Biological Psychiatry—Greatest Health Care Fraud in History

2.11.10 – Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD – Medications and medication checks are what they are all about today, which with no disease/abnormality to make normal or more nearly so, are exogenous chemicals put into the normal body and brain

Biological Psychiatry—Greatest Health Care Fraud in History

By Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD

February 11, 2010

In Revising Book On Disorders Of the Mind, Benedict Carey (NY Times, A-1, February 10, 2010) writes, “Far fewer children would get a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.”  Were this to result from a re-write of psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), Rebecca Riley of Hull, Massachusetts, diagnosed ADHD and ‘bipolar at 2 ½ years of age, multiply drugged and dead at 4, might still be alive today.  I am a physician (a neurologist), who like all real physicians diagnoses and treats organic/physical diseases—demonstrable abnormalities–gross (a mass, tumor), microscopic (cancer cells) or chemical (diabetes, gout, PKU).  Whether a physical abnormality is present or not determines whether a disease is present or not—the physical abnormality is the disease.  Nor is this ever altered by a rewrite of or any article or text, as is characteristic of psychiatry.  Because psychiatrists go to medical school, learn of things normal, abnormal (diseases, pathology) and how to tell the difference (diagnosis), their legerdemain leads the naïve, trusting, public-at-large to believe that the ‘diseases’/ ‘disorders’/ ‘chemical imbalances’ they diagnose from their magical DSM are actual diseases and that the poisons they reflexively prescribe actually balance a chemical imbalance within the brain that these charlatans neither know or understand.  Nor are they interested any longer in understanding the Mind that Carey’s title references.

Medications and medication checks are what they are all about today, which with no disease/abnormality to make normal or more nearly so, are exogenous chemicals put into the normal body and brain (as in Rebecca Riley’s)—poisons.  In fact, all drugs are poisons.  Only those that make a disease/abnormality normal or more nearly normal can be called medications (e.g., insulin for diabetes, penicillin for an infection).  Carey continues: “For months they (revisions) have been the subject of intense speculation and lobbying by advocacy groups…” Since when do physicians determine diagnoses by the “lobbying of advocacy groups…”?  I never did.  Do cardiologists?  Cancer specialists?  Will advocacy groups determine your diagnoses?  Your child’s?  “Your treatment?” Psychiatrist Michael First, an editor of the DSM-IV, states, “Anything you put in that book, any little change you make, has huge implications not only for psychiatry but for pharmaceutical marketing, research, for the legal system, for who’s considered to be normal or not, for whose considered disabled… the more disorders you put in, the more people get labels…” If this does not send shivers down your spine you are asleep or already drugged.  Psychiatrist, Jack McClellan of the University of Washington confessed, “The treatment of bipolar disorder is meds first, meds second and meds third…” Exactly Rebecca Riley’s prescription.

On Nov 10, 2008, Supriya Sharma, Director General of Health Canada (like our FDA) wrote  “For mental/psychiatric disorders in general, including depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and ADHD, there are no confirmatory gross, microscopic or chemical abnormalities that have been validated for objective physical diagnosis…” On March 12, 2009, Donald Dobbs of the FDA reluctantly confessed, “I consulted with the FDA new drug review division responsible for approving psychiatric drug products and they concurred with the response you enclosed from Health Canada.”  In other words, ‘no disease’!  And yet the CDC reports that 4.5 million children 5-17 years of age were diagnosed with ADHD as of 2006 and that diagnoses were increasing at 3% per year.  Diagnoses of so-called ‘childhood bipolar disorder’ rose from zero in the mid-nineties to between 2 and 3 million today, largely due to the disease-mongering efforts of Biederman, et al of the Harvard/Massacheusetts General Hospital Department of Pediatric Psychopharmacology.

In 2009 Gould et al reported that that the rate of sudden cardiac deaths in children on amphetamines/psychostimulants for the fraudulent, non-existent ‘disease’ ADHD is 7.4 times as prevalent as in children taking no such medication, while Ray et al reported that the rate of sudden cardiac deaths in adults on antipsychotics is twice that in a normal control population.

If one poison doesn’t get you that the next one will.  Or, as in the case of Rebecca Riley, are we doomed by diagnosis—374 of them in the DSM-IV.  How many there will be in the 2013, DSM-V?

Physicians are supposed to diagnose and treat diseases—physical abnormalities, and they are supposed to be patient advocates.  Here we learn that psychiatrists do not diagnose or treat actual diseases and that that they advocate not for their patients but for Big Pharma—the pharmaceutical industry.  They are, in fact, an arm of Big Pharma and of government and will control us with their diagnoses and drugs whenever asked to do so and whenever more profit is called for.

Their disease-mongering insists that one in four adults—approximately 57.7 million Americans— experience a mental health disorder in a given year, that one in 17 lives with a serious mental illness and that one in 10 children live with a serious mental or emotional disorder.

Will you sit still for diagnosis and drugging?  Are we lemmings or what?

Filed under: antidepressants, antipsychotics, drugging children, Drugging Vets, Fred Baughman MD, pharmacology, biological psychiatry, disease mongering, DSM, greatest health care fraud, in history, lemmings, medication

1031 Deaths of Babies Exposed to Psychotropic Drugs

“There’s no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.”
- President Dwight David Eisenhower

Below is a link that shows some of the MedWatch reports submitted to the FDA of deaths caused to babies by exposure prenatally and neonatally to psychotropic drugs. This does not include the birth defects and withdrawal syndromes for babies who did survive exposure, which seems to be the only thing we usually hear about in the media concerning the drugs’ risks for babies. These figures are based on about a four year time period and represent from 1-10% of likely actual deaths. Keep in mind that these were preventable deaths of helpless babies which would not have occurred were it not for the exposure to psychotropic drugs prenatally and neonatally.

Go to http://psychdrugdangers.com/MothersAct.html and look through the summary tables for the 1,031 Abortions, Miscarriages & Other Deaths. You can see the breakdown for each drug class.

Filed under: "mood stabilizers", "prevention", Effexor, Effexor in pregnancy, experimentation, forced 'treatment', Fred Baughman MD, Indiana, Informed Consent, Isaac Philo, Julie Edgington, Katherine Stone, lawsuits, Melanie Stokes, mothers act, advocacy, anti-anxiety medication, anticonvulsants, antidepressants, antipsychotics, Katherine Stone, legislation, mothers act, Postpartum Support International, PSI, Robert Menendez, stimulants, The MOTHERS Act

“Medical Ethicist” Promotes Offering Ritalin Over The Counter – Dr. Fred Baughman comments

Re: Let students buy brain-boosting drugs such as Ritalin ‘over the counter’ says academic
Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2009 15:54:26 -0800

Fred Baughman, MD, author of THE ADHD FRAUD www.Trafford.com comments on:

Let students buy brain-boosting drugs such as Ritalin ‘over the counter’ says academic
By Daily Mail Reporter
January 2, 2009

Professor John Harris of Manchester University, a medical ethicist and philosopher-not a physician-says Ritalin and other psychostimulants-all basically amphetamines, help normal students study and learn and should be made available to one and all, over-the-counter, next to breath-mints and chewing gum, to help them study.    

As a physician aware why such drugs are “controlled” substances, I can only imagine that we have, in Dr. Harris, one who has had a convincing experience with such a drug, or, alternatively, one who has yet-undeclared income from the manufacturers of such drugs.  How could any newspaper report such a pro-drugging suggestion without asking their source how much he, she or their university had been paid by the  pharmaceutical industry? 

Professor Harris claimed that a sizeable body of evidence showed that stimulants such as Ritalin, Adderall (a mix of amphetamine salts) and
Provigil (Modafinil)  -  described by U.S. students as ‘Viagra for the brain’  significantly improve concentration and academic performance.  

Calling methylphenidate, Ritalin, or any of the amphetamines, ‘cognition-enhancing,’ Professor Harris, references no proof.  There is no proof in those said to have the contrived, faux disease ADHD, and there is, as yet, no  proof in populations of normals.   If “yes” in the short term, what of accumulated side effects at one year? Three years? 10 years–if still alive?   

Harris told the Times Higher Education magazine that the side-effects of these drugs were not excessive and that ‘It would make sense to try to maximise their benefits.’ 

Testifying before The House of Representatives, September 29, 1970,  John D. Griffith, MD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, posited:  -”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.  A problem, now being considered in most of the Capitols of the Free World, is whether the benefits derived from Amphetamines outweigh their toxicity.  It is the consensus of the World Scientific Literature that the amphetamines are of very little benefit to mankind.  They are, however, quite toxic. After many years of clinical trials it is now evident that this antidepressant effect of amphetamines is very brief- on the order of days.  If a patient attempts to overcome this tolerance to the drug, he runs the risk of becoming addicted and even more depressed.”

A 1995 U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Background Paper on Methylphenidate, has this to say: “Methylphenidate is a Schedule II
central nervous systen (CNS) stimulant and shares many of the pharmacological effects of amphetamine, methamphetamine and cocaine”
[p.6]. ” Internationally, methylphenidate is viewed as having a very high potential for abuse and is listed in Schedule II of the Psychotropic Convention” [p.7]. “A recent communication from the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), expressed concern about non-governmental organizations and parental associations (CHADD) in the United States that are actively lobbying for the medical use of methylphenidate  for children with ADHD.  The INCB further stated that “financial transfer from a pharmaceutical company with the purpose to promote sales of an internationally controlled substance would be identified as hidden advertisement and in contradiction with provisions of the 1971 Convention.”

“In conjunction with the American Academy of Neurology, CHADD has submitted a petition to reschedule methylphenidate from schedule II to Schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA)” [p.4].

Nor has the INCB succumbed to enduring pressures, such as those of Dr. Harris, to reschedule them.  

In a prospective longitudinal study of 492 ADD/ADHD subjects and age-mate controls of Nadine Lambert and associates of the University of California, Berkeley “has provided evidence that childhood use of CNS treatment (amphetamines and Ritalin) is significantly and pervasively implicated in the uptake of regular smoking, in daily smoking in adulthood, in cocaine dependence, and in lifetime use of cocaine and stimulants.” [1] 

Studies that seem to have been commissioned, published by Biederman et al, allege that ADHD is a real disease, with substance abuse
disorder (SUD) a co-morbidity needing treatment with Ritalin and amphetamines to  prevent or mitigate the SUD. [2, 3] Here was Biederman doing his best to convince the public that taking substances of addiction early and often was the best way to prevent addiction.  Today he stands discredited by belated disclosures of his ties to industry.  While his so called “research” became the stuff of Novartis ads, they did nothing to change the science given us by the late, ever-scientific, Nadine Lambert.

As for Professor Harris’ assertion that the side-effects of these drugs-amphetamines and amphetamine cogeners are not excessive, consider this the following:  Of  2,993 adverse reaction (AR) reports concerning “Ritalin” or  “methylphenidate” alone, listed by the FDA’s Division of Pharmacovigilance and Epidemiology (DPE), from 1990 to 1997,  there were: 160 deaths, 569 hospitalizations (36 life-threatening),126 cardiovascular occurrences and 949 central or peripheral nervous system occurrences, 6 cases of  “cardiomyopathy,” 12 of “arrhythmia,” 7 of “bradycardia,” (slow pulse), 5 of “bundle branch block,” (impairment of conduction apparatus of the heart), 4 of “EKG abnormality,” 5 “extrasystole,” (a heart rhythm abnormalities),  3 “heart arrest,”  2 heart failure, right,” 10 “hypotension,” (low BP), 1 “myocardial infarction,” and 15 with “tachycardia” (rapid pulse).

Finally, we must all be reminded that figures from post-marketing, adverse drug reaction, voluntary reporting systems report no more
than 1 to 10 percent of adverse reactions.  To estimate the number of deaths for the period 1990 to 1997 due to Ritalin/methylphenidate
alone one would have to multiply the 160 deaths times 100 to get the maximum possible number or deaths and 160 x 10 to get the least
possible number.  For the maximum possible number of adverse drug reactions one would have to multiply 2993 x 100.  It must also be
understood that there are yet to be counted, separate, morbidity and mortality figures for mixed amphetamine salts (Adderall),
dextro-amphetamine, methamphetamine, pemoline, atomoxetine, dextro-methylphenidate, etc. 

Why is the post-marketing reporting of all deaths not required for at least a time, in the FDA-MedWatch program?   Because, the way it
is–grossly under-reporting the morbidity and mortality of all drugs, is exactly how Big Pharma wants it.  And what Big Pharma wants,
Congress provides.  

We are told that GPs in the UK wrote more than 535,000 prescriptions for antihyperactivity drugs in 2007  -  more than 10,000 a week,
double that of 2002.     What effect does Novartis (manufacturer of Ritalin) other stimulant manufacturers anticipate that Dr. Harris’
call to legalize amphetamines and make them available over the counter, next to the chewing gum, will have on their sales?  

References:

  1. Lambert N, Hartsough CS.  Prospective study of tobacco smoking and substance dependence among samples of ADHD and non-ADHD subjects. J Learn. Disabil. 1998; 31:533-544.
  2. Biederman J, Wilens T,  Mick E,  Spencer T,  Faraone SV.  Pharmacotherapy of Attention-deficit/HyperactivityDisorder Reduces Risk for Substance Use Disorder. PEDIATRICS Vol. 104 No. 2 August 1999, p. e20.
3.  ADHD Treatment Discourages Children From Drug Abuse Later USA TODAY – August 11, 2003

Filed under: 'ADHD', Fred Baughman MD, brain boosting, hyperactivity, substance abuse

The MOTHERS Act Blockers: ‘The most bitter pill’ by Jason Whited, Las Vegas City Life

Thanks to Jason Whited of the Las Vegas City Life newspaper for doing what few other reporters these days are willing to do and that is – reporting the truth. And thanks for the information on Carol Blocker’s new spin on ‘her’ bill.

The most bitter pill

Reid faces unexpected criticism on postpartum measure — from mothers suspicious of Big Pharma

by JASON WHITED
 

“AT times, the pressures that come with holding national office must outweigh the perks.                                             

Just ask U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid how he’s holding up these days.

As if working around the clock to hammer out a massive Wall Street bailout, avoiding a nationwide economic meltdown and ensuring the federal government has enough money to function during the upcoming congressional recess weren’t enough, Reid now faces ardent protests from Iowa to Texas for his support of a controversial measure that aims to reduce postpartum depression…”

In today’s Las Vegas City Life, Jason Whited reports on Harry Reid’s incorporation of The MOTHERS Act into his massive omnibus – the Advancing America’s Priorities Act, S. 3297. Whited writes that in 2005 alone, 2,727 people died because of antidepressant drugs according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Whited also points out that many health organizations have raised serious concerns about antidepressants and fills readers in on the facts about how negative trials went unpublished for years. Whited goes on to ask, “Considering all this bad press for Big Pharma, why is Reid so supportive of a program that could funnel millions of unsuspecting patients toward the industry?”

Near the end of this article we see a new twist on an old story… from Carol Blocker. Blocker is Melanie Blocker Stokes’ mom. Her new and ‘improved’ response to the MOTHERS Act criticism?

“Those who are against this [bill] don’t know anything about the illness,” says Blocker. “Melanie didn’t take the drugs, even though they prescribed them to her.”

Given the fact that Melanie was hospitalized many times, the likelihood of her never taking any psychotropic drugs is about zero. Moreover, as Mrs. Blocker admits, her daughter was electroshocked and prescribed four separate cocktails of antidepresant, anti-anxiety, and antipsychotic drugs. Obviously and unfortunately, Carol Blocker is misinformed. Though nothing she can do will bring back Melanie – passing this bill would only cause more mothers the same grief that Carol is feeling. I think that Carol deserves an apology from the doctors who drugged and shocked Melanie to death, at the very least. The fact that we all are horrified by Melanie’s death at the hands of psychiatry does not mean that we are any less sympathetic towards Melanie’s family. But unlike Carol Blocker or Harry Reid, we also sympathize with the thousands of women who have lost their babies due to antidepressant-induced spontaneous abortions, still births, fatal birth defects, and SIDS, and with the thousands of women who commit suicide every year as they were never warned that the drugs prescribed them can actually induce them to commit suicide.

I’m no stranger to trauma and grief, though I can’t say I know how Blocker feels. But neither can Carol Blocker say that I ‘don’t know anything’ about what she terms the ‘illness,’ or that I have no clue how Melanie felt… If you recall, I was suicidal and homicidal for four months on Zoloft, something proponents of the bill seem to repeatedly forget. Isaac nearly died right before my eyes and only after being prescribed Zoloft did I ever start contemplating killing myself or my son.

“Like Philo, her daughter didn’t want to take antidepressants either — a fatal mistake, she now says.” 

It’s not that I simply ‘didn’t want to take antidepressants,’ but fortunately for myself, my husband, and my children, I realized it was the drugs that were making me suicidal and psychotic. If not, I may have ended up like Melanie Stokes. And perhaps those proponents of drugging women should take a look at my YouTube video or Julie Edgington’s videos about Manie to see what exactly we are opposed to. We’re opposed to the use of as well as increasing the use of antidepressants among pregnant and nursing mothers because they are dangerous. We are opposed because the FDA and international drug regulatory agencies warn these drugs can and do cause suicidal thinking and ideation. We are opposed because people with no prior history of depression or suicidal tendencies have become so under the influence of these drugs, and numerous studies including those by Dr. David Healy verify this. So for Carol Blocker – or worse yet, Senator Harry Reid to make blanket statements that those of us who have nearly died or had our children nearly die say we are ‘misinformed’ is not only insulting, it is utter arrogance. We are not speaking from second hand experience, we lived it. We are not spouting drug company promotional statistics, we are citing drug regulatory agency warnings.

For my own mother, who was supervising me until I got off of Zoloft when Isaac was about 4 months old, I doubt she really understood what I was going through. “That’s not Amy,” she kept saying. But thankfully my mom found out the truth and insisted I read about it before it was too late. In fact, part of the reason I stopped taking Zoloft was that the FDA issued a black box suicide warning in the middle of my ‘treatment.’ How easily Blocker and Reid have ignored our own FDA’s statement of facts based on clinical trials showing that antidepressants double the rate of suicidality.

If it hadn’t been for people speaking out against these drugs at FDA hearings and elsewhere, I wouldn’t be here opposing the MOTHERS Act today. I would be dead or in prison, and Isaac might not be here. Toby would never have been born. The news I got from the FDA and other families came in the nick of time for me, though it was too late for Melanie. 

I would never wish what has happened to Carol Blocker, Melanie’s husband and loved ones, or most of all, Sommer – Melanie’s daughter – on anyone. That is what I find so hard to understand about those who push for this bill. Even when faced with the explanation for why their friends and loved ones have died or suffered, so many people do not want to accept that drugs or shock were the culprit. This would explain how someone who did lose her daughter could be okay with a bill that would assuredly cause more women to suffer as I suffered, as Melanie suffered, and as Andrea Yates and other moms are suffering. Whether or not The MOTHERS Act passes, women and children continue dying preventable deaths. But one thing is for certain – it is undeniable what the real intentions of those who push this bill are, and that is force.     

So, did Melanie take her drugs, or not? The record is now being complicated by Carol’s most recent statement, even though all the stories from the past 7 years in papers as well as on Carol’s own website, stated that (http://www.melaniesbattle.org/story.html):

“Melanie’s [sic] was hospitalized three times in seven weeks. She was given four combinations of anti-psychotic, anti-anxiety, and anti-depressant medications. She also underwent electroconvulsive therapy. Her family rallied around her with all their strength, but in the end, Melanie jumped to her death from the twelfth floor of a Chicago hotel.”

If we’re to assume it’s true that Melanie was on and off her meds, did she not want to take them because perhaps she knew that they were making her worse? If that’s the case, was that why she was hospitalized, so she could be given them forcibly? Or how about the electroshock… Was that given as an alternative to the four combinations of drugs which Blocker now claims her daughter didn’t want to take? How soon after Melanie’s fourth hospitalization (as is now claimed) did she stop taking drugs? The time lapse was approximately 11 days from the release from the hospital, if I remember correctly, until her death, and she was missing for about 3 days before her suicide. Was she in sudden withdrawal from four drugs when she jumped out of that hotel window?

Does Carol Blocker really consider it a ‘fatal mistake’ when women don’t ‘take their drugs?’ Is the real message here about The MOTHERS Act that women should be force-drugged? What about the provision in the bill which states that nobody knows the ’cause’ of PPD and psychosis and that we need more taxpayer-funded drug research to come up with a new drug – that what the NIH is already doing is not enough? That one seems to be based on the premise that all the drugs Melanie did indeed take simply didn’t work so we need to find new and better drugs. This entire bill and PR campaign is made up of mutually exclusive and absurd claims. ‘Take drugs. Drugs are good. Fund development of new drugs because we don’t know what we’re doing yet. But still take drugs. And go to the hospital. This is not about force. Oh wait, yes it is.’

So what I would like to see, and what America deserves if we are expected to live under a new ‘Melanie Blocker-Stokes’ regime of forced drugging for moms, are answers to the following questions:

1) What drugs was Melanie taking, and when?

2) What reaction did she have to the drugs and electroshock?

3) What made the doctors release her from the hospital? (Perhaps like I had to do to get released, she was again becoming compliant with her meds?)

4) If Carol Blocker now wants us to believe that her daughter never took antidepressants, or was in withdrawal from them when she ended her life, is the message here that women need to be forced to take drugs? Because that is sure what it sounds like. 

Carol Blocker also stated, “If government can act to avoid the death of just one more young mother or her newborn baby, it should do so.” Finally – a statement we can agree on. The only way that the government can or should avoid the death of just one more young mother or her baby is by staying out of women’s lives, health, medicine cabinets, and by leaving us with our right to life and liberty. Because passing The MOTHERS Act would not only not avoid more deaths, it would by its very nature cause even more.

One last thought: 

“Senator Reid stands firmly with the broad coalition of mental health and children’s groups who want this bill passed, and he hopes those blocking these women and children from the help they need will consider the toil their opposition is taking and let this important legislation move forward.”

How would the government staying out of the expansion of forced treatment prevent women from getting ‘help?’ I’ll ask Senator Reid to explain this one. According to the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, one third of pregnant women in the U.S. take psychotropic drugs at some point during their pregnancies. There are also forums online where you can learn about ‘support groups,’ and numerous pharmacies now offer generic prescriptions for $4. This just goes to show that Reid is out of touch and too proud to admit he could ever be wrong. That is the only real fatal mistake here.

If Senator Reid is going to stand firmly with the pHARMa cartel-influenced groups who want the bill passed – then it is up to us to keep the heat on and insist that the truth be told. Apparently no amount of facts would change his mind, but that does not mean that the American people have to accept his unbending will. 

Given that, I ask simply that the government fulfill its obligation of being for the people and by the people and doing what it was meant to do and that is to protect our rights, not take them away. That is the only purpose of Government. Not to oppress, but to promote freedom – and The MOTHERS Act turns women into slaves of Pharma and the government. It must not be allowed to see the light of day. Voters everywhere should consider that their rights are about to be taken away and handed over to those who intend to harm them. We have to stand up for our vulnerable and uninformed mothers and children in any and every way we can.

Filed under: "prevention", Amy Philo, antidepressants, antipsychotics, Congress, forced 'treatment', Fred Baughman MD, Harry Reid, involuntary hospitalization, Isaac Philo, Melanie Stokes, mothers act, Paxil in pregnancy, PPD, Pregnancy, Psychiatry: Force of Law, suicide, The Future of The United States

Fred Baughman Comments on ‘ADHD’ Drug Warning Letters from FDA

Fred Baughman, M.D., Neurologist, Child Neurologist
Author: The ADHD Fraud-How Psychiatry Makes “Patients” of Normal Children

http://www.Trafford.com
Comments on (439 words): FDA Warns Five Drugmakers Over ADHD Ads

Pharmalot, Ed Silverman
September 26th, 2008

Ed Silverman (Pharmalot, September 26th, 2008) writes. “…five warning letters were sent yesterday by the agency (FDA) to different drugmakers for incomplete, false or misleading promotional materials for ADHD meds.” “… the FDA says the drugmakers variously omitted material facts; minimized important risks; overstated efficacy or made unsubstantiated claims.” “Manufacturers will always try to go right to the limit in making their promotional claims to doctors, and doctors tend to follow their claims,” said Larry Diller, a behavioral pediatrician in Walnut Creek, California, who says the hyperactivity medications are overused though he prescribes them for some patients. “When claims are overstated, there is both over-prescribing and mis-prescribing and in the end children get hurt,” Diller said in a telephone interview with Bloomberg News, September 26, 2008.”

The glaring omission here is that ADHD has never been proved to be a disease (throughout medicine, disease = physical abnormality-gross, microscopic, or chemical). Shown no proof of an abnormality, the Panel of the 1998 Consensus Conference on ADHD could only conclude ” …we do not have an independent, valid test for ADHD, and there are no data to indicate that ADHD is due to a brain malfunction.” Carey reporting on “Is ADHD a Valid Disorder?” concluded: “What is…described as ADHD in the United States appears to be a set of normal behavioral variations…” Nor has ADHD or any other psychiatric diagnosis/ “disorder” been proved since to be a bona fide disease, having, as it must, a confirmatory physical abnormality. This being the case, all research and all treatment predicated upon the presumption that ADHD is an abnormality/disease is false. For this reason what we have today is not “mis-diagnosis” and “over-prescribing” but a total, one hundred percent fraud. No child diagnosed with “ADHD” is demonstrably abnormal/diseased. Their first and only abnormality is the intoxication with amphetamines and other psychotropic drugs that invariably follow the “diagnosis” of ADHD.

Lawrence Diller, quoted above, is widely viewed as a voice of moderation when it comes to the diagnosis and treatment of this “disorder” that does not exist. On page 7 of his book Running on Ritalin: Should I Medicate My Child? Diller writes: “Before 1990 I needed perhaps one pad of a hundred forms every nine months; by 1997 I realized it was one every three months,” or approximately 400 Ritalin prescriptions a year, hardly “moderate” given that no such disease exists-that the children are normal to begin with.

 

Filed under: FDA Warns ADHD Drug Makers, Fred Baughman MD, 'ADHD'

Suicide of Mental “Health” Poster Child

Fred Baughman, MD author of THE ADHD FRAUD http://www.Trafford.com comments on:

August 22. 2008
Children’s mental health law signed

Child who spoke at Statehouse later killed self

By Steve LeBlanc THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BOSTON- When Mary Ann Tufts trekked to the Massachusetts Statehouse in May 2007 to testify in favor a children’s mental health bill, her daughter Yolanda tagged along for a “girls’ day away.”

Yolanda, who’d battled anxiety and bipolar disorder for years, hadn’t planned on speaking at the hearing, but at the last minute decided to tell lawmakers about her personal struggles – putting a young face on the issue.

Eight months later, Yolanda Torres, then 16, committed suicide.

[[[[[[FB: So much for her improved "mental health".]]]]]]]]]]]

Yesterday, Gov. Deval L. Patrick signed the children’s mental health bill – dubbed “Yolanda’s Bill” by advocates – saying it strengthened the state’s commitment to children living with mental illness.

Yolanda’s mother expressed mixed emotions at the news.

“It’s extremely bittersweet. I’m thrilled that it passed and I hope and believe that my daughter had something to do with it,” Tufts said. “It makes her passing stand for something and that gives us some solace.”

Patrick said the new law will make it easier for the state to identify and treat mental illness in children.

The law helps train teachers, guidance counselors and nurses to better identify mental health needs in students. Under the law, the state Department of Early Education and Care will provide behavioral health consultation services in early education and care programs to reach children with mental illness earlier.

[[[[[[[[[[[FB: This is just what killed Yolanda; just what Yolanda never needed to begin with.]]]]]]]]]
The new law also encourages behavioral health screening for children during visits to their doctors.

[[[[[[[[[This does nothing but lead to more "mental health," "chemical imbalance" diagnoses and more prescriptions of "chemical balancers"--pills. Yolanda's mother still does'nt get it. ]]]]]]]]]]

The law also ensures greater cooperation between agencies by creating a children’s behavioral health research and evaluation council, and service teams to collaborate on cases for children who may need services from multiple state agencies.

A report by Children’s Hospital Boston and the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, found that of the more than 140,000 young people younger than 18 who need mental health services each year, more than 100,000 do not receive them.

Senate President Therese Murray, D-Plymouth, who lives in the same town as Mary Ann Tufts, said the goal of the bill was to help reach out to other teens suffering from mental illness.

“There are too many children in the commonwealth who go undiagnosed or untreated for mental illness,” Murray said. “This new law will help seal the cracks in our system.”

Tufts said that while she would give anything to have her daughter back, she also knows that Yolanda would be pleased to have her name associated with a law designed to help other children and teenagers facing similar struggles.

“She wanted to help other children like herself,” Tufts said. “She was a very powerful young woman.”

[[[[[[[[One must feel absolutely powerless to take their own life. When teachers are forbidden from making diagnoses and suggesting drugs what they do instead is to urge, suggest, insist that the parents of pupils they have "diagnosed," at least in their own minds, go to a physician or mental health professional which accomplishes the same thing--that the child is diagnosed and then medicated, as surely as if the teacher had been the one making the diagnosis and then referring the child and family to a physician who they know will prescribe the need "chemical balancers"--drugs. Either way the epidemic of mental disorders, diseases grows and with it prescriptions for psychiatric drugs--intoxicants, poisons, all detectible in the blood, body and brain--the first abnormality/disease the pupil, now a patient actually has. The parents and family should decide if and when to take their children to a physician or to any kind of a health care professional. Yes educators may speak their piece on the issue but nothing more. They should not require or coerce, which is often the case. This bill is just what the "mental health" industry wants. It will lead to more diagnoses, more children "treated" and to more deaths such as this one and that of Rebecca Riley.]]]]]]]]]]]]

Filed under: "prevention", Fred Baughman MD, Rebecca Riley, suicide