MIT Psychs Sued for Damages in Suicide Case

As Seen in the Worchester Telegram in Massachusetts

A judge has ruled the parents of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology student who committed suicide can continue their $27 million suit against college administrators and staff, a decision higher education officials criticized as unusually broad.

Elizabeth Shin died in 2000 after setting herself on fire in her dorm room.

Non-clinicians aren't usually held responsible for suicides, but Middlesex Superior Court Judge Christine McEvoy said Shin's housemaster and student life dean had a "special relationship" with her. That required them to protect her, McEvoy ruled, because they "could reasonably foresee that Elizabeth would hurt herself without proper supervision."

Sheldon Steinbach, general counsel of the American Council on Education, called the June 27 decision "an extraordinary stretch."

"I'm surprised the judge didn't find the president responsible, too," he told The Boston Globe. "How far are you going to go? Are the board of trustees liable because they should have known?"

McEvoy dismissed the claims against the university itself and dismissed some claims against the MIT employees. The remaining claims against four psychiatrists and two administrators will go to a jury trial. A pretrial conference in scheduled for September.

The lawyer for Shin's parents, Cho Hyun Shin and Kisuk Shin, praised McEvoy's decision.

"We believe it could have and would have turned out much differently for Elizabeth, had they chosen to respond to a known emergency situation," attorney David DeLuca said.

In a statement, MIT said Shin's death was a terrible tragedy, but "it was not the fault of MIT or anyone who works at MIT."

Suicide threats by Elizabeth Shin, of Livingston, N.J., were known to MIT before she killed herself on April 10, 2000. On that day, a group of administrators and psychiatrists discussed her case, including her statements to two students that she intended to commit suicide. One psychiatrist made an appointment for Shin for the next day at a psychiatric facility outside MIT.

McEvoy ruled the Shin family's lawyers had presented enough evidence to show their charges of gross negligence by MIT administrators were a legitimate issue because the administrators didn't enact "an immediate plan to respond to Elizabeth's escalating threats to commit suicide."

McEvoy's ruling is "very new ground," said Gary Pavela, director of judicial programs at the University of Maryland at College Park and the author of a newsletter for college administrators on law in higher education.

Pavela said a federal district court in Virginia found Ferrum College officials had a "special relationship" that gave them a duty to a student who committed suicide. But that case was settled out of court. In contrast, the Iowa Supreme Court in 2000 found no such duty toward a suicidal student, Pavela said.

Pavela said the legal uncertainty is upsetting college officials, and some are forcing students to go on medical leave at the first sign of any suicidal thoughts to avoid legal liability.

But Pavela said that's ethically wrong and illegal. The Americans with Disabilities Act requires schools to carefully consider the facts in an individual case before sending a student home, he said.

"If administrators overreact to these cases by routinely removing students, then they are jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire," he said.

Hypochondria as a Marketing Tactic. You do feel sick, don't you?

Mother Jones has an extended article on the marketing of new diseases.

From a pharmaceutical company's perspective, the big money can be made not only by selling drugs to the sick, but by selling drugs to the healthy, the people who don't even know that they need drugs yet. A recent Reuters Business Insight report, designed for drug company executives, suggested that the drug companies can reap billions by "creat[ing] new disease markets." That involves convincing people that "problems they may previously have accepted as, perhaps, an inconvenience"—such as, for instance, the distress that can accompany PMS—are in fact "worthy of medical intervention." In other words, nothing short of the medicalization of everyday troubles. Cheerfully, the report believes that drug companies are up to the task: "The coming years will bear greater witness to the corporate sponsored creation of disease."

From this we get the marketing of psych drugs for new uses.

Consider this story. In 1998, Lilly, one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, was on the verge of losing its patent on fluoxetine (more commonly known as Prozac) worth over $2 billion annually. However, if Lilly could find a new use for the drug, the patent could be extended. That year, Lilly helped fund a "roundtable" of researchers to gather in Washington D.C., along with staff from the Food and Drug Administration to discuss a scientifically controversial condition called "premenstrual dysphoric disorder" (PMDD), which had only recently, and after much controversy, been included in the appendix of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual—the bible of psychiatric disorders—as a disorder "under evaluation." But the Lilly-funded researchers soon published an article in a small medical journal suggesting, falsely, that the debate was over and that PMDD could now be considered a "distinct clinical entity," distinct from the stress and tension that can accompany ordinary PMS.

Lilly has not said what role it played in turning the "roundtable" into a journal article, but by 1999, the article helped convince the FDA to approve the use of fluoxetine to treat PMDD—and extended the patent until 2007. Lilly simply repackaged the drug in lavender pill-form, renamed it Serafem, and began marketing it to women. Never mind that independent researchers questioned whether PMDD even existed as a condition. Never mind that Europe's drug regulators raised serious questions about PMDD and criticized Lilly's clinical trials that purported to show the benefits of Serafem. Never mind that even the industry-friendly FDA was appalled at Lilly's television ads, with their too-vague tagline: "Think it's PMS? It could be PMDD." Undaunted, Lilly continued its advertising barrage, trying to convince women who thought they were experiencing regular PMS-related distress that, actually, they might well have a serious disorder that required heavy medication. Soon thereafter, both Pfizer and GSK got their own anti-depressants approved for treating PMDD. For all intents and purposes, the "debate" over whether PMDD was a disorder—let alone requiring medication with serious side-effects—was over. Industry money had carried the day.

Child psychiatrist settles molestation claim case

A prominent San Mateo child psychiatrist has reached a confidential lawsuit settlement with a former patient who accused Dr. William Ayres of repeatedly molesting him when he was a 13-year-old boy in the late 1970s.

The settlement was submitted to San Mateo County Presiding Judge George Miram on Tuesday, the day after a civil trial was scheduled to begin.

The settlement was confirmed by Robert Tobin, an attorney for the now-40- year-old former patient, and by Ayres' attorney, Donald Putterman. Neither side would reveal the terms.

Putterman said that Ayres "hotly disputed" the allegations against him. "Hotly disputed cases are often settled,'' Putterman said. In reaching the settlement, "nobody conceded anything,'' he added.

Filed in December, the lawsuit cast a cloud over the high-profile career of Ayres, a past president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

The patient, who alleged the molestation incidents occurred in 1977-78, did not come forward to police until decades later. Meanwhile, the San Mateo County court system continued to refer young boys who were either victims of abuse or juvenile offenders to Ayres for treatment.

The Ritalin Cancer Link

Almost 30 million prescriptions for Ritalin and similar drugs to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) were written last year in the United States; 23 million were for children. While these drugs are among the most widely prescribed medicines in the world, they also remain one of the most controversial.

The latest chapter in the debate over the safety of ADHD drugs: The Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) investigation regarding a link between Ritalin and cancer -- based on a small University of Texas study.

The findings showed damage to the chromosomes of 12 children who had taken Ritalin for three months. A grant proposal is in the works at the NIH to fund a much larger probe in 2006, involving many more patients and a variety of drugs.

See the story as reported in Forbes Magazine. There obviously some people in a major panic over this

Nazi Shrinks invented the Sex Doll

As seen on BlogCritic,

The Nazis invented the worst thing ever: the assembly-line death factory. But they also invented something else, perhaps the only legacy of theirs that endures to this very day. During World War II, Hitler's war machine created the world's first sex doll: Borghild.

Psychiatrist Dr. Rudolf Chargeheimer wrote the following note as the project went forward:

”The sure thing, purpose and goal of the dolls is to relieve our soldiers. They have to fight and not be on the browl or mingle with 'foreign womenfolk.' However: no real men will prefer a doll to a real woman, until our technicians meet the following quality standards:

The synthetic flesh has to feel the same as real flesh;
The doll’s body should be as agile and moveable as the real body;
The doll’s organ should feel absolutely realistic.”

Between June 1940 – 1941, IG Farben had already developed a number of ”skin-friendly polymers” for the SS. Their special characteristics: high-tensile strength and elasticity.

The cast of a suitable model proved to be more difficult. Borghild was meant to reflect the beauty-ideal of the Nazis: white skin, fair hair and blue eyes. Although the team considered a doll with brown hair, the SS Hygiene Institute insisted on manufacturing a ”Nordish doll.” Tschakert hoped to plaster-cast from a living model. A number of famous female athletes were invited to come to his studios.

But in a letter to Mrurgowsky, Tschakert came to this conclusion: ”Sometimes the legs are too short and look deformed, or the lady has a hollow back and arms, like a wrestler. The overall appearance is always dreadful and I fear there is no other way than to combine.” While Mrurgowsky still favoured a ”whole imprint” of prevailing diva Kristina Söderbaum, the Borghild-designer decided to build the doll’s mold in a ”modular way,” taking bits and pieces from different women. In Tschakert's view, the doll should be nothing less than a ”female best-form,” a ”perfect automaton of lust,” that would combine ”the best of all possible bodies.” The team agreed on a cheeky and naughty face, a look-a-like of actress Käthe von Nagy, but she politely declined to lend her face to Tschakert’s doll.

After Mrurgowsky’s exit, Dr. Hannussen took over, and rejected the idea to cast a face from a living person. He believed in an ”artificial face of lust,” which would be more attractive to soldiers. ”The doll has only one purpose and she should never become a substitute for the honourable mother at home ... When the soldier makes love to Borghild, it has nothing to do with love. Therefore the face of our anthropomorphic sex machine should be exactly like the common wanton’s face.”

Something strangely twisted, another fine legacy of modern psychiatry

Mental home worker used wild dogs to terrorize patients

A care worker from a notorious mental home here used to unleash feral dogs in the facility so that he could terrorize patients and ease his workload, sources told the Mainichi newspaper in Japan.

Shigemi Sudo, the care worker who has already been arrested for assaulting patients at the infamous Caritas no Ie mental home, is also accused of allowing the feral dogs to bite some patients' legs and buttocks.

Home officials are alleged to have been informed of Sudo's purported activities, but refused to take action against him.

Several sources have attested to the claims.

"It causes a lot of work for officials if patients get out of their rooms and start to panic, so Sudo seems to have used the dogs like watchdogs that would keep the patients from leaving their rooms," a former Caritas no Ie official told the Mainichi on condition of anonymity.

Several sources said that starting about five years ago, three feral dogs roamed around outside the grounds of the mental home. Sudo, 54, befriended the dogs, feeding them and giving them attention.

About three years ago, the sources allege, Sudo started bringing the dogs into the home when he was on duty.

Sudo did not keep the wild dogs on a leash. There were several reported instances from January to March last year when the feral dogs bit patients.

Patients were terrified of Sudo and his dogs, the sources said. When Sudo was on duty, patients would typically shut themselves up in their rooms and not come out.

Sudo knew which patients were most frightened by the feral dogs. When he approached these patients, there were times when he would deliberately make the dogs go closer to the terrified patient, the sources said.

When a patient was late at mealtime, Sudo would confiscate their meal and feed it to his dogs, the sources said.

Guardians of some patients learned of what Sudo had allegedly been doing and complained to Caritas no Ie operators. Operators did not deny the allegations, but said they could not punish Sudo because if he were fired they would not be able to find anybody else to perform his duties. (Mainichi)

Interview with a Psychiatrist

As seen on www.nomorefakenews.com , by JON RAPPOPORT

For the past year, I've been receiving communications from a practicing American psychiatrist, who has an office in the southeastern US. He sees patients privately and also works at a large hospital. Increasingly, this man has been expressing doubts about the drugs he has been prescribing.

Now, he has blown the lid off his own profession, and it appears he is ready to switch careers or become an alternative practitioner.

Here is an excerpt from our recent conversation:

Q: Why do you doubt the drugs?

A: They're toxic and injurious.

Q: Which ones?

A: All of them.

Q: And in particular?

A: The antidepressants. Paxil, Prozac, Zoloft, and so on. They are not showing, on balance, good results, and patients have been experiencing adverse effects.

Q: Such as?

A: Sleeplessness, nightmares, erratic behavior, highs and lows, crashes, attempts to commit suicide, exacerbated depression, violence, dramatic personality changes.

Q: Why do you think this is happening?

A: To be honest, I don't know. But my sense is, in general, that the drugs interfere in unpredictable ways with various neurotransmitter systems. I also believe they can work extreme changes in blood sugar levels and electrolyte levels. You know, it's not hard to create these effects with chemicals. The body is not able to integrate them in its normal functioning. I would compare it to suddenly setting up all sorts of roadblocks and detours and forced lane changes on a busy highway. You will get big trouble.

Q: Have you tried to communicate your concerns to colleagues and medical groups?

A: For a short time, I did. But I was given the cold shoulder. I got the distinct feeling I was being treated like some wayward child who had his facts all wrong.

Q: Who do you blame for this drugging catastrophe?

A: At the moment, everybody. The doctors, the drug companies, the FDA, the psychiatric teaching institutions, even the press. And at some point, patients are going to have to take responsibility and not follow the orders of their doctors.

Q: Do you believe that doctors should cut back and give the drugs to some people and not others?

A: That sounds good, but there is no way to know what effects the drugs will cause in any given individual, especially as time passes. Even in the short term, I have seen some frightening things.

Q: Do you believe the profession of psychiatry has made some kind of overarching deal with the drug companies?

A: Yes. The drug companies are everywhere. They stick their noses into everyone's business.

Q: What lies about the drugs have you had to purge from your own mind?

A: The main one is that they're some kind of miracle breakthrough. Another one is that I can rely on the judgments and certifications of the FDA. We're playing Russian Roulette out here. It's a very dangerous situation.

Q: Do you believe that some of the school shootings have resulted from children being on the antidepressants?

A: I didn't, until one day a sixteen-year-old patient of mine showed up for his appointment with a 9mm hand gun. Then I began to comb back through reports on a bunch of those shootings. I can tell you, it focuses the mind to see a young patient sitting across from you---you've put him on an antidepressant and now he's talking about "a new day" and he takes the gun out of his pocket and lays it on a table next to him by the Kleenex. You think to yourself, "I may have created a killer and his first victim could be me." People want to outlaw all guns. I'd start with the drugs.

Q: How about the diagnosis of depression itself?

A: I've come to realize that you can't do an interview with a patient and then come out with a shorthand assessment. It's wrong. It reduces all sorts of problems down to a label, and then you have your official gateway into the drugs.

Q: Your colleagues think you're over-reacting?

A: I think I'm under-reacting. I think we have an epidemic on our hands, but it has nothing to do with mental disorders. It has to do with the chemicals we're facilitating.

Q: This boy with the gun---were you able to talk him down?

A: I spent two hours with him that day. I told him he was having a reaction to the drug. At first, it made no sense to him. He was on a manic sort of ride. That really scared me---that I couldn't make him see what was happening to him. He was in the middle of an episode and he couldn't stand outside it. Finally, he eased up a little. He began to weep in my office. It wasn't really crying. Tears just ran down his cheeks while he was talking. He didn't seem to notice them. He had almost stopped being human. He was a...creature. He was on a mission of some kind. His view of the world had totally changed. In his mind set, destruction was the only course of action.

Q: And then?

A: He calmed down a little. I was afraid to ask him for the gun. He just picked it up and put it back in his pocket. After he left, I called his mother. She went home from her job and met him. I had asked her to call the police but she wouldn't. Later, she told me she sat and talked with him for a long time and then he handed over the gun. It was a very tense situation. I had her remove the bottle of pills from her medicine cabinet. Then I had to follow up. I weaned him slowly from the drug. It took two months. He finally sort of returned to being the person he was. Even then I wasn't sure he'd be okay. He was definitely addicted to the drug. Luckily, I didn't cut him off suddenly. He might have killed people during the withdrawal cycle.

Q: Did you continue to see this boy as a patient?

A: I did a nutritional assessment with the help of a doctor who is very good with that. We found the boy was having strange reactions to certain soft drinks that have speed-type boosters in them. We gradually weaned him off them. Then we discovered he was reacting to dyes and other chemicals in junk food. So we had to change his diet. That wasn't easy.

Q: He was addicted in several ways to chemicals.

A: That's right. There was peer pressure for him to keep eating junk. All his friends did. They called him weird for going off the food they were eating every day. Finally, I discovered that, five years before I saw him, he'd been on Ritalin for a year. You know, for ADHD. He'd been driven into depression by that. He basically felt, at eleven, that his life was over. All paths and interests were closed to him.

Q: How is he now?

A: Much better. But he's not all the way back.

Q: Do you think there is permanent brain damage?

A: I don't know. He's now living outside the US with his father. I get reports once in awhile.

Q: How does he feel about his own experience?

A: He wants it to be an example to other families.

Q: You didn't go into medicine to deal with this.

A: No. In school, my ideals were high. But I allowed myself to be led down the garden path. I fell for the sales pitch. I'm telling you, this is not a good situation. We are a society on the brink. Something has to be done.

Q: How do you feel about Bush's mental health screening program for all children?

A: All in all, it may turn out to be the worst thing he's done as president. It's just a tip of his hat to his pharmaceutical supporters. But the consequences---if this plan gets rolling---will be devastating.

Q: Is there some underlying principle at work here? Some paradigm that everyone is accepting that is putting us into a bad situation?

A: You know the answer to that. It's the combination of easy diagnosis plus the drug fix. The pill craze for everything. Take a drug and everything will work out. I see it as the classic street-drug promotion. Feel good. Take this drug and you'll feel different and better. Combine that with the basic immaturity of most people and you have the interlock. Why work out your problems and strive to have the life you want when you can arrive at the best destination with a pill? I'd take this a step further. If you stacked up all the tranquilizers and antidepressants, for adults, next to, say, marijuana, as a way of dealing with stress, I'd say that a very modest amount of a mild marijuana would be more successful than all those other drugs at the levels they're normally prescribed. If I were forced to recommend one or the other, I'd go with the marijuana. And I'd say the drug companies know this. Which is one reason why, in the US, the enforcement on marijuana has been stepping up. But again, you're always dealing with an individual. Each person is different. I've seen people who react very badly to pot. It affects them like a psychedelic.

Q: You're saying the science behind the antidepressants is false.

A: Absolutely. Judging by the effects of the drugs, it has to be. It may sound good and proper. All the right words are used. But I don't care about that anymore. I go by results. My eyes have been opened.

Q: Then why are the drug companies pushing these drugs?

A: I'm not an expert to speak to about that. Certainly there is the profit motive. But I think there is also the myth of progress.

Q: What do you mean?

A: That myth states that technology must keep making advances. It's the legend of forward motion. If technology is to be seen as good, it has to keep turning out better advances---otherwise something is wrong. And there can't be anything wrong.

Q: It's like a hectic race.

A: Yes. If you stop, you might fall down. Secrets might be exposed. Shortcomings might show up. So you have to keep pushing. You have to keep saying you're doing better and better. I'm sure you can see where this gets you. You make new mistakes to cover up old mistakes. You become careless. You lie. You hire promotion people to tout your work. You keep the whole thing rolling forward, no matter what. That's where we are.

Q: And you were carried on that wave.

A: For many years. But now I've stopped.

Q: Is it uncomfortable?

A: Not so much anymore. But at first I was very upset and angry. I was blaming everyone but myself. I felt like I was in chains, that my whole education and career were at stake. And I was my career. What else did I have? Getting off the boat was quite difficult. I had every advantage this society has to offer. I was---

Q: The expert.

A: Yes. That's a powerful feeling. People come to you with questions and you have the answers. If you don't, then you're thrown down in the pit with everyone else. Part of being a doctor is being above the pit, out of the problem. You're the solution. You don't want to fall. And the only thing that keeps you from falling is what you've learned. Your knowledge. When you see that that's based on lies, you don't know what to do. It's like being a priest and realizing that everyone gets to the far shore by his own means. You don't want to let go of the doctrine that put you on the pulpit.

Q: So what would a new paradigm look like?

A: For mental health? We have to get rid of all the old classsifications and disorders. We have to let all that sink into oblivion. That was wrong. That was largely fantasy.

Q: It was a story.

A: We told it, and now we have to stop telling it. Because we've ended up intervening in people's lives in a very pernicious way.

Q: Part of the story necessitated that kind of intervention.

A: Yes. And, not to take myself off the hook, but people want that kind of story, as you say. They want that "expert story." They want someone else to come in and tell them what to do and what to think and what drug to take.

Q: Why do you think that is?

A: Because people have taken the easy path. They have opted for what I would call a flat version of reality. If they started adding dimensions on their own---

Q: They would be forced to tell their own story.

A: In the terms you're using, yes. That's what would happen.

Q: And how would society look then?

A: Much different. Much more risky, perhaps, but much more alive. Psychology and psychiatry don't allow for that kind of outcome. All mental disorders are constructs. They're named by committees, as I'm sure you know. They're a form of centralized pattern. In this context, the word "shrink" is very appropriate. That's what we've been doing. Shrinking down the perception of what reality and the mind are all about.

Q: Can you imagine what would happen if the lid were taken off?

A: I work with that idea every day now.

Q: And how does it look?

A: More and more appealing.

Medical Journals Are an Extension of the Marketing Arm of Pharmaceutical Companies

“Journals have devolved into information laundering operations for the pharmaceutical industry”, wrote Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, in March 2004 [1]. In the same year, Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, lambasted the industry for becoming “primarily a marketing machine” and co-opting “every institution that might stand in its way” [2]. Medical journals were conspicuously absent from her list of co-opted institutions, but she and Horton are not the only editors who have become increasingly queasy about the power and influence of the industry. Jerry Kassirer, another former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, argues that the industry has deflected the moral compasses of many physicians [3], and the editors of PLoS Medicine have declared that they will not become “part of the cycle of dependency…between journals and the pharmaceutical industry” [4]. Something is clearly up.

As published in the PLOS Journal of Medicine

Desperate plight of Russia's mentally ill

Even Russia seems to be reformimg their mental health institutions, as seen in this BBC report

In Russia's psychiatric institutions known as "internats", there is not much in the way of facilities or medical care, and as Oleg Boldyrev has discovered, most of the inmates will never be able to leave. On the edge of Pervouralsk, a small town in the Urals, past the brick-making plant, the streets get smaller, the tarmac turns to dirt and the wooden houses give way to tall spruce trees.

Then, all of a sudden, you are confronted by a long grey building, four storeys high. It is an "internat", a final destination for thousands of people who are mentally ill, have learning difficulties or who simply have nowhere else to go. Once you are here, it is almost invariably forever.

Internats are supposed to offer psycho-neurological treatment, but that is not really the case. They do not come under a medical authority and so are chronically short of nurses and doctors. There is little treatment on offer.

Reform is coming. The article mentions one bright spot, but it is still just a drop in the bucket.

Government Backed Drug Marketing Schemes

As seen in an Introduction to a Commentary published on Yuba Net

At an FDA hearing on the safety of psychotropic drugs on Feb 2, 2004, dozens of tortured parents testified that their children had committed suicide or other violent acts after being prescribed the same drugs that are being marketed in the Bush-backed pharmaceutical industry schemes aimed at recruiting the nations 52 million school children as customers.

In July 2003, the Bush appointed New Freedoms Commission on Mental Health (NFC) recommended screening all children for mental illness and designated TeenScreen as a model program to ensure that every student receives a mental health check-up before finishing high school.

The NFC also has a preferred drug program in place modeled after the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP), that lists what drugs are to be used on children found to be mentally ill.

The list contains every drug that people complained about at the FDA hearing, including Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, Wellbutron, Zyban, Remeron, Serzone, Effexor, Buspar, Risperdal, Zyprexa, Seroqual, Geodone, Depakote, Adderall, and Prozac.

There is little if any evidence that these drugs work on children but nevertheless, an estimated 10 million children in the US are now taking these mind-altering drugs even though they have documented side-effects including suicidal ideation, mania, psychosis, and future drug dependence.

FDA Seeks Suicide Data for Epilepsy Drugs

In addition to use by millions of people with epilepsy, anti-seizure drugs are becoming widely used to treat psychiatric illnesses such as bipolar disorder -- also called manic depression -- as well as pain and other conditions. Some epilepsy drugs have FDA approval for various other uses, while others are prescribed "off-label."

Prompted in part by an attorney's claims against the leading anticonvulsant, Neurontin, the FDA last month asked makers of all epilepsy medicines to reanalyze research studies done with the drugs to see if there is any evidence of increased suicide risk, particularly those who use them for psychiatric illnesses instead of seizure prevention.

It's the same type of analysis that the FDA last year ordered for antidepressants amid controversy over their use by children and teenagers -- and ultimately those drugs were linked to an increase in suicidal thoughts and actions in young patients.

Women Allege Witchcraft Used As Psych Treatment, Damages Sought

Two women have filed lawsuits claiming a psychologist at an Illinois hospital used witchcraft during treatments and threatened patients. The lawsuits allege Delnor-Community Hospital did not stop the unorthodox treatments. One seeks more than $50,000 and the other more than $1 million.

Neither is seeking damages from the psychologist, who has not worked at the hospital since January, because of a fear of retribution from the woman, the plaintiffs' attorney told the Arlington Heights (Ill.) Daily Herald. One suit was filed in Kane County, Ill., court and the other in federal court.

One of the plaintiffs alleges while undergoing treatment for a neurological syndrome, she was taught spells and told to divorce her husband. She moved in with the psychologist and allegedly was forced to take care of the house and take nude pictures of the psychologist.

The other suit alleges the psychologist told the patients to strip and commit acts of self-mutilation and join a Wicca coven, the newspaper said.

The newspaper said the accused psychologist did not respond to calls for comment. The hospital said the complaints have been reported to police and state health regulators.

The full report from the Daily Herald follows:

St. Charles woman files suit in hospital witchcraft case

By Tona Kunz
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Tuesday, April 12, 2005

A third person has claimed that a former St. Charles psychologist used witchcraft on her and shared private medical details between patients.

Kathleen Carlson of St. Charles filed a lawsuit late Friday against Delnor-Community Hospital in Geneva, claiming that the hospital failed to monitor Leitita Libman, a psychologist working at the hospital from 1994 until January 2005.

The lawsuit is the third in as many weeks filed against the hospital claiming Libman used witchcraft under the guise of therapy.

None of the suits have been filed against Libman because of fear of retribution, said Richard Stavins, a Chicago attorney representing the women in two Kane County lawsuits and one federal lawsuit.

Libman is accused of threatening family members of the women, bragging about being an expert in poison and pulling a gun on one of the women.

Libman could not be reached for comment Monday, but previously in a published report denied the allegations or bringing religion of any type into therapy.

“Libman’s statement that it never happened is just absolute nonsense,” Stavins said. “I can understand her arguing that one person made it up, but three? No way.”

Delnor officials declined to comment on the specifics of the lawsuits because of employee and patient privacy laws, but said that Libman stopped working at the hospital in January 2005 shortly after the hospital investigated a patient complaint against her.

“We take complaints of this nature extremely seriously,” said hospital spokesman Brian Griffin.

Delnor reported Libman to the Geneva police and the Illinois Department of Professional Regulations. State officials would not confirm if an investigation into Libman is ongoing.

The lawsuits claim that Libman tried to treat the women’s depression and chronic pain with spells, pentagrams and the freeing of sexual inhibitions.

In the previous two suits from a former Woodstock native and another woman from Kane County, who asked to have her hometown anonymous, Libman is accused of trying to get the women to join her Wiccan coven.

That has angered area Wiccan practitioners who say that the accusations leveled at Libman do not meet the guidelines of the God and Goddess-based pagan religion. The religion has a harm-none tenet at odds with claims of orgies, threats and violent spells.

The newest lawsuit claims Libman used what she called witchcraft, but does not mention Wiccan connections.

The new lawsuit also stands out for its allegations that Libman said she was a superior being brought to Earth in a spaceship and that she tried to have Carlson falsely committed when Carlson disagreed with her.

Carlson is asking for more than $50,000 in damages for her care under Libman at the hospital’s St. Charles campus between September 2002 and January 2005 when her depression and arthritis worsened.

“This kind of outrageous care makes everything worse,” Stavins said.

If it weren't for the outrageous nature of the offenses, there are any number of Witty remarks that could be made.

The Myth Of Attention Deficit Disorder

As seen in the Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter # 184 By Thomas Armstrong 4-7-05

Over the past ten years, attention deficit disorder (ADD) or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has emerged from the relative obscurity of cognitive psychologists, research laboratories to become the "disease du jour" of America's schoolchildren. Accompanying this popularity has been a virtually complete acceptance of the validity of this "disorder" by scientists, physicians, psychologists, educators, parents, and others. Upon closer critical scrutiny, however, there is much to be troubled about concerning ADD/ADHD as a real medical diagnosis.

There is no definitive objective set of criteria to determine who has ADD/ADHD and who does not. Rather, instead, there are a loose set of behaviors (hyperactivity, distractibility, and impulsivity) that combine in different ways to give rise to the "disorder." These behaviors are highly context-dependent. A child may be hyperactive while seated at a desk doing a boring worksheet, but not necessarily while singing in a school musical. These behaviors are also very general in nature and give no clue as to their real origins. A child can be hyperactive because he's bored, depressed, anxious, allergic to milk, creative, a hands-on learner, has a difficult temperament, is stressed out, is driven by a media-mad culture, or any number of other possible causes. The tests that have been used to determine if someone has ADD/ADHD are either artificially objective and remote from the lives of real children (in one test, a child is asked to press a button every time he sees a 1 followed by a 9 on a computer screen) , or hopelessly subjective (many rating scales ask parents and teachers to score a child's behavior on a scale from 1 to 5: these scores depend upon the subjective attitudes more than the actual behaviors of the children involved).

The treatments used for this supposed disorder are also problematic. Ritalin use is up 500% over the past six years, yet it does not cure the problem, it only masks symptoms, and there are several disadvantages: children don,t like taking it, children use it as an "excuse" for their behavior ("I hit Ed because I forgot to take my pill."), and there are some indications it may be related to later substance abuse of drugs like cocaine. Behavior modification programs used for kids labeled ADD/ADHD work, but they don,t help kids become better learners. In fact, they may interfere with the development of a child's intrinsic love of learning (kids behave simply to get more rewards), they may frustrate some kids (when they don,t get expected rewards), and they can also impair creativity and stifle cooperation.

ADD/ADHD is a popular diagnosis in the 1990's because it serves as a neat way to explain away the complexities of turn-of-the-millenium life in America. Over the past few decades, our families have broken up, respect for authority has eroded, mass media has created a "short-attention-span culture," and stress levels have skyrocketed.

When our children start to act out under the strain, it's convenient to create a scientific-sounding term to label them with, an effective drug to stifle their "symptoms," and a whole program of ADD/ADHD workbooks, videos, and instructional materials to use to fit them in a box that relieves parents and teachers of any worry that it might be due to their own failure (or the failure of the broader culture) to nurture or teach effectively.

Mainly, the ADD/ADHD label is a tragic decoy that takes the focus off of where it's needed most: the real life of each unique child. Instead of seeing each child for who he or she is (strengths, limitations, interests, temperaments, learning styles etc.) and addressing his or her specific needs, the child is reduced to an "ADD child," where the potential to see the best in him or her is severely eroded (since ADD/ADHD puts all the emphasis on the deficits, not the strengths), and where the number of potential solutions to help them is highly limited to a few child-controlling interventions.

Instead of this deficit-based ADD/ADH paradigm, I,d like to suggest a wellness-based holistic paradigm that sees each child in terms of his or her ultimate worth, and addresses each child's unique needs. To do this, we need to provide a wide range of options for parents or teachers.

50 Ways to Improve Your Child's Behavior and Attention Span without Drugs, Labels, or Coercion (for detailed information about each way, see The Myth of the A.D.D. Child


Order book by calling: 1-800-247-6553.

1. Provide a balanced breakfast.
2. Consider the Feingold diet
3. Limit television and video games
4. Teach self-talk skills.
5. Find out what interests your child.
6. Promote a strong physical education program in your child's school.
7. Enroll your child in a martial arts program.
8. Discover your child's multiple intelligences (link)
9. Use background music to focus and calm.
10. Use color to highlight information.
11. Teach your child to visualize.
12. Remove allergens from the diet.
13. Provide opportunities for physical movement.
14. Enhance your child's self-esteem.
15. Find your child's best times of alertness.
16. Give instructions in attention-grabbing ways.
17. Provide a variety of stimulating learning activities.
18. Consider biofeedback training.
19. Activate positive career aspirations.
20. Teach your child physical-relaxation techniques.
21. Use incidental learning to teach.
22. Support full inclusion of your child in a regular classroom.
23. Provide positive role models.
24. Consider alternative schooling options.
25. Channel creative energy into the arts.
26. Provide hands-on activities
27. Spend positive times together.
28. Provide appropriate spaces for learning.
29. Consider individual psychotherapy.
30. Use touch to soothe and calm.
31. Help your child with organizational skills.
32. Help your child appreciate the value of personal effort.
33. Take care of yourself.
34. Teach your child focusing techniques.
35. Provide immediate feedback.
36. Provide your child with access to a computer.
37. Consider family therapy.
38. Teach problem-solving skills.
39. Offer your child real-life tasks to do.
40. Use "time-out" in a positive way.
41. Help your child develop social skills.
42. Contract with your child.
43. Use effective communication skills.
44. Give your child choices.
45. Discover the treat the four types of misbehavior.
46. Establish consistent rules, routines, and transitions.
47. Hold family meetings.
48. Have your child teach a younger child.
49. Use natural and logical consequences.
50. Hold a positive image of your child.

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Resources

Armstrong, Thomas.
The Myth of the ADD Child: 50 Ways to Improve Your Child's Behavior and Attention Span without Drugs, Labels, or Coercion. New York: Plume, 1997.

To Empower, Not Control!: A Holistic Approach to ADD/ADHD, Reaching Today's Youth, Winter, 1998.

ADD as a Social Invention," Education Week, October 18, 1995.

Labels Can Last a Lifetime," Learning, May/June, 1996.

Why I Believe Attention Deficit Disorder is a Myth," Sydney's Child [Australia], September, 1996.


Divoky, Diane and Peter Schrag. The Myth of the Hyperactive Child. New York: Pantheon, 1975.

Goodman, Gay, and Mary Jo Poillon. "ADD: Acronym for Any Dysfunction or Difficulty,"

Journal of Special Education, Vol. 26, No. 1, 1992.

Griss, Susan. Minds in Motion: A Kinesthetic Approach to Teaching Elementary Curriculum.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1998.

Kohn, Alfie. "Suffer the Restless Children," Atlantic Monthly, November, 1989, pp. 90-100.

McGuinness, Diane. When Children Don't Learn. New York: Basic, 1985.

Merrow, John. " Attention Deficit Disorder: A Dubious Diagnosis," (Video). The Merrow Report, 588 Broadway, Suite 510, New York, NY 10012,212-941-8060; 212-941-8068 (fax).

Patterson, Marilyn Nikimaa. Every Body Can Learn: Engaging the Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence in the Everyday Classroom. Tucson, AZ: Zephyr Press, 1997.

Reid, Robert, John W. Maag, and Stanley F. Vasa, "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder as a Disability Category: A Critique," Exceptional Children, Vol. 60, No. 3, pp. 198-214.

Ritalin Death

The Story of the death of a child due to Ritalin, as told by a parent.

My name is Lawrence Smith; I am here to let you know about the death of our fourteen-Year-old Son Matthew. He died on March 21, 2000. The cause was determined to be from the long- term (age 7-14) use of Methylphenidate a medication commonly known as Ritalin.

The Certificate of Death under due to, (or because of) reads. Death caused from Long Term Use of Methylphenidate, (Ritalin). According to Dr. Ljuba Dragovic, The chief pathologist at the Oakland County Medical Examiners office in Michigan said upon autopsy, Matthew's heart showed clear signs of small vessel damage, the type caused by stimulant drugs like amphetamines.

The medical examiners told me that a full-grown man's heart weighs about 350 grams and that Matthew's heart weight was about 402 grams.

Matthew did not have a preexisting heart disease

Mass drugging of schoolchildren remains dark secret of public education, psychiatry

As reported on News Target.com

Believe it or not, until recently, it has been perfectly legal for schools to force schoolchildren to be put on psychoactive mind-altering drugs as a condition of attending that school. That is, the school administrator or counselor could insist that a certain child be dosed with mind-altering drugs. It sounds bizarre, but it was absolutely true until just recently.

Finally, Congress has passed legislation that bans schools from forcing parents to drug their children for behavioral problems. This law was even signed by President Bush, believe it or not.

Now you may think that, gee, this wasn't a problem, I never heard about this. But in fact it was a huge problem. There have been many cases where children were denied an education because their parents refused to put them on narcotic stimulants, antidepressants and other drugs that we now know cause violent behavior and increased risk of suicide. There were schools actually forcing parents to put their children on drugs that would cause aggressive behavior and suicidal thoughts.

And, in extreme cases, these drugs actually caused or contributed to the kind of mass murders like we saw in Columbine where the two high school students picked up assault rifles, went to school, and blew away teachers and classmates. These two kids were on antidepressant drugs -- it's still one of the most censored stories of the last decade.

Another Teen Killer was on Prozac

The 16-year-old Minnesota outsider who killed nine people before taking his own life on Monday was being treated with the controversial anti-depressant Prozac. The revelation yesterday by Jeff Weise's aunts, Shauna and Tammy Luscher, on CBS News' "The Early Show" revived the debate over whether such drugs induce homicidal and suicidal thoughts in children and teens.

Eric Harris, one of the teen gunmen in the infamous Columbine massacre in 1999, had been prescribed Prozac, as had Kip Kinkel, who killed his parents and classmates at Thurston High School in Oregon in 1998.

His grandmother, Shelda Lussier, 54, said he saw a mental health professional at Red Lake Hospital on Feb. 21, the same day his prescription was refilled for 60 milligrams a day of Prozac, which he had been taking since last summer, the Washington Post reported.

Studies have linked Prozac and similar antidepressants to a greater risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior in kids. In October, the Food and Drug Administration revised the drugs' packaging to warn health professionals that they should closely monitor young patients when an antidepressant is prescribed or the dose is changed. Prozac proponents maintain that that association is all just a bad coincidence

Are your children crazy?

Congress and President Bush apparently think that a lot of children have a "mental health" problem. Or that enough of them do to justify taking millions of dollars from taxpayers to fund a universal "mental health screening" for children, and eventually for everyone.

Personally, I think -- from the perspective of a person who never had any -- that almost all children act crazy. Those who don't are, by definition, abnormal, because they don't act like the others.

The main problem with about half of them is that they are boys. Such children are obviously made of snips and snails and puppy dog tails. On the farm there is a solution for that: a procedure for turning boy lambs into non-ram lambs. After a quick little operation, they act like peaceful little lambs instead of aggressive, disruptive rams.

We don't do surgery like that on little boys, of course, but we do have our methods: such as behavioral therapy and chemicals. [...]

Teams of experts are awaiting the infusion of cash. They'll be ensconced in your child's school before you even know it. A bonus is that your little darlings will probably give them quite a bit of information about you also, and then you too can receive therapy you didn't know you needed.

Do you sometimes raise your voice? Ever spank them? Hug them inappropriately? Have politically incorrect attitudes? Use forbidden words? Own a gun? Smoke cigarettes, especially indoors? Read extremist literature? Refuse to recycle? Prepare for a knock on the door.

As Seen in the UPI Article
Outside View: Are your children crazy?
By Jane Orient, M.D.
Outside View Commentato

Alliance for Human Research Protection

The Alliance for Human Research Protection (AHRP) is a national network of lay people and professionals dedicated to advancing responsible and ethical medical research practices, to ensure that the human rights, dignity and welfare of human subjects are protected, and to minimize the risks associated with such endeavors.

Over the past decade, the explosion of biomedical research has not been accompanied by an effective system of oversight or enforcement to protect those who volunteer. A body of well-documented evidence shows that in numerous instances the rights of human subjects have been violated. Unsuspecting research volunteers have sometimes suffered grievous injuries and even preventable death.

The causes are clear:

• Research is increasingly driven by commercial concerns.
  
• Conflicts of Interest are ubiquitous.
  
• Disclosure of risks may be incomplete.
  
• Regulatory safeguards have been violated.
  

Lax oversight by Institutional Review Boards has failed to prevent ethical violations even at major research institutions (e.g., University of Rochester, University of Pennsylvania, Duke University, University of Oklahoma, Johns Hopkins University, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Harvard University, and the National Institutes of Health).

This year, more than 15 million Americans will be recruited into clinical trials.

The AHRP mission is to stand up - and speak out - for the human rights of research subjects of human experiments, especially those who are vulnerable and /or susceptible to manipulation and exploitation. Those who are incapable of exercising their right to informed consent are in greatest need of protection from research abuse

• children (some as young as preschool age),
  
• elderly residents of nursing homes, and others with impaired reasoning capacity, and
  
• people suffering from a disabling mental illness.
  

Psychiatric Failure in Cannibalism Case

As seen in this report, a pychotic criminal who was inside the Broadmoor secure mental hospital in Britain [for a hideous crime which included cannibalism] was being assessed for a possible return to the community by the mental health esperts there.

The court was told that the mental health system had let the public down after Bryan was released from Rampton special hospital where he was sent after the manslaughter of shop assistant Nisha Sheth, in Chelsea, in 1993.

Aftab Jafferjee, prosecuting, said: “The last two killings have taken place when the defendant was under the care of the mental health regime which has manifestly failed to protect the public. That there was a significant failure within the mental health care regime in recognising the danger that the defendant presented is plain.”

And David Etherington QC, defending, agreed, saying Bryan “should have been kept in conditions of the highest security”.

Sentencing him to two life sentences today, Judge Giles Forrester told Bryan he would never be released because he was too dangerous.

He said: “You killed on these last two occasions because it gave you a thrill and a feeling of power when you ate flesh. The violence on each occasion was extreme and unpredictable, accompanied by bizarre and sexual overtones.”

Referring to Mr Cherry, he added: “You ate his flesh. You fried his brain in his kitchen.”

Abuse of Power by a depressed, suicidal psychologist who lies to have people committed

News from our friends in Florida that a psychologist has been convicted of lying on committal forms so that she could have a pesky neighbor put away for a few days. Psychologist Holli Bodner was feuding with neighbor Jean Pierre Villar for a year, and apparently got fed up enough to actually have him committed to an institution for a three day evaluation against his will. Florida law provides that such committals may be made when someone is a danger to himself or others, but clearly there is ample room for abuse.

A psychologist accused of making false statements has pled no contest to a perjury charge Monday afternoon. The false statments led authorities to wrongfully involuntarily commit a Longboat Key, Florida man that she was having a dispute with.

Sitting inside Circuit Judge Douglas Henderson's [Florida] courtroom, Ana Villar coddled her weeping daughter-in-law, Erika Villar, as they listened to Holli Bodner explain why she impulsively asked authorities to arrest Jean Pierre Villar and have him undergo an involuntary mental evaluation in April 2003.

Prosecutors were seeking 10 days imprisonment, three months of probation and termination of Bodner's medical license. "Taking somebody's freedom away is egregious," assistant state attorney Darlene Ragoonanan told the court.

Henderson sentenced Bodner to 10 weekends of jail time starting at 6 p.m. March 25. She was also sentenced to six months of probation. An appeal bond was set at $10,000.

Bodner was scheduled to stand trial on Monday. Her license to practice psychology is under review by the Board of Medicine, attorneys said.

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After the Longboat Key Police Department failed to register Bodner's complaint against Villar, Bodner turned to the Manatee County Sheriff's Office, filing a Baker Act against Villar at the courthouse on April 9, 2003.

"I was so in fear for months of the ongoing barrage of this man," Bodner told Henderson. "I just wanted somebody to stop it."

Villar, who had a back injury, was taken into custody for mental evaluation. Family members claimed sheriff's deputies used excessive force while taking him into custody, causing his condition to worsen. Villar died in November.

"I just think 10 days in jail is not enough for what she did," Erika Villar told Henderson, as she cried. "He really couldn't do anything after that."

While issuing his sentence, Henderson noted that judges usually place more weight in issuing a Baker Act that is filed by a physician. Bodner never medically evaluated Villar as a patient.

Is it me or is there something disturbing about a depressed, suicidal psychologist who lies to have people committed and is still working?