How prescription drug abuse is helping to fuel violence in America

Local Column by "Dr Manny" on violence in America

My heart aches and my soul is full of sadness for the nine innocent lives lost in Charleston, South Carolina, and the community left reeling due to yet another senseless crime. This horrific mass murder will no doubt be remembered in American history, just like the many others that have come before it, and unfortunately the probable ones yet to come.

While we know that accused killer Dylann Roof was fueled by hatred and racism, I wonder if there is a pattern in some of these tragedies. In conjunction with what other experts will tell us, I believe that an epidemic of drug abuse in this country is helping to fuel the violence. I am not talking about marijuana, cocaine or heroin – I am specifically singling out prescription drug abuse.

It is alleged that Roof was taking Xanax and Soboxone. A high school classmate even referred to him as a “pill popper.” The Wall Street Journal reported that in a police incident report from February, Roof was found to have strips of Suboxone -- a pain drug used to treat opiate addiction -- on him, but did not have a prescription for the drug. From what we know thus far, Roof was not under any kind of psychiatric care, either.

Now, I don’t know for sure whether or not Roof had a prescription for Xanax, or if he purchased it off the street like his former classmate inferred, but the drug has been linked to many potential dangerous side effects without careful monitoring. Xanax may cause a person to become depressed, irritable, an insomniac, to have difficulty concentrating, and to act in an aggressive manner. When psychiatrists and physicians prescribe Xanax, they are aware of these side effects, and determine the proper dosage to prescribe to patients based on any underlying mental illnesses. However, when the drug is purchased off the street, there could be undiagnosed disorders like bipolar disorder or another mental illnesses that could cause the above-mentioned side effects to come to life, often in tragic ways.

Suboxone is another powerful drug that requires a degree of professional monitoring. This is typically prescribed for narcotic addiction because it contains both a narcotic element, along with an anti-narcotic ingredient. The combination of this drug and Xanax could create a poisonous cocktail that may spell trouble for the user.

Many of these drugs are sold on the streets by people who have obtained them illegally. A National Household Survey on Drug Abuse indicated that an estimated 36 million U.S. residents aged 12 and older abused prescription drugs at least once in their lifetime. In breaking that number down, it found that 2.7 million of those individuals were aged 12 to 17, and 6.9 million were aged 18 to 25. Those purchasing the drugs are unaware of potential side effects or the dangers that they may pose to others while on the medications.

Make no mistake about it, these are powerful drugs intended to treat many mental illnesses. Most of them, if they are taken as intended, do provide great relief to patients. However, there are instances of violence that have occurred while suspects were under the care of a psychiatrist and were taking the prescriptions legally.

Let’s look at James Holmes, the accused killer who opened fire on a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, killing 12 and wounding 70. Holmes had been prescribed a generic version of Zoloft, which is used to treat depression, panic disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and Clonazepam, which treats anxiety and panic attacks. Zoloft has the potential to cause suicidal ideation, while Clonazepam also carries the potential for serious side effects.

Next, let’s consider Eric Harris, who along with Dylan Klebold, opened fire on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School, murdering 13 classmates before killing themselves. Harris had been prescribed the powerful antidepressant Luvox.

One in 10 Americans now takes antidepressant medications and many others illegally acquire these drugs for recreational use. I am certainly not suggesting that one in 10 of us is a killer. What I am saying, is that when these powerful medications are given, they must be medically supervised, and all of the side effects must be considered by the prescribing doctor. When there is no medical supervision, or lax guidance, these drugs can enhance aggressive behavior and further fuel irrational thinking. The illegal prescription drug abuse on the streets is far too great for us to ignore.

As the nation once more looks for answers to an unthinkable tragedy, many will race to call for better gun control and background checks. Others will want social answers and call for better ways to mend the racial divide that exists in some of our communities. But what I ask our leaders is to also address the epic level of untreated mental illness in our country, which when paired with illegal drug abuse, has only left us reeling time after time.

We all need to work together. Just recently the Justice Department arrested 243 people across the country and charged them with submitting fake billing for Medicare which totaled $712 million. Among those arrested are 46 doctors, nurses and other licensed medical professionals. In one case, a doctor in Michigan prescribed unnecessary narcotics in exchange for patients’ identification information to generate false billings.

Uncontrolled drug abuse in people that already possess racism and hatred in their hearts makes for an incredibly dangerous situation.

Each and every one of us will play a role in righting this wrong, and it begins with caring for each other. If you notice changes in any of your loved ones, friends or colleagues, then you must speak out. Too often after the fact we hear of all the warning signs that were there for us, whether it was the lack of compassion for your fellow man, drug abuse or mental illness, it is our responsibility to get them help. Let us hope that this hate crime will make every single American know how to love and respect and care for each other, because that will be the definitive cure that will make us stronger and better people.

Black Youth, Over-Medicated and Underserved - Part 1

As seen in this report by Charlene Muhammad of FinalCall.Com. While we acknowledge that some news reports from the Black Muslim community can be controversial, there are also many items that are woefully underreported. We are breaking this up into three sections, with the first one posted below today:

The Rev. Fred Shaw, Jr., of the Basic Life Institute in Compton, Calif., has been working with troubled youth and gang-bangers for over a decade. But as he tries to help them turn their lives around, the specter of drugs has surfaced. Not illegal drugs, like crack cocaine or meth, but legal drugs that the activist is concerned with.

He believes psychotropic drugs, like Ritalin, are over-prescribed, and hastily dispensed to control young people, instead of helping them deal with serious emotional and social problems. “We don’t even know the full scope of the impact of these drugs on our youth and people don’t care enough to test whether or not it’s the stimulants that are causing them to shoot and violently kill one another,” he said.

Before working with the Basic Life Institute, the Rev. Shaw co-owned a group home and was stunned by the number of Black youth that were medicated. “African Americans are 16 percent of the nation’s student population but we’re 32 percent of students being drugged, but it’s so entrenched into the system that people have bought into the process wholesale,” he said.

He believes authorities stopped referring clients because he opposed drugging of youth in his group home. The activist also believes mental health drug campaigns are well orchestrated and pushed by pharmaceutical companies. “They fund the psychiatric research, then the psychiatrists develop diagnoses which allows the companies to sell their drugs through them. One hand is washing the other, and they have studied normal adolescent behaviors and made them mental disorders,” Rev. Shaw charged.

Psychotropic drugs are prescribed to treat mental disorders and diseases. That means the same drugs may be used to calm youngsters who are hyper and to stimulate young people who may be depressed.

The most common diagnosis that results in drug treatments is Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). According to the FDA, ADHD accounts for up to 50 percent of mental health referrals for children and at least 7.5 percent of all school-aged children are affected by ADHD. The National Center for Health Statistics reports that 4.7 million children between 3-17 years of age were diagnosed with ADHD. The percentage of boys was 9.5 percent while girls comprised 5.9 percent.

The fears voiced by Rev. Shaw aren’t new and Black psychologists have raised questions about the impact and long-term effects of drugging Black children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. Some federal warnings boost their worries.

Last year, the Food and Drug Administration ordered manufacturers of psychotropic drugs to develop patient medication guides to warn of possible cardiovascular risks associated with the drugs. Such drugs, which include Ritalin, Concerta, Adderall and Strattera, are usually given to children diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. Side affects include anxiety or nervousness; headache or dizziness; insomnia; headache, stomach pain, sleeplessness and decreased appetite.

Early last year, the FDA also indicated that ADHD medicines showed a slight risk (about 1 per 1,000) for drug-related psychiatric adverse events, including hearing voices, becoming suspicious for no reason, or becoming manic, even in patients who did not have previous psychiatric problems.

The Centers for Disease Control lists symptoms of ADHD as often fidgeting with hands or feet; squirming in seat; running or climbing when inappropriate; feeling restless; often on the go and talks excessively; and often acting as if driven by a motor.

According to Dr. Ronald Beavers, a psychologist with the Positive Imagery Foundation in South Los Angeles, Black children are disproportionately represented because their needs are greater.

“Our children are locked more into the system and when you look at the statistics and those in foster care and up for adoption, and see what ethnic group is overrepresented, question marks should be coming up because it’s African Americans. Eighty percent of adoptions and 80 percent of foster care are Black children,” Dr. Beavers told The Final Call.

Alternatives to drugs, like group counseling, life skills and culturally competent parenting education, are usually counted out because they cost time and money, he added.

“The ultimate alternative for Blacks is learning how to live,” Dr. Beavers said.

An employee with the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services told The Final Call, the department tracks foster care children who are taking psychotropic drugs, but the numbers are not easy to get. Even high-ranking employees find it difficult to get the actual facts about the drugging of children because the numbers are an embarrassment to the department, said the employee, who has a background in social work. The employee asked to remain anonymous.

Northern Illinois University Murders Due to "Chemical Imbalances" from Psychiatric Drugs.

Article by Fred Baughman, Jr. M.D. Neurologist/Child Neurologist, as found on OpEd News. Of course, it is our own opinionthat the Northern Illinois University murders were caused by "chemical imbalances" due to the use of psychiatric drugs.

Regarding the Northern Illinois University shooter, Steven P. Kazmierczak, The New York Times (Benedict Carey, 2/19/08, A20) remarks “…doctors say it is almost impossible to tell whether the spasms of violence stem in part from the drug reactions or the underlying illnesses.”

A girlfriend said Kazmierczac, took Prozac to battle anxiety and compulsive behavior. While psychiatry (psychology too) and the pharmaceutical industry want anxiety, depression, elation impulsiveness, poor conduct, trouble with math, reading, writing, etc., portrayed as brain abnormalities/diseases/disorders/syndromes, so as to be able to portray their drugs as “medications” and “treatments” there is no such thing as an demonstrable physical abnormality/disease in all of psychiatry.

Diseases of the brain, MS, ALS—Lou Gehrig’s disease, stroke, meningitis, etc., are the province of neurology, my specialty. This was assured in 1948 when the two specialties were formally split with “neuropsychiatry” becoming the separate, new specialties, “psychiatry” and “neurology.” This means that the drugs/exogenous chemicals invariably prescribed by psychiatrists (and throughout mental health, by all sorts of doctors) are toxins/poisons, the first and only demonstrable abnormality/disease that they have.

But today, patients are invariably lied to—told, for purposes of informed consent, that they have an illness/sickness/chemical imbalance. This gains their consent. Whether it is true, honest, informed consent or not the psychiatry-pharmaceutical cartel doesn’t care. There is little doubt that without the “chemical imbalance” lie the epidemic psychiatric drug poisoning would be a small fraction of what it is today.

At a 1970 Congressional hearing on the drugging of school children, that at which hyperactivity was first called a brain disease, Dr John D. Griffith, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, testified: “I would like to point out that every drug, however innocuous, has some degree of toxicity. A drug, therefore, is a type of poison and its poisonous qualities must be carefully weighed against its therapeutic usefulness.”

Such a scientific, honest weighing of the risks vs. the benefits of psychiatric medications is virtually never carried out today because the psychiatric diagnosis, never a “chemical imbalance”/disease, is always portrayed as one, always needing, even requiring “treatment” with a “chemical balancer”—pill.

Think for a moment of the tens of thousands of children court-ordered to take psychiatric drugs for diagnoses such as ADHD, conduct and oppositonal-defiant disorders, lest their parents, without trial, be pronounced “medically negligent” and threatened with the loss of custody of the child—their child. Their child who’s emotional life they are no longer allowed to direct. This is what we have come to in the USA!

As in the University of Northern Illinois case, almost all of the grade school, high school, and college shooters have been psychiatric patients with psychiatric “diseases” (not real diseases) on psychiatric drugs (real exogenous chemical compounds, real brain- and body-altering poisons, real diseases). Nor is the issue of whether they still have the poison in their system or not critical. All psychiatric drugs damage the previously normal brain and body.

This is how they alter the subjective symptoms for which they are “treatment.” Even if stopped they have damaged and thus altered the previously normal individual. Eric Harris, one of the two Columbine shooters had been on Zoloft, also Prozac-like. There is no such thing as the “chemical imbalance” portrayed in the Zoloft ad. There is no such thing as the balancing of that “chemical imbalance” as portrayed in the Zoloft ad. And yet the FDA, as much a part of the pharmaceutical industry as psychiatry, lets them tell us these lies. Harris was denied enlistment in the armed forces. They knew something the public did not.

Health care providers in Sweden are now required to report all suicides committed up to four weeks after their last health care visit. 367 suicides were thus-reported for the year 2006. More than 80 percent of persons committing suicide had been “treated” with psychiatric drugs. In over 50 percent of cases the persons were on antidepressants, most of them Prozac-like, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). More than 60 cases had been on antipsychotic/neuroleptic. This information had been concealed by psychiatric officials at Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare. Does this not blow the myths of antidepressants and neuroleptics as suicide-preventive drugs to pieces?

What’s more: these drugs—SSRIs and neuroleptic/antipsychotics alike, are being given to infants toddlers and children in the US, and are being pushed hard by the psychiatry-pharmaceutical cartel around the world. Think of it: over 80 percent of persons killing themselves on treatment with psychiatric drugs.

A certain number of persons killing themselves can be expected to be suffering from drug induced akathisia – an extreme inner restlessness, a feeling of having to creep out of ones skin, a completely unbearable condition. It is created by the psychiatric drugs, not by any “underlying disease”—there is no such thing as an actual disease in psychiatry, at least, not before the “treatment” poisoning—the first and only disease. (thanks to Janne Larsson, investigative journalist, Sweden).

In December, 1994, Professor David Healy interviewed Jonathan Cole , Director of Psychopharmacology Research at the National Institute of Mental Health. Healy asked: “What about a group of patients who may get worse on it Prozac?

Cole responded: Yes. I’m one of the authors of the suicide paper. Yes, I have seen people, at least a handful, that clearly got more agitated and got weird thoughts and suicidal drive. Tony Rothschild…found three people who had jumped off something while on fluoxetine, who didn’t kill themselves, and agreed to take it again. He re-created the same desperate driven quality with fluoxetine (Prozac).

Cole: One patient…was so distressed by a thought telling her to kill herself over and over again, …I told her to take some Ativan and go to sleep and she did and within 36 hours it had passed. At the end of it she said ‘gee, I’ve been depressed for 21 years, and suicidal a lot but that was ridiculous.’ Lilly (manufacturer of Prozac) doesn’t believe it…Plus about 1-2% of the people on fluoxetine…called up and said I’ve got suicidal ideas that I haven’t had before and another 1-2% phoned up and said I’ve got crazy ideas that I hadn’t had before.

Today in the US we have been so taken in by the “chemical imbalance”/ “chemical balancer” lie of the psycho-pharm cartel that 20% of school children are on one or more psychiatric drug, 60-70% of children in foster care (who cannot defend themselves ) and a like number of those in juvenile and adult penal institutions.

At the same time we have organized psychiatry asking us to believe that half of all of us in the US will one day be afflicted with a “serious mental disorder” (read chemical imbalance) and that, of course we will need one or more “chemical balancers”/drugs.

[...]

When normal people are lied to, told they have a "disease" to make "patients" of them, their right to informed consent has been abrogated and they no longer live in a democracy. When, pursuant to that lie, they are drugged, we have not "treatment" but poisoning. This is the greatest health care fraud in modern medical history.

Suspected gunman in SuccessTech Academy school shooting was on psychiatric drugs

The SuccessTech Academy shooting is a school shooting that took place on October 10, 2007 at SuccessTech high school in Cleveland, Ohio. The perpetrator, Asa H. Coon, wounded at least four people, including two teachers and two students; another student was injured fleeing from the school. Coon had been suspended on Monday, October 8, after fighting with another student during a disagreement, and returned on Wednesday, October 10, with two guns and began shooting. Coon reportedly then committed suicide. (via Wikipedia)

Peter Breggin, M.D., documents cases of irreversible psychosis from short stints on certain drugs.

Ann Tracy, Ph.D., Executive Director of www.drugawareness.org has received reports of antidepressant-induced psychosis lasting for five years before complete recovery was achieved.

As reported by WKYC, via the SSRI Stories website.

Many are asking what caused the suspected gunman in the SuccessTech Academy shooting to snap.

We are learning new details about Asa Coon's troubled background.

The anger that touched off the tragedy began in the heart and mind of Asa Coon at a very young age.

"Are there a lot of Asa's out there? There probably are," Cuyahoga County Children's Services Director Jim McCafferty
said.

McCafferty says between 1998 and 2002 the county agency twice investigated the Coon family for neglect and once for physical abuse.

Asa had mysterious burns on his arm, McCafferty says his older brother, Stephen, may have been to blame.

"As these boys got older and more out of control one has to wonder how much control was in their lives," McCafferty said.

Stephen Coon has a history of committing violent crimes including assault, weapons and drug charges.

One day after the shooting, Cleveland Police arrested Stephen outside his home on an outstanding warrant.

"His environment was living with an older brother who has a long violent history of criminal activity not only in juvenile court and adult court," Chief Juvenile Prosecutor Carmen Naso said.

In January 2006 Asa Coon was convicted of domestic violence.

At the age of 12 he attempted suicide. Asa was prescribed antidepressants and pills for attention deficit disorder.

After a psychiatric evaluation specialists suspected he suffered from a bipolar disorder and recommended psychotropic drugs.

"He was a troubled youth. In January of 2006 that resulted in violence against his own mother and that should have told us something," Naso said.

Whatever it told healthcare professionals, the juvenile and child welfare systems, it was not enough to prevent this from happening.

Police say they've gone to the Coon household five times since 2006.

They were responding to complaints of domestic violence, assault and some property crimes.

A Commentary on the Dangerousness of a Certain Psychiatrist

An interesting commentary on the dangerousness of a certain psychiatrist, Dr. Eileen Bazelon, as seen in this blog entry - the comments are also a worthy read. This is interesting and certainly worth further investigation given Bazelon's membership in a number of patient's rights organizations.

I didn’t know her name when I was a student at Bryn Mawr College and was in a deep depression my senior year, but I knew the reputation of my college’s psychiatrist and I knew that for me to seek psychiatric help as a student was to risk expulsion, loss of all my hard work thus far and even deeper depression. So despite the fact that I was unable to get myself to go to classes or do any work or even eat except once a day in the evening, I never walked over to the health center because I was not willing to risk losing everything.

I decided it was better to risk losing my life than losing my diploma. In the end a wonderful professor, now gone, walked over to my dorm room and offered to call my parents for me and my dean and did so. The late Katrin Burlin saved me. But she knew better than to refer me to the Health Center (than known as the Infirmary if I recall correctly) too.

I never thought about why she didn’t refer me there until later, but I had been accepted to an Ivy League University for graduate school with a full scholarship and stipend and being expelled by the college’s psychiatrist would have put an end to that.

I am disappointed and angry that the same psychiatrist is hosting a conference on what to do about “dangerous” behavior on campus now.

From all I have heard from more recent graduates, students at Bryn Mawr still have to fear expulsion for being mentally ill and apparently Dr. Bazelon not only does not feel confidentiality is an issue in cases of need to warn but also when she feels like sharing patients/students’ confidential medical information with her daughter as soon after Virginia Tech’s tragedy, her daughter wrote an article for an online publication that gave confidential details of the cases of two expelled former students.

Here I am on the Commitment Taskforce of the Supreme Court Justice’s Commission on Mental Health Law Reform all these years later with kidney failure from forced and abusive psychiatric treatment and fear of forced treatment; and the psychiatrist in chief at my alma mater is still working to undermine the rights and the confidentiality of women with psychiatric illness.

How sad.

How scary.

How maddening.

Too bad I already pledged for this year’s alumnae fund.

Conference Asks: What Should Colleges Do About Dangerous Behavior on Campus?

Inspired by the shootings at Virginia Tech, Bryn Mawr resident psychiatrist Eileen Bazelon ‘65 has convened a group of nationally recognized experts to discuss the law and ethics of balancing students’ right to privacy against their own safety and that of their communities. The one-day conference, to take place in Thomas Great Hall on Monday, Sept. 24, is open to college and university administrators, counselors, deans, security officers, legal counsel and other interested parties.

Full story: http://www.brynmawr.edu/news/alum/2007-09/dangerous.shtml

Controversy resurfaces over use of electric shock treatment at Rotten-Berg school

It seems that the Mother Jones article on the curriculum of electric shock therapy at the Judge Rotenburg School in Canton, Massachusetts has had an impact, inspiring the possibility of state legislative action. Of Course, we had reported on the story when it first appeared, and it seems that it has made some traction.

Massachusetts state senator Brian A. Joyce, interviewed for the Mother Jones story, has circulated a copy of the piece to every state legislator and is working to push up hearings, originally scheduled for January 2008, on existing legislation that would curb the use of the skin shock device and create a regulatory commission.

Here is the report from the Boston Globe, as well as a link to the Mother Jones blog followup

An investigative magazine article dubbing a Canton-based institution the "school of shock" has reignited efforts to pass legislation limiting the facility's use of skin shock and aversive therapy.

State legislators say the report in the September edition of Mother Jones has refocused the controversy surrounding the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, believed to be the only school in the country that gives children electric shocks as a form of treatment.

The 230-student facility treats children with autism, mental retardation, and emotional problems.

Senator Brian A. Joyce of Milton and Representative John W. Scibak of South Hadley are trying to move up hearings, now slated for January, on legislation that would limit aversive therapy to extreme cases of violent or self-injurious behavior, such as head banging or eye gouging, and create a special commission to regulate it.

Matt Israel, founder of the Rotenberg Center, acknowledges the controversy surrounding the use of shock therapy, but says the practice is crucial to treat severe mental illnesses. Israel said it is unfair of legislators to characterize the school's practices as unfettered because it is regulated by the Department of Mental Retardation, Department of Education, and Department of Early Education and Care, as well as judges in individual cases.

The Judge Rotenberg Center, which has students from at least seven states, is in Joyce's district. He said his staff has spent hundreds of hours researching the facility and its practices, including claims by critics that children are often shocked for relatively minor infractions such as cursing or speaking out of turn - behavior that, he said, is typical of most adolescents.

"The bottom line is, we have to protect some of the most vulnerable citizens in our society," Joyce said. "We need to eliminate or severely limit any future application of this barbaric treatment on innocent children."

Aversive therapy - which uses a system of positive and negative reinforcements based on psychologist B.F. Skinner's behavior modification theory - is banned in 10 states, including Connecticut and Rhode Island. Last year, Joyce filed a budget amendment to ban it in Massachusetts. It passed in the state Senate but not in the House.

Some state legislators, including Representatives Tom Sannicandro of Ashland and Barbara L'Italien of Andover, have denounced the institution's methods as cruel and outdated. Others say there are behaviors and illnesses that warrant shock therapy.

The release of the Mother Jones article is not the first time the Rotenberg Center has come under scrutiny. Massachusetts officials have investigated reports over the years that electric shocks delivered to misbehaving students caused burns on their arms, legs, or torsos. Regulators from New York, where more than half the students come from, have pressed the school to end electric shock.

The facility was also fined last year by the Massachusetts Division of Professional Licensure for falsely representing employees as licensed psychologists.

Israel told the Globe he thought the Mother Jones article, written by freelancer Jennifer Gonnerman, did a poor job of explaining the school's mission. He said that negative reinforcement for seemingly harmless behaviors is sometimes necessary for treatment, and that the article depicted certain incidents out of context.

"Sometimes in treating a behavior, you'll notice that it changes its form as it decreases in frequency," Israel said. "If you are treating someone who pulls hair out to the point of baldness, you'll pay attention when they are even pulling, tugging, or touching their hair. It may look innocuous, but if you don't treat it at that point in time, it will grow back to its original form."

"There are many well-intentioned people who oppose this form of therapy because they are unwilling to weigh the intrusiveness of it against the benefits," he said. "Just like any medical or dental procedure, you have to weigh the benefits and the risks."

[...]

Just how much pain the shocks cause is a matter of some disagreement.

Sannicandro, who sits on the Legislature's Joint Committee for Children, Families and Persons with Disabilities, said he tested the shock treatment himself and compared it to being electrocuted.

"It was unbelievable pain that felt like it was going on forever," said Sannicandro, who has a 23-year-old son with Down syndrome. "I can't imagine subjecting my child to this. It would be like living in a hell."

The Mother Jones article described an environment where teachers were fearful of being attacked and of losing their jobs for not shocking students enough.

Gregory Miller, who worked as a Rotenberg Center teacher's assistant from 2003 to 2006, told the Globe that most teachers found the work unbearable. As a result, there was a high turnover rate, he said.

"You could just hear echoes of screams coming down the halls, all day long," said Miller, who will testify in favor of Joyce's bills. "The stress levels were incredible because every time someone jumped up from being shocked, everyone would scream as a reaction and in turn they would be shocked. It's dangerous to think of the level of stress caused by that constant fear."

Joyce said he has already gotten reaction from people who have read the Mother Jones article, and he is confident the bills to restrict the practice will pass before the end of this year.

"This Skinner pseudo-science from 50 years ago is not appropriate today," said Joyce. "It is curious that we don't inflict such punishment on serial killers or child molesters."

Happiness classes ‘depress pupils’

Another experiment in modern psychology gone badly wrong. As seen here.

Classes in happiness and emotional wellbeing, intended to tackle ill-discipline and improve social skills, may instead leave children depressed and self-obsessed, according to a new report.

The research, which draws on the findings of more than 20 international academic studies, describes the government programme in secondary schools as a “large-scale psychological experiment”.

It finds little evidence that the classes, which encourage children to express feelings openly and empathise with others, lead to any long-term improvement in emotional well being or academic success.

Ed Balls, the children’s secretary, announced last week that happiness classes would be introduced to state secondary schools after a successful two-year pilot of the programme. The technique is called Seal - Social and emotional aspects of learning.

Balls said the classes would “help to cultivate the right attitude” and would help tackle indiscipline. But the report by Carol Craig, a psychologist and chief executive of the Centre for Confidence and Wellbeing in Glasgow, concludes the classes risk harming some children.

“A focus on the self can create an obsession with how you feel and can lead in some kids to depression,” said Craig. “Seal may work for some children but this is not like arithmetic or French grammar - if it doesn’t work it will lead to psychological problems.”

Craig’s conclusion was supported by Nick Emler, professor of psychology at Surrey University: “It is disturbing that the government wishes to introduce this programme without proper evaluation.”

Anthony Seldon, master of Wellington College in Berkshire and a pioneer of happiness classes, defended their merits.

“You are trying to help people with long-term coping skills,” he said. “I don’t think there is any sane way to exist as a human being except to get in touch with your feelings and thoughts.”

Alan Smithers, education professor at Birmingham University, said Seal “looks like a panic measure” to tackle problems highlighted earlier this year by the Unicef table of child well being in which Britain came bottom out of 21 countries.

Cho, Va. Tech and System Failure

Various comments on the Washington Post about the report regarding the investigating the shooting at Virginia Tech.

Vunderlutz wrote that, "The brunt of the criticism should be directed at the lack of follow-through by the courts and the mental health professionals. But, all in all, this was a system failure and the blame, guilt and remorse are shared among many."

And jamalnasir_2000 said, "...this article makes it seem like VA Tech should have had a anti crime force of its own... This school just ended up being a victim of a screwed up/insane person. That can happen anywhere....example Columbine."

UncleWillie concurred, saying that "...the actions of a 1-in-a-million nut like this one remains unpredictable. As a result thousands will be subjected to more stringent rules and procedures which erode our freedoms and will fail to circumvent anything."

terryeo said "It is psychiatry that should be criticized...Treating someone so they kill people is simply not good medical practice... This idea of a psychiatrist using our tax dollars, treating Cho, prescribing Cho psychotropic drugs, and then not being held accountable for Cho's behaviour is beyond good sense."

RustNeverSleeps said, "Va Tech did nothing wrong! College students believe they are invincible and would not have listened to any warnings to stay inside behind locked doors? This commission was another waste of taxpayer dollars."

Last word goes to DardenCavalcade1, who wrote, "In ALL of these tragedies, institutional failures abound and are a principle contributing cause... Commonwealth institutions failed serially and repeatedly to do their damn jobs. Virginia government constantly fails to exercise due diligence in governance: drivers licensing of the 9/11 terrorists, gun laws that provide a statistically significant number of firearms to professional criminals in the Atlantic states, failure to build and repair critical infrastructures, failure to educate, and now the slaughter at Virginia Tech."

The discontent out there is obvious

Another school shooting where psych drugs are involved

As seen here

A mental examination has been ordered for a teenager accused of shooting a classmate to death at Foss High School.

At the request of Pierce County prosecutors, Superior Court Judge Ronald E. Culpepper directed on Friday that Douglas S. Chanthabouly, 18, charged with first-degree murder in the attack on Samnang Kok, undergo a 15-day exam at Western State Hospital.

Kok was slain in a school hallway on Jan. 3. Police have written that there was some kind of dispute between the two teenagers.

Chanthabouly has pleaded innocent, and prosecutors told the judge that his lawyers have given notice of intent to present a mental health defense. Defense lawyer John David Chin said he had arranged for a private psychiatrist to evaluate the teenager.

According to court filings, Chanthabouly told a jail mental health expert in January that he is schizophrenic, takes anti-psychotic medication and was once admitted to a psychiatric hospital after attempting suicide.

Big Headache for Big Pharma

From the NovoPress Blog Archive

For pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, death and injury are just a cost of doing business. When Zyprexa, Lilly’s drug to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, hit the marketplace in 1996, it was hailed as an “atypical” – a “safe, gentle psychotropic,” more effective than older drugs like Thorazine and Trilafon, without the dangerous side effects. Sales skyrocketed. The hype soon gave way to reality, as Lilly faced waves of lawsuits by patients suffering from diabetes, massive weight gain, pancreatitis and cardiac problems.

Lilly responded with the cozy arrangement that worked with Prozac, another blockbuster plagued with problems: quietly settle suits out of court, with proceedings sealed and secret under a gag order. Anything embarrassing – or illegal – that Lilly is doing behind closed doors would remain hidden from public view.

Even though the payout is enormous – more than a billion dollars in settlements to tens of thousands of plaintiffs – Lilly can afford it: atypicals sell for ten times more than older drugs, and Lilly’s marketing machine made Zyprexa its biggest profit maker, with more than 20 million customers worldwide and sales topping $4 billion annually. So Lilly writes a check, buys the silence of the people harmed by its products, and then turns around and passes the cost along to the consumer at inflated drugstore prices. All perfectly legal.

What Lilly didn’t count on was a whistleblower, a lawyer and hackers taking matters into their own hands. Just as Lilly’s legal muscle was lax during Christmas holidays, one of the expert witnesses in the Zyprexa litigation contacted human rights attorney Jim Gottstein, who used a combination of clever subpoena wizardry and fast action to get hundreds of secret documents out from under the court seal. Gottstein turned the memos over to The New York Times before Lilly could plug the leak.

The memos, emails and correspondence reveal how Lilly’s marketing strategy bent and broke the law, hid unfavorable risk studies and pushed Zyprexa for unapproved use on the elderly and children. The Times ran repeated front page stories, and Lilly’s stock took a nose dive.

Claiming “trade secrets” and proprietary “merchandising techniques,” Lilly lawyers swooped down on Gottstein, seizing emails and voice mail records. They convinced the court to order an injunction forbidding further distribution of the files, but Gottstein had already sent out disks loaded with scanned copies to a dozen activists and journalists around the country. Lilly tracked the disks down, trying to halt the escalating crisis.

And this is where the hackers come in. Someone – still not identified by Lilly – got a copy, but any distribution traced back to them could lead to contempt of court and serious legal consequences. So they turned to software called Tor, set up by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Tor is an anonymous server privacy tool EFF created to help dissidents in totalitarian regimes like China slip past state censors. It was perfect to help the whistle-blowers evade Lilly’s surveillance. The file – zyprexakills.tar.gz – found its way into cyberspace, and the court finally ruled that Lilly couldn’t block websites from hosting the file once it was freely available online. The leak finally went public.

The Zyprexa documents are a disturbing glimpse into the marketing mind of one of the biggest companies in the world, a firm with close ties to the Bush Administration (Lilly CEO Sidney Taurel sits on the Homeland Security Council). When a study showed three times the risk of diabetes over other drugs, Lilly simply hid it from the Food and Drug Administration’s scrutiny. Lilly aimed sales to dementia patients – without approval – in a campaign called “Viva Zyprexa.” They instructed product representatives to downplay drug risks, and targeted children, who Zyprexa has never been tested on. Emails discussed the strategy of indemnifying doctors who prescribe Zyprexa against any legal action: “Our experience with Prozac,” the memo said, “confirms the impact and goodwill of such an initiative.” The memos reveal callous indifference to the diabetes risk Zyprexa causes, perhaps because Lilly’s other top selling drugs include – you guessed it – diabetes medications.

Lilly now faces a snowballing scandal. The Times compared Zyprexa to Vioxx, Merck’s painkiller withdrawn from the market after leaked documents showed the company hid heart attack risks. FDA scientist Dr. David Graham, who blew the whistle on Vioxx, testified to Congress that atypicals like Zyprexa kill some 62,000 people a year in unapproved uses. A study in the Archives of General Psychiatry concluded atypicals were no more effective than older, cheaper drugs, and five state governments, with enormous budgets for atypicals, initiated investigations. And last month, four-year-old Rebecca Riley died from drugs prescribed by a psychiatrist, including an atypical, raising concerns about the approximately 30,000 children under five who take these drugs, despite no study on drug safety for children.

Lilly objected to its secret memos going public because they might “cause unwarranted fear among patients that will cause them to stop taking their medication.” Yet this gets to the heart of Lilly’s corruption. Beyond hiding drug risks and marketing illegally, Big Pharma doesn’t trust its customers to make informed decisions about their health care. Growing numbers of people are turning off the TV pill ads and exploring other ways to deal with their suffering. A New York Times article last year broke the story of the many people with a schizophrenia diagnosis who do well with non-medication treatments. Maybe the solution isn’t to be found in a pill after all?

Now that would bring down Big Pharma faster than any scandal.

What Risks are Acceptable Risks?

On April 16th, Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people, and wounded many more, in a shooting spree termed the "Virginia Tech massacre." The massacre took place on April 16, 2007 on the campus of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg, Virginia, just four days before the eighth anniversary of the Columbine shooting. Cho committed suicide after law enforcement officers breached the doors of the academic building where he shot most of his victims, including faculty and students.

On April 17th, in an example of incredibly poor timing, Scientific American and other science news outlets carried a news item about a study that came to the conclusion that the benefits of antidepressants outweighed the risks.

As news reports indicate that Cho was on psychiatric medications before the shooting, This leads us to the natural question:

What risks are acceptable risks? Surely the authors of the study and the outlets that reported it do not mean that the occasional school massacre is acceptable. It is apparent that school shootings and other similar incidents were not on the radar of those who wrote the student.

The possibility that they knew, and did not take the risk seriously is too horrifying to contemplate.

But if true, then maybe it is time to storm the castle Frankenstein and bring the doctors who made this monster to justice.

On May 3rd, the FDA issued an updated requirement for the black box warning that appears on the packaging of antidepressants.

The question of the supposed benefits vs side effects of the drugs is another matter entirely.

What Exactly Was Cho Seung-Hui On?

from the Mother Jones Magazine blog

The Times reported that Cho Seung-Hui was taking a psychoactive medication. What was he on? Was it an antidepressant? No doubt antidepressants save lives, but they also cause side effects. Psychiatrists know they trigger mania, exacerbate delusional thinking, and agitate suicidal tendencies. In short, they can push troubled people over the edge.

For obvious reasons, it's kinda hard to clinically research any link between antidepressants and shootings. But I'm certainly not the first person to notice one. For example, the wife of comedian Phil Hartman was on Zoloft when she killed herself and him. Most notoriously, Eric Harris of Columbine was on Luvox.

For more common violent crimes, antidepressant manufacturers years ago actually teamed up with district attorneys to make sure the Zoloft defense didn't fly. As Rob Waters reported:

In the early 1990s, Eli Lilly, the maker of Prozac, started the practice of aiding district attorneys who were prosecuting defendants who blamed the drug for their acts of violence. Lawyers for Pfizer, the world’s largest pharmaceutical company, later created a “prosecutor’s manual” for the same purpose.

The Zoloft manual itself is a closely held secret -- and Pfizer has fought hard to keep it that way.

In 2001, a widow sued Pfizer because her husband shot and killed himself after six days on Zoloft. Her lawyers discovered in Pfizer’s records a reference to a document called “prosecutor’s manual,” and requested a copy.

Pfizer fought the request, claiming it was privileged information between the company and its attorneys. The judge allowed the manual to be introduced -- noting it was designed to prevent “harm to Pfizer’s reputation” if a defendant successfully raised “a Zoloft causation defense” -- but he agreed to thereafter seal the manual and keep it out of the public record.

James Hooper, an attorney for Pfizer, says that “in rare cases” the company’s attorneys have provided the manual to prosecutors if a defendant “is attempting to blame some sort of criminal behavior on the medicine."

Here is the link to the article Prosecuting for Pharma: Antidepressant manufacturers team up with district attorneys to make sure the Zoloft defense doesn’t fly.

Virginia Tech Gunman Cho Seung-Hui Was on Anti-Depressants

It seems Virginia tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui may have been on anti-depressant drugs after all.

As seen on Fox News, which references these reports from ABC News and the Chicago Tribune.

The gunman responsible for at least the second of the two Virginia Tech attacks that claimed 33 lives to become the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history has been identified as Cho Seung-Hui, a campus student in the United States on a permanent resident visa, Virginia Tech police said Tuesday.

But police are still searching for a motive.

"He was a loner, and we're having difficulty finding information about him," school spokesman Larry Hincker said.

Sources told ABC News that after Cho killed the one female and one male at West Ambler Johnston Monday morning, he returned to his own dorm room where he re-armed and left a "disturbing note" before entering Norris Hall on the other side of campus to continue his rampage and kill 30 more before shooting himself.

The Chicago Tribune reported that the note included a rambling list of grievances that railed against "rich kids," "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans" on campus. The paper also reported that Cho died with the words "Ismail Ax" in red ink on the inside of one of his arms.

Quoting an "investigative source," the newspaper said Cho had shown recent signs of violent, aberrant behavior, including setting a fire in a dorm room and allegedly stalking some women, and that he was taking medication for depression.

See also this report from the Charleston Daily Mail

The gunman suspected of carrying out the Virginia Tech massacre that left 33 people dead was identified today as an English major whose creative writing was so disturbing that he was referred to the school's counseling service.

News reports also said that he may have been taking medication for depression, that he was becoming increasingly violent and erratic, and that he left a note in his dorm in which he railed against "rich kids,'' "debauchery'' and "deceitful charlatans'' on campus.

I have found various relevant notes and links to videos posted here

Of course, Dr. Phil blames Video Games.

As one commenter noted:

Of course, rather than trying to address the problems of why they’re a sociopath or trying to help others with similar mental illnesses, it’s easier to just pin the blame on the entertainment.

How can someone say that, and not realise the major logical short-circuit there? The problem wasn’t that he was a gamer, it’s that he was a f****** psychopath. Taking his games away wouldn’t have made him any less of a psychopath.

The Link Between Violence and Psychiatric Drugs

Given today's (April 16th, 2007) tragic fatal shootings in Virgina, it seems timely to take note on the following collection of facts. We do not have, at this time, any details behind the identity or the motivations of the shooter.

While the shootings might very well be due to any number of causes, we would not be surprised if there were psychiatric drugs involved.

Based On information seen here: and elsewhere.

Be sure to visit the SSRI Stories website which has a moderately complete list of over 1500 deaths associated with various psychiatric drugs

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In 1964 A paper published in The American Journal of Psychiatry found that major tranquilizers ( Thorazine, Haldol, Mellaril etc.) can "produce an acute psychotic reaction in an individual not previously psychotic.

In 1970 a textbook on the side effects of psychiatric drugs pointed out the potential for violence from these drugs stating, "Indeed, even acts of violence such as murder and suicide have been attributed to the rage reactions induced by chlordiazepoxide (Librium) and diazepam (Valium)."

In 1975 a research paper described a negative effect from the major tranquilizers called "akathisia" (from the Greek a - meaning "without" or "not" and akathisia meaning "sitting".) Akathisia is a drug-induced insanity which was first recognized as an inability of people taking the drugs to sit still comfortably.

In 1984 a study of Xanax reported, "Extreme anger and hostile behavior emerged from eight of the first 80 patients we treated with alprazolam (Xanax)."

In 1985 an investigation into Xanax, reported in the American Journal of Psychiatry, claimed that more than half (58 percent) of the treated patients experienced serious "dyscontrol", i.e. violence and loss of control compared with only eight percent who were given a placebo.

In 1985 another article published in the American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry described five cases of "extreme acts of physical violence" due to akathisia caused by Haldol. These cases included acts of extreme, senseless, bizarre and brutal violence.

On March 6, 1985, Atlanta postal worker Steven W. Brownlee, pulled a pistol from his pocket and shot and killed a supervisor and a clerk. Another clerk was wounded. Brownlee had received treatment and psychotropic drugs at the Grady Memorial Psychiatric Unit.

On November 20, 1986: 14-year-old Rod Mathews beat a classmate to death with a bat in the woods near his home in Canton, Mass. He had been prescribed Ritalin since the third grade.

On April 23, 1987: William Cruse was charged with killing six people in a shooting rampage in Palm Bay, Florida. Cruse had been seeing a Kentucky psychiatrist and stated he had been taking psychiatric drugs for several years.

On November 26, 1987 Bartley Dobben killed his two young children by casting them in a 1,300 degree foundry ladle. He had been placed on a regimen of psychiatric drugs in 1985

On May 20, 1988, Laurie Dann walked into a Winnetka, Illinois second grade classroom carrying three pistols and began shooting innocent little children, killing one and wounding five others before killing herself. Subsequent blood tests revealed that both Lithium and the antidepressant Anafranil were in her bloodstream at the time the murder was committed.

On September 26, 1988, 19-year-old James Wilson took a .22 caliber revolver into an elementary school in Greenwood, South Carolina and started shooting schoolchildren, killing two 8-year-old girls and wounding seven other children and two teachers. Wilson had been in and out of the hands of psychiatrists for years and within 8 months of the killings he had been on several psychiatric drugs which can generate violent behavior. Since the age of 14, he had been given psychiatric drugs, including Xanax, Valium, Thorazine and Haldol.

On January 17, 1989, Patrick Purdy opened fire on a school yard full of young children in Stockton, California. During his vicious and unprovoked assault, Purdy killed five school children and wounded 30 others. Purdy then killed himself. During the two years prior to the murders of the Stockton children, Purdy had been on two strong psychiatric drugs of categories known to cause violence.

In 1991, at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting, Dr. William Wirshing, a psychiatrist at UCLA, reported that five patients appeared to have developed akathisia from Prozac. Dr. Wirshing believed the akathisia had “led them all to contemplate suicide.”

On April 28, 1992, Kenneth Seguin drugged his two children, aged 7 and 5, took them to a pond, slashed their wrists and dumped their bodies in the water. He then drove home and killed his wife with an ax while she slept. He was on Prozac at the time

In November 1992, Lynwood Drake III, in San Luis Obisbo and Morro Bay, California, shot and killed six people with a hand gun before he killed himself. Metabolized Prozac and Valium were both found in his system

In December 1993, Steven Leith of Chelsea, Michigan, walked back into a school meeting and fatally shot the school superintendent and wounded two others including a fellow teacher. He was on Prozac at the time of the shootings

In 1995 16-year-old Brian Pruitt fatally stabbed his grandparents. He had a history of psychiatric treatment and had been prescribed psychiatric drugs.

On November 3, 1995, Sergeant Steven B. Christian, a twenty-five-year commended veteran of the Dallas police force drove to a police sub-station and seriously wounded an officer outside in his attempt to get inside and shoot others. Christian was shot and killed by two fellow Dallas police officers. The autopsy revealed high levels of an antidepressant in his blood

February 19, 1996: 10-year-old Timmy Becton grabbed his 3-year-old niece as a shield and aimed a shotgun at a Sheriff's deputy who had accompanied a truant officer to his Florida home. Becton had been taken to a psychiatrist in January and had been put on a psychiatric drug.48

May 25, 1997 While on vacation in Las Vegas, 18-year-old Jeremy Strohmeyer raped and murdered a 7-year-old girl in the ladies’ rest room in a casino. He had been diagnosed with ADD and prescribed Dexedrine. He had begun taking the drug a week before the killing.

September 27, 1997: 16-year-old Sam Manzie raped and strangled another boy to death. At the time of the killing the younger boy had been selling candy door to door for the local PTA. Manzie was under psychiatric “care” and was being “medicated.”

October 1st, 1997: 16-year-old Luke Woodham stabbed his mother--50-year-old Mary Woodham--to death and then went to his high school in Pearl Mississippi where he shot nine people killing two teenage girls and wounding seven others. Published reports say he was on Prozac.

December 1, 1997: Michael Carneal, a troubled 14-year-old, killed three students and wounded five others at Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky.

1998, there were three events in which boys, one as young as 11, killed classmates and teachers.

February, 1998 a young man in Huntsville, Alabama on Ritalin went psychotic chopping up his parents with an ax and also killing one sibling and almost murdering another.

March 6, 1998: Mathew Beck, a lottery accountant in Connecticut, reported promptly to his job, hung up his coat and methodically gunned down four of his bosses, one of whom he chased through a parking lot before he turned the gun on himself. Beck had been seeing a psychiatrist and taking three types of “medication."

March 24, 1998 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, 11-year-old Andrew Golden and 14-year-old Mitchell Johnson shot 15 people killing four students, one teacher, and wounding 10 others.13 According to one report, the boys were believed to be on Ritilan.

May 21, 1998: Springfield, Oregon: 15-year-old Kip Kinkel murdered his own parents and then proceeded to school where he opened fire on students in the cafeteria, killing two and wounding 22. Kinkel had been on Prozac.

May 28, 1998: Brynn Hartman murdered her husband, comic Phil Hartman, then committed suicide. She had been prescribed and had been taking the antidepressant drug Zoloft, which the coroner found in her system along with alcohol and cocaine

September, 1998, a study published in The Journal of Forensic Science found that of 392 youth suicides in Paris between 1989 and 1996, 35% used to take psychoactive drugs.

April 16, 1999: 15-year-old Shawn Cooper of Notus, Idaho took a 12-guage shot gun to school and started firing, injuring one student and holding the school hostage for about 20 minutes. Terrified students ran for their lives, some barricading themselves in classrooms. Cooper had been taking Ritalin when he fired the shotgun's rounds.

April 20, 1999: Columbine, Colorado: 18-year-old Eric Harris was on the antidepressant Luvox when he and his partner Dylan Klebold killed twelve classmates and a teacher before taking his own life in the bloodiest school massacre in history. The coroner confirmed that the antidepressant was in his system through toxicology reports while Dylan Klebold's autopsy was never made public.

April 29 1999: A 14 year old boy shot two children, killing one, at W.R. Myers High School in Taber Alberta. He was student of the school who was seeing a psychiatrist who prescribed him Dexadrine just prior to the shooting.

May 4, 1999: Steven Allen Abrams rammed his car into a preschool playground in Costa Mesa, California, killing two and injuring five. He had been placed on probation in 1994 which required him to see a psychiatrist and take Lithium

May 20, 1999: Conyers, Georgia: 15-year-old T.J. Solomon was being treated with a mix of antidepressants when he opened fire on and wounded 6 of his classmates.

March 5, 2001, Charles Williams, 15, killed two students and wounded 13 others at Santana High School in Santee, California

March 7, 2000: Williamsport, Pennsylvania: 14-year-old Elizabeth Bush was on the antidepressant Prozac when she blasted away at fellow students in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, wounding one.

May 26, 2000: Nathaniel Brazill, 13, killed his English teacher on the last day of classes in Lake Worth, Florida.

In 2000, a 6-year-old who shot and killed another 6-year-old at Buell Elementary School in Mount Morris Township, Michigan

March 22, 2001: El Cajon, California: 18-year-old Jason Hoffman was on two antidepressants, Effexor and Celexa, when he opened fire at his California high school wounding five. Hoffman had also undergone an "anger management" program.

April 10, 2001: Wahluke, Washington: 16-year-old Cory Baadsgaard took a rifle to his high school, and held 23 classmates and a teacher hostage while on a high dose of the antidepressant Effexor.

In 2003, two students were killed at Rocori High School in Cold Spring, Minnesota by a fellow student, age 15. He is awaiting trial.

March 21, 2005: Red Lake Indian Reservation, Minnesota: 16-year-old Native American Jeff Weise, reportedly under the influence of the antidepressant Prozac, went on a shooting rampage at home and at his school, killing nine people and wounding five before committing suicide.

And now, sadly, we add to this very incomplete list:

April 16, 2007: Cho Seung-Hui, 23, a student at Virgina Tech shoots down and kills over 30 people on the Virginia Tech campus. He had been troubled, and had been on medication for depression.

The Destructive Side Effects of Psychiatric Drugs

A Report from the Fox News show The Big Story about the destructive side effects of psychiatric drugs

NY State Considers Revisions to Aversion Therapy Regulations

As Seen here

Revised proposed regulations relating to Behavioral Interventions, including Aversive Interventions have been published in the State Register and are available for public comment. A two-page summary of the major revisions to the regulations that were adopted through emergency action in June 2006 is available to assist the public in its review of the revised proposed rules.

A full text of the revised proposed rule can be accessed at www.vesid.nysed.gov/specialed/behavioral/proposedterms1106.htm

Written comments on the proposed regulation must be received by December 15, 2006 and may be submitted to:

Rebecca H. Cort, Deputy Commissioner

VESID, New York State Education Department

Room 1606 One Commerce Plaza

Albany, New York 12234

Or by email to:

Attention: Comments: Behavioral Intervention Regulations vesidspe@mail.nysed.gov

You can see the Summary here

Among other things, The regulations were revised to prohibit, without exception, the following aversive interventions:

* ice applications; hitting; slapping; pinching; deep muscle squeezes;
* use of an automated aversive conditioning device;
* the combined simultaneous use of physical or mechanical restraints and the application of an aversive intervention;
* withholding of sleep, shelter, bedding or bathroom facilities;
* denial or unreasonable delays in providing regular meals to the student that would result in a student not receiving adequate nutrition;
* placing a student unsupervised or unobserved in a room from which the student cannot exit without assistance;
* or other stimuli or actions similar to these interventions at the discretion of the Commissioner.

Meaning that these and other actions were previously permitted.

Please Take time to submit your comments.

Antidepressants linked to 'adolescent' aggression

As seen in this report from New Scientist

Prozac can make “adolescent” hamsters more aggressive towards their cage-mates, despite the antidepressant drug producing the opposite effect in adult hamsters, making them calmer.

The new findings may help explain why certain antidepressants appear to cause irritability and other abnormal behaviours in teenagers.

[...]

Some young people with depression receive lower doses of antidepressant drugs because of their relatively small weight and size. But Taravosh-Lahn says the findings of the hamster study should prompt a closer look at the effects of this practice.

“We underestimate the differences between the juvenile brain and the adult brain,” says Taravosh-Lahn. “It seems there needs to be more research on the effects of antidepressants on kids.”

Previous studies have also indicated a link between SSRIs and violent behaviour. Aggression was the most common reason children discontinued taking the drug Zoloft in two clinical trials conducted by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer (PLoS Medicine, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0030372), for example.

One high-profile case is that of Christopher Pittman, who in 2001 at the age of 12 shot and killed his grandparents before setting their house on fire. Lawyers defending the boy argued the murders were influenced by the antidepressant Zoloft, but a jury disagreed and sentenced him to 30 years in prison in February 2005.

Following a decision by the US Food and Drug Administration in late 2004, all antidepressants in the US now carry strong "black box" warnings, which state that the drugs may cause abnormal behaviours or suicidal thoughts in teenagers.

[...]

Journal reference: Behavioral Neuroscience (DOI: 10.1037/0735-7044.120.5.1084)

The Study linked the lower doses of antidepressants to increased violence in adolescents

Are prescription drugs linked to school shootings?

As seen on this report by WALB, the questions that people are asking are spreading, of course they need to explain it away, even though there is this pesky coincidence in timing.

A recent string of school violence and shootings have left many concerned citizens asking why. And with studies showing at least 10 school shooters since 1998 were under the influence of antidepressants or other stimulants, drugs like Prozac, Effexor, and Paxil are being blame.

"Children that end up taking antidepressants naturally are ones that already have behavioral problems, depression issues, social things going on in the home," says Wendy Vandemark, a Physiatrist at Greenleaf Hospital.

Doctors and pharmacists agree that antidepressants and other mood altering drugs can increase the risk of suicidal behavior and changes in behavior for people, especially young adults, taking these drugs. Those changes can range from social withdrawal to irritability, to aggressiveness and in some cases hostility," says Pharmacist Michael Hicks.

[...]

All medical experts agree that when being prescribed an anti-depressant, all patients should be closely monitored during treatment.

Tenfold increase in Ritalin prescriptions for ADHD children sets off U.K. investigation

According to this report

After studies revealed a nearly tenfold increase in Ritalin prescriptions in the U.K., public backlash spurred an investigation of doctors' prescription procedures by the National Health Service. However, the results of the review may not be available until March of 2008.

The delay has left some parents and doctors unsure of whether ADHD drugs are the right move for their children.

While one mother in Scotland said Ritalin had been indispensable in calming her son, another said her child became incredibly aggressive and hard to manage while on Ritalin, injuring his brother by throwing him through a glass door.

"I think in 10 years time we will say that ADHD was too simple an explanation for many children," said Dr Gwynedd Lloyd, head of Educational Studies at the Edinburgh University, adding that many doctors label children as having ADHD and prescribe them the amphetamine Ritalin without investigating other possibilities. "We will ask ourselves what we were thinking giving these children amphetamines," she said.

Dr. Dave Coghill, senior lecturer in child and adolescent psychiatry at Dundee University, disagreed, saying Ritalin was an effective drug. "By inhibiting impulsive behavior in children with ADHD it allows them to socialize and develop normally," he said. "Despite the risks, the medication can work for some children."

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is usually diagnosed when children show signs of inattention, hyperactivity and an inability to start and foster social relationships. For many children, the alternative isn't better, as the side effects of ADHD drugs such as Ritalin can include loss of appetite, sleeping problems and death.

The FDA assigned Ritalin its most serious safety warning -- the "black box" warning -- last month after 25 deaths were linked to cardiac problems caused by the drug. Seven U.K. children are also thought to have died due to Ritalin side effects.

"Why is it conventional medicine, and even some parents, are so willing to rely on drugs to control children's behavior?" Asked consumer advocate Mike Adams, who has written extensively on ADHD at NewsTarget.com, and interviewed experts in the field such as Dr. Fred Baughman. "If colorful cereals made from processed sugar and refined grains didn't pass for a 'complete breakfast,' and soft drinks and fruitless 'fruit drinks' weren't standard lunchtime fare, we'd notice a marked improvement in the behavior and learning ability of our school-aged children.

"Ritalin is handed out like candy simply because the drug companies know it is a huge revenue producer, and school administrators support the practice because medicating students makes them more sedate," he added.

Glasgow Schools told not to punish kid bullies

Teachers in Glasgow, Scotland, have been advised not to punish bullies. Top child psychologist Alan McLean claims bringing the playground thugs to book will only make their behaviour worse.

He insists, in new guidelines sent to every school, that punishing them just meets the wish for revenge of parents. But today the mother of a teenage girl who committed suicide after being bullied at school condemned the advice. The mother of 15-year-old Nicola Raphael called instead for tough sanctions.

The psych position sort of seems like, "don't stop the criminals, because if you do, they get mad at you"

This just inspires contempt for the shrink who came up with this.