn't the only one the experts have got badly wrong. Dr Mitchell's other shocking discovery is that the latest guidelines to detect post-natal depression (PND) are even more inaccurate, but in the opposite direction.

A new three-question test fails to spot an astonishing 80 per cent of the women who actually are depressed.

"It uses the same two questions as for regular depression and then adds a third: "Do you want help?" This reduces the accuracy of the test to just 17 per cent," explains Dr Mitchell.

NICE is now in discussion with Dr Mitchell about the PND test.

According to the doctors' newspaper Pulse, many GPs are dropping the depression test because they don't believe it is good for patient care, even though they will lose income as a result. It's mainly aimed at high risk patients, such as those with heart disease or diabetes.

Many GPs say they don't have the time for longer, more accurate testing - the reason for introducing the shorter test in the first place.

The useless tests also threaten to make a nonsense of a new government initiative to make CBT available to many online.

Last year, a group of charities, including the Mental Health Foundation and Mind, called for a "large sustained cash injection to improve psychological treatments'.

They said CBT was as effective as drugs and that more than half of GPs believed it was the best option.

The internet scheme, unveiled by Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt last month, has been designed to meet criticism that, even though CBT is recognised as the best treatment for depression, waiting times can be more than a year because the health service needs 10,000 more therapists.

If you rate as depressed on the flawed test, you get eight onehour interactive computer sessions on a program called Beating The Blues with homework projects and GP progress reports - much cheaper than training 10,000 therapists.

The aim, said Ms Hewitt, was to allow patients to access the right sort of therapy "instead of just being prescribed medication".

One doctor who has been using the system in Swindon, Wiltshire, for three years was enthusiastic.

Dr Peter Crouch said: "It has significantly helped patients cope with anxiety, insomnia and stress." But, of course, how useful it is depends on how accurately people are diagnosed.

Indeed, what is the point of rolling out a programme that will be offered to hundreds who don't need it - or if it isn't provided to those who do? Soon many will be spending hours at their keyboard doing CBT exercises for no reason.

The 'good' news is that computers and the internet are likely to be much more widely used to spot who needs help - and at least these seem more accurate than the two-question test.

A recent report by researchers in Taiwan reported that an online questionnaire filled in by more than 500 people identified 38 per cent as depressed and 46 per cent as not. When they were tested by a psychiatrist, 75 per cent of the diagnoses were correct.

Soon patients may be asked to fill in longer questionnaires of this sort, while they are in the waiting room.

And if it is done on a computer the doctor could then have the results during the session. For the moment, what can you do to increase your chances of getting the right sort of help?

Dr Mitchell's research into how GPs diagnose depression also provides some useful tips. "Doctors tend to be influenced by how patients describe their problems," he says.

"If you talk about physical symptoms - how tired you are, how you can't sleep - your doctor will usually suspect a physical cause even though those are also signs of depression.

"Be clear about your main symptom. So if feeling down or low is what's really making your life miserable, talk about that."

How can you avoid being labelled as depressed when you aren't? Do what may seem like common sense and explain your problems.

What the test ignores is that sometimes people have a very good reason to feel low: you've been sacked, for example.

A recent U.S. study has found that as many as a quarter of people currently labelled as depressed are reacting perfectly normally to stressful events.

It suggested that even psychiatrists regularly miss the broad picture. Once you've ticked enough boxes for symptoms, you get diagnosed as depressed even though you may just be sad.

So if you aren't asked the obvious question about what is going on in your life, make sure you volunteer it.

My Kid Doesn't Have ADD, Etc. But I Had Him "Labeled" Anyway

A sad commentary seen in the rant section of the Burbia Blog

When I meet a mother these days who does not have a child in occupational or physical therapy, I have the urge to shake her violently, maybe slap her, and say, "Are you mad, woman? Don't you know that something is wrong with your child?! Don't you care about Seamus/Suri/Maeve/Shiloh (take your pick)?"

OK, that was a joke, but it goes to the dilemma I've faced over the past 6 months. I had to decide whether to "label" my child, something that caused a bit of family strife and internal conflict. I came to the conclusion that, like it or not, the new normal of childhood is abnormal. And I found my near 40-year-old self caving to peer pressure, like an insecure teenager at a beer pong party.

My toddler has always been tightly wound and when he began preschool the director made it clear within two days she thought something was wrong with him. (Back story: at 3 years old, he had never been in any childcare, and because we are sadly lacking in grandparents or family close by, my son had never been in the care of anyone other than his parents. And I mean no one, not once, ever.) When pressed, the director used the phrase “Pervasive Developmental Disorder – Not Otherwise Specified,” and then tried to console me about this by saying "all of us could be diagnosed with something!"

At home minutes later, furious googling ensued, showing PDD to be on the autism spectrum. Since you can see that I am splaying out this sorry saga for perfect strangers to read, you might suspect that I am not one to suffer through problems silently. After I got this news from the preschool director, I proceeded to tell everyone I knew about it, and even people I didn't know, like my unsuspecting seat mates at Starbucks.

The first thing I noticed was the stark generational difference.

Anyone over the age of 50 (including a close relative) believed strenuously that we had medicalized every normal trait of childhood, that "rambunctious" had become ADD, that "sassing back" had become Oppositional Defiant Disorder, that "shy" and "nervous" had become mild autism, "sensitive" had become Sensory Integration Disorder, "awkward" had become Asperger's, "klutzy" had become a gross motor deficit. And they believed that medicalizing the natural diversity of child behavior was one step away from medicating the child, which they viewed as an unmitigated travesty (their view, not mine).

The second thing I realized was that among the parents I knew, well over 50 percent had their child in some form of therapy (I counted), hence my assertion that the new normal was in fact abnormal, a claim that would certainly make a statistician's head spin.

So it was with these competing impressions that I entered the evaluation process with our public school district. Frank was not found to have PDD, but rather a fine motor deficit and also a lack of "body awareness" (known to the pros as proprioception), which, in the evaluators' eyes, explained an array of seemingly disparate behaviors.

Did I believe any of it? Without question, I knew my son was well behind on fine motor skills. As for proprioception, well, I'm not sure I buy it. I'm not saying there aren't behavioral challenges for my son (which, by the way, have greatly improved after six months of school), but I'm not positive that lacking body awareness is at the root of them all. I should also say that my natural contrarian inclination would lead me to side with the older generation, who think we run the risk of turning borderline quirks into maladies.

But here's the ruthlessly honest truth of how I decided what to do. I did something because everyone else was doing it; I was undeniably a lemming. I chose to accept therapy and the attendant label because, frankly, more than half of my friends or acquaintances had done the same (even the ones like me who view the labels for marginal problems as faintly absurd).

I felt as if my son would be at a disadvantage if he did not get the therapy offered by the school district. I wish I could say my decision-making had more integrity. Maybe I can blame my lack of spine on my (diagnosed) pre-menopausal anxiety disorder. I just hope my son doesn't one day read this. I can hear myself saying to my rebellious teenager, "well, if everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?" And his answer, rightly, would be "well YOU did, Mom!"

Linda Keenan is a contributing writer at Burbia. Linda worked 7 years as a head writer/senior producer for various programs on CNN. Before that she worked as a writer/producer for Bloomberg TV. She now writes satire, primarily about parenting culture, at Thoroughly Modern Mommy

Half of Americans are in some way mentally ill, and one-quarter of the population has taken anti-depressants, not including that one time at a rave

Another person is waking up to the fraud the is Modern Psychiatry. An Editorial in the NY Sun, by Christoper Lane

America has reached a point where almost half its population is described as being in some way mentally ill, and nearly a quarter of its citizens - 67.5 million - have taken antidepressants.

These statistics have sparked a widespread, sometimes rancorous debate about whether people are taking far more medication than is needed for problems that may not even be mental disorders. Studies indicate that 40% of all patients fall short of the diagnoses that doctors and psychiatrists give them, yet 200 million prescriptions are written annually in America to treat depression and anxiety.

Those who defend such widespread use of prescription drugs insist that a significant part of the population is under-treated and, by inference, under-medicated. Those opposed to such rampant use of drugs note that diagnostic rates for bipolar disorder, in particular, have skyrocketed by 4,000% and that overmedication is impossible without over-diagnosis.

To help settle this long-standing dispute, I studied why the number of recognized psychiatric disorders has ballooned so dramatically in recent decades. In 1980, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders added 112 new mental disorders to its third edition, DSM-III. Fifty-eight more disorders appeared in the revised third edition in 1987 and fourth edition in 1994.

With over a million copies in print, the manual is known as the bible of American psychiatry; certainly it is an invoked chapter and verse in schools, prisons, courts, and by mental-health professionals around the world. The addition of even one new diagnostic code has serious practical consequences. What, then, was the rationale for adding so many in 1980?

After several requests to the American Psychiatric Association, I was granted complete access to the hundreds of unpublished memos, letters, and even votes from the period between 1973 and 1979, when the DSM-III task force debated each new and existing disorder. Some of the work was meticulous and commendable.

But the overall approval process was more capricious than scientific.

DSM-III grew out of meetings that many participants described as chaotic. One observer later remarked that the small amount of research drawn upon was "really a hodgepodge - scattered, inconsistent, and ambiguous." The interest and expertise of the task force was limited to one branch of psychiatry: neuropsychiatry. That group met for four years before it occurred to members that such one-sidedness might result in bias.

Incredibly, the lists of symptoms for some disorders were knocked out in minutes. The field studies used to justify their inclusion sometimes involved a single patient evaluated by the person advocating the new disease. Experts pressed for the inclusion of illnesses as questionable as "chronic undifferentiated unhappiness disorder" and "chronic complaint disorder," whose traits included moaning about taxes, the weather, and even sports results.

Social phobia, later dubbed "social anxiety disorder," was one of seven new anxiety disorders created in 1980. At first it struck me as a serious condition. By the 1990s experts were calling it "the disorder of the decade," insisting that as many as one in five Americans suffers from it. Yet the complete story turned out to be rather more complicated.

For starters, the specialist who in the 1960s originally recognized social anxiety - London-based Isaac Marks, a renowned expert on fear and panic - strongly resisted its inclusion in DSM-III as a separate disease category. The list of common behaviors associated with the disorder gave him pause: fear of eating alone in restaurants, avoidance of public toilets, and concern about trembling hands.

By the time a revised task force added dislike of public speaking in 1987, the disorder seemed sufficiently elastic to include virtually everyone on the planet.

To counter the impression that it was turning common fears into treatable conditions, DSM-IV added a clause stipulating that social anxiety behaviors had to be "impairing" before a diagnosis was possible. But who was holding the prescribers to such standards? Doubtless, their understanding of impairment was looser than that of the task force. After all, despite the impairment clause, the anxiety disorder mushroomed; by 2000, it was the third most common psychiatric disorder in America, behind only depression and alcoholism.

Over-medication would affect fewer Americans if we could rein in such clear examples of over-diagnosis. We would have to set the thresholds for psychiatric diagnosis a lot higher, resurrecting the distinction between chronic illness and mild suffering. But there is fierce resistance to this by those who say they are fighting grave mental disorders, for which medication is the only viable treatment.

Failure to reform psychiatry will be disastrous for public health. Consider that apathy, excessive shopping, and overuse of the Internet are all serious contenders for inclusion in the next edition of the DSM, due to appear in 2012. If the history of psychiatry is any guide, a new class of medication will soon be touted to treat them.

Sanity must prevail: if everyone is mentally ill, then no one is.

Whistle Blowing in Australia - a Report from the Australia

We have recently received two documents from someone who appears to be Dr Yolande Lucire, who offers them as evidence that they are a whistle blower in Australia. They point to a pattern of corruption in the Australian Medical System the should be troubling to anyone. (We also point people to her site, as there are a number of interesting documents pointing out the hazards os SSRIs)

The first is a text of a troubling letter sent to Sun Herald on 28 Feb 2008. Here is the text of that letter, as I received it

Sir

The Professional Standards Committee (PSC) judgement, said that I needed to consult a senior colleague about deficiencies in my knowledge and communication. It concerned 3 patients out of 30 whose pharmacological treatment I had reported to the area health service and to the NSW Medical Board.

Before I saw them, all had displayed suicidal, homicidal, psychotic, violent or otherwise peculiar behaviours both caused and aggravated by high doses of 'SSRI' antidepressants to which had been added to other medicines which have been well documented interactions with them. Two were on Aropax which its maker, GSK had admitted, a fortnight ago, had increased suicides eightfold in clinical trials over placebo, but they had not disclosed this catastrophic side effect when Aropax was licensed as an 'antidepressant.' The third was on three drugs together with Luvox, a drug so interactive that it had been withdrawn from use in the United States.

The NSW Medical Board had declined to investigate my 30 complaints as prescribing issues. The HCCC used the services of a psychiatrist who was a 'peer' of the prescribers, who found nothing unusual in a series that soon involved four deaths and several more suicides and deaths which were not investigated either and a dozen near lethal suicide attempts and a variety of bizarre behaviours on these drugs. On legal advice, I made the reports prospectively, at a rate of two or so each week, as the doctors of concern continued in their prescribing after I had issued formal warnings supported by documentation to the Superintendent. The first deaths occurred very soon after the prescriber had been ‘exonerated’ by the HCCC for the first group of suicide attempts but the reports of the deaths were ‘lost’ for two years at the HCCC, then not investigated either, or not by relevant experts. .

These same ‘side effects’ have been reported tens or possibly, hundreds of thousands of times to the United States Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) which issued Public Health Advisory in March 2004 and many before and since about worsening depression, suicidality, mania, akathisia, violence, insomnia, agitation, panic and anxiety caused by antidepressants. The Area Health Service, the PSC and the various ‘peers’ all failed to acknowledge the significance and legal importance of such high level advisories.

The PSC was not concerned that one of the three went on to stab a man and attempt suicide when he was given even more of the very drugs that I had warned (in writing) had already caused a ‘serotonergic reaction.’ Nor were they concerned that he had been abandoned by his treaters and re-diagnosed with an ‘antisocial personality disorder’ after he had done that.

That complaint was bizarre in that it was I, who had tried to prevent such a catastrophe by warning in writing, was alleged to be somehow responsible for causing this behaviour. The PSC was advised that I was unethical for making so many unjustified reports and for informing a patient’s mother about her son’s problems, although that information led to his full recovery.

Since 1997, that Area Health Service had increased its mental health beds from 30 to 42 and it was promised another 12 in 2006, after yet another inpatient suicide.

Hospitalised suicide attempts have trebled from 55 to 155/100,000. Suicides under mental health care in NSW (a relatively new phenomenon) run at between 100 and 150 annually and violence and homicides by mental health patients have hugely increased. 194 such patients were admitted to one ward during 2003-4, but it took a psychiatrist with 42 years of experience to see that this was a population which did not exist before this new batch of serotonin altering psychiatric drugs came into use, antidepressants and ‘atypical’ antipsychotics which have the same side effects at double the rate of antidepressants.

We have a Crisis in Mental Health. The Department of Health has installed nearly 500 more mental health beds and there are 1100 more on the drawing boards.

Finding and relieving such patients has been a Mental Health priority in the UK for three years now and in Canada where I had lectured on this problem.

In the USA, 40 State Attorneys are suing the makers of these drugs for criminal fraud, to get funds to compensate patients who had suffered and to recoup costs so generated, and settlements run in billions of dollars. Doctors, when sued, say they were not properly warned, and thus pass the responsibility successfully onto the drug companies.

The Department of Health has been told many times that the causes of this crisis are: new drugs which have suicide attempts, homicidal thinking and hallucinations among their listed side effects. It prefers to kill the messenger by repeated acts of defamation.

The Health Care Complaints Commission is the only body available to look at treatment complaints. It had been was set up in the wake of the Chelmsford Royal Commission to ensure that malpractice of such magnitude could not happen again. Thirty years ago, 26 deaths and suicides were occasioned by pharmacological treatment delivered by the late Dr Harry Bailey over some twenty years.

Today's drugs are far more dangerous inductive of suicide. They are given to a million Australians, 14% of whom do not have the metabolism to deal with them at all. Huge numbers who are at risk of these catastrophic side effects which, more often than not, are taken for schizophrenia, bipolar illness or borderline personality disorder and the patient is given more drugs. Persons seeking mental health care doubled in the decade since Prozac was released in 1992 to 2003 and the numbers are still increasing, as the number of people whose SSRI side effects were taken for schizophrenia, etc mounts up.

I reported this series of suicides deaths and suicide attempts over 6 months, after which I was advised by lawyers to stop reporting because the Medial Board has decided to pursue me. The series was far worse than anything that Dr. Bailey and Chelmsford produced in that short period time and every complaint was dismissed in a cavalier fashion. One senior administrator apologised to me for not dealing with my reports. He explained that it was ‘The System.’

Read this doc on Scribd: Dr Yolande Lucire letter to Sun Herald (28-02-08)

We also have a copy of an interesting report. This report concerns how the Greater Southern Area Health Service (at the time the Greater Murray Area Health Service) has dealt with nearly 40 reports of suicides, dangerous suicide attempts, a homicide, a serotonin syndrome death and many episodes of violence and psychosis due to how certain drugs were prescribed and co-prescribed by certain practitioners. These reports were made initially in 2002 but mostly from September 2004 to April 2005 and again from September 2005 to December 2006. The report notes this as a pattern of cover-up of repeated acts, which caused serious adverse events including deaths.

Read this doc on Scribd: Review Of Inquiry Into Complaints Handling In NSW Health

Study shows 80% of suicides in Sweden are by people on anti-depressants.

As reported on Natural News

A Swedish writer has accused the National Board of Health and Welfare (NBHW) of covering up evidence suggesting a connection between psychiatric drugs and suicide. Under a recent law, Swedish health-care providers must fill out reports on all suicides committed by patients under their care or within four weeks of a health care visit. The reports are then sent to the NBHW, which compiles and analyzes them.

Recently, the NBHW released the first report analyzing the 367 suicides recorded in 2006. "Not a single word is written about the most compelling fact: Well over 80 percent of persons killing themselves were treated with psychiatric drugs," Janne Larson writes.

According to data received via a Freedom of Information Act request, more than 80 percent of the 367 suicides had been receiving psychiatric medications. More than half of these were receiving antidepressants, while more than 60 percent were receiving either antidepressants or antipsychotics. There is no mention of this either in the NBHW paper or in major Swedish media reports about the health care suicides.

Why the truth won't be reported in the mainstream media

"It was contrary to the best interests of Big Pharma and biological psychiatrists" to expose the information, Larson writes. "It blew the myths of antidepressants and neuroleptics [antipsychotics] as suicide protecting drugs to pieces. It would also have hurt the career of many medical journalists to take up this subject; journalists who for years have made their living by writing marketing articles about new antidepressant drugs."

These statements are quite true. The conspiracy of silence between Big Pharma and the mainstream media is now so strong that accurate news about the dangers of psychiatric drugs is rarely reported. As we recently saw in the death of Heath Ledger, the mainstream media is quick to blame the victim, but slow to realize that the real cause of these behavioral problems rests with the chemicals that alter brain function (and therefore alter behavior).

Evidence has emerged that a class of antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) actually increases the risk of suicide in those who take them. While such claims have been hotly disputed by the pharmaceutical industry and many psychiatrists, experimental, epidemiological and case study evidence continues to emerge that reinforces such a link. The evidence suggests that those taking SSRIs are approximately twice as likely to commit suicide as those not taking such medications. This risk increase appears to be independent of the specific diagnosis or other underlying health factors.

Even worse, recent research published in the peer-reviewed journal PLoS Medicine reveals that antidepressant drugs don't work any better than placebo at reducing depression. This study looked at all the clinical trials conducted on SSRIs, not just the ones selected by drug companies for publication. It reveals that SSRI drug manufacturers committed scientific fraud in censoring studies that did not show positive results. Now, the whole world knows that the disease mongering and hype behind antidepressant drugs was based on pure scientific fraud.

Links between SSRIs and suicide

The link between SSRI use and suicide in youths has been firmly established enough that the United States and United Kingdom have licensed only one such drug (fluoxetine, marketed under the brand name Prozac) for use by those under the age of 18. In the United Kingdom, off-label use by children is blatantly illegal. In the United States, the FDA requires a "black box" warning that SSRIs may increase the risk of suicide in those under the age of 18, but that warning is routinely ignored, and hundreds of millions of doses of Prozac have been taken by children and teens.

A "black box" warning is the most severe warning the FDA can issue without withdrawing a product from the market. In December 2006, an FDA advisory panel recommended increasing the age on the SSRI black box warning to 25 years of age. In reality, the black box warning is a way for the FDA to allow dangerous drugs to remain on the market: It gives them an excuse to say, "We warned you!"

The dangers of Prozac

Prozac has been found to increase the risk of aggressive and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. When the drug was first submitted to the FDA for approval in 1985, the agency's then-chief safety investigator, Richard Kapit, suggested that the drug bear a "labeling warning [for] the physician that such signs and symptoms of depression may be exacerbated by this drug." In 2004, the FDA finally added the labeling requirement.

Antipsychotics may also increase suicide risk by inducing a condition known as akathisia — a subjective, often-misdiagnosed feeling of inner restlessness that can range from mild anxiety to a feeling of overwhelming doom. Akathisia can also be induced by certain SSRIs, including Prozac and Paxil. A 2006 study published in PLoS Medicine concluded that akathisia induced by antipsychotic use is significantly correlated with suicide, and that the condition appeared to be overwhelmingly more likely in patients taking SSRIs than in those taking a placebo, with 10 times as many patients on SSRIs exhibiting symptoms severe enough that investigators were forced to pull them from the study.

Yet Larson alleges that the Swedish government has failed to investigate any potential link between SSRIs or antipsychotics and suicide. The investigation form that the government sends to local healthcare providers to fill out after a suicide does not contain any questions about drug treatment.

According to Larson, a truly objective investigation would have to look at whether the patients exhibited symptoms that could be attributed to akathisia (which is nearly always a drug side effect) and whether suicide was preceded by an increase or abrupt drop in drug dosage.

"[NBHW] claimed: 'Every investigated suicide where one can see flaws that can be taken care of, can contribute to the prevention of further suicides,'" Larson writes. "Yet no investigation at all was done in the suicide-inducing effect of antidepressants and neuroleptics."

Suicides and violent behavior

It is important to note that nearly every school shooting that has happened in the United States over the last decade has been conducted by young males who were taking antidepressant drugs. The drugs not only cause suicidal behavior, they also seem to promote extreme violence towards other individuals. In most school shooting cases, the young men committing the violence also committed suicide after killing classmates and teachers. These are classic signs of antidepressant use.

Dr. Fred Baughman (www.ADHDfraud.org) has spoken extensively about the link between antidepressants and violent behavior, and has accused the drug companies of lying to the public about depression in order to sell more antidepressant drugs. His most recent article is published at OpEdNews

Illinois gunman 'stopped his medication'

The Furious Seasons weblog has, as usual, some excellent commentary

As noted in the Telegram, and elsewhere.

Officials have said that the man who killed five students and injured many more before turning the gun on himself at Northern Illinois University had become erratic in the past two weeks after stopping his medication.

Campus police chief Donald Grady said that the motive of 27-year-old Stephen Kazmierczak motive was not known and that there were no indications that he had a relationship with any of his victims.

[...]

Mr Grady refused to name the medication Kazmierczak had been taking, but said that he was "a fairly normal, undistressed person".

"There were no red flags," he said. "He was an outstanding student".

ABC News has this information:

Though Kazmierczak seemed friendly and normal, he had a troubled past. After high school, Kazmierczak's parents sent him to Thresholds-Mary Hill House, a psychiatric treatment center for teens, where he lived for a year while getting therapy and medication for what was described as "unruly" behavior.

Louise Gbadamashi, a former employee at the Chicago treatment center, told the Associated Press that he used to cut himself, and had resisted taking his medications. "He never wanted to identify with being mentally ill," she said. "That was part of the problem."

Apparently in recent weeks Kazmierczak's problems were re-emerging. "We have spoke to people who are close to him and apparently he had been taking medication. He had stopped taking those medications and had become somewhat erratic in the last couple of weeks," said NIU Police Chief, Donald Grady.

The chief declined to specify the type of medication the gunman was on.

We wonder why the medications the gunman was on were not identified. It seems like there may have been a PR push to get the release of this information delayed as a general policy, so that that the drugs in questions would not be so strongly tied to the killing. We need to know which drugs are responsible for these deaths.

We note the history involving a psychiatric treatment for "troubled teens". These have been controversial in the past, especially those which are best labeled Psychiatric Boot Camps for Breaking Minds and Spirits, as noted in our earlier stories:

• Lawsuits Against Child Abuse in Utah Based Troubled Teen Homes
• Congress Holds First Hearing on Abuse in Unregulated 'Troubled Teen' Industry, Exposing Quackery and Torture Across America
• Child Abuse for Profit
• Utah wilderness therapy deaths

The Thresholds Mary Hill House does not seem to be in this class of facility, but there is precious little information available online about it. There have been recent scandals at other Illinois facilities.

The Thresholds chain of psychiatric facilities are oldest and largest of their type in Illinois. We are sure they will be getting many questions from investigators and reporters.

We also note the following items located at the SSRI STORIES website documenting the connection of Psychiatric Drugs such as antidepressants and other SSRIs to school shootings, among other things.

Sadly, we expect this this will be a similar case. Between the possible combination of the two factors, this could be revealed as an especially grim case.

School Shooting	Anafranil Antidepressant	May 20, 1988	Illinois	**29 Year Old WOMAN Kills One Child: Wounds Five: Kills Self
School Shooting	Prozac Antidepressant	January 30, 1992	Michigan	**School Teacher Shoots Kills His Superintendent at School
School Shooting	Antidepressants	September 20, 1992	Texas	**Man, Angry Over Daughter's Report Card, Shoots 14 Rounds inside Elementary School
School Shooting	Zoloft Antidepressant	October 12, 1995	South Carolina	**15 Year Old Shoots Two Teachers, Killing One: Then Kills Himself
School Stand-Off	Zoloft Antidepressant	April 13, 1998	Idaho	**14 Year Old in School Holds Police At Bay: Fires Shots
School Shooting	Prozac Antidepressant Withdrawal	May 21, 1998	Oregon	**Four Dead: Twenty Injured
School Shooting Threat	Antidepressant	April 16, 1999	Idaho	**Teen Fires Gun in School
School Shooting	Luvox/Zoloft Antidepressants	April 20, 1999	Colorado	**COLUMBINE: 15 Dead: 24 Wounded
School Threats	Prozac	October 19, 1999	Florida	16 Year Old Threatens Classmates With Knife Fake Explosives
School Shooting	Paxil Antidepressant	March 10, 2001	Pennsylvania	**14 Year Old GIRL Shoots Wounds Classmate at Catholic School
School Shooting	Celexa Effexor Antidepressant	April 19, 2001	California	**Teen Shoots at Classmates in School
School Shooting	Antidepressant?	January 17, 2002	Virginia	**Possible SSRI Withdrawal Mania: 3 Dead at Law School
School Shooting Threat	Antidepressant	May 31, 2003	Michigan	**Teen Threatens School Shooting: Charge is Terrorism
School Shooting	Paxil Antidepressant	February 9, 2004	New York	**Student Shoots Teacher in Leg at School
School Shooting Threat	Med for Depression*	October 19, 2004	New Jersey	**Over-Medicated Teen Brings Loaded Handguns to School
School Violence	Antidepressants	February 9, 2005	Pennsylvania	**Teen Uses Knife to Attack Fellow Classmate
School Shooting	Prozac Antidepressant	March 24, 2005	Minnesota	**10 Dead: 7 Wounded: Dosage Increased One Week before Rampage
School/Assault	Zoloft Antidepressant	February 15, 2006	Tennessee	**Teen Attacks Teacher at School
School Shooting	Celexa Antidepressant	August 30, 2006	North Carolina	**Teen Shoots at Two Students: Kills his Father: Celexa Found Among his Personal Effects
School Shooting	Med for Depression?	September 19, 2006	Canada	**Young Man Kills 1 Self : Injures 19: Being Teated for Depression
School Shooting	Antidepressant	September 30, 2006	Colorado	**Man Assaults Girls: Kills One Self
School Shooting	Antidepressant?	April 18, 2007	Virginia	**Possible SSRI Use: 33 Dead at Virginia Tech
School Threat	Antidepressants	April 23, 2007	Mississippi	**College Student Arrested for Making School Threat Over Internet
School Threat	Wellbutrin Antidepressant	April 24, 2007	Tennessee	**Young Boy, 12, Threatens to Shoot Others at School
School Suspension	Lexapro	July 28, 2007	Arkansas	Student Has 11 Incidents with Police During his 16 Months on Lexapro
School Shooting	Antidepressant Withdrawal?	October 12, 2007	Ohio	**14 Year Old School Shooter Possibly on Antidepressants or In Withdrawal
School Shooting	Antidepressants	November 7, 2007	Finland	**Student Shoots 8: Wounds 10: Kills Self: High School in Finland
School Shooting	Medication Withdrawal	February 15, 2008	Illinois	** 6 Dead: 15 Wounded: Perpetrator Was in Withdrawal from Med Acting Erratically