tagged w/ Mental Health
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Miami Herald
Creating juvenile zombies, Florida-style
May 28, 2011
By Fred Grimm
They’re children of the new Florida ethic. Zombie kids warehoused on the cheap in the state’s juvenile lock-ups. Kept quiet, manageable and addled senseless by great dollops of anti-psychotic drugs.
A relatively small percentage of young inmates pumped full of pills actually suffer from the serious psychiatric disorders that the FDA allows to be treated by these powerful drugs. But adult doses of anti-psychotic drugs have a tranquilizing effect on teenage prisoners. Prescribing anti-psychotics for so many rowdy kids may be a reckless medical practice, but in an era of budget cuts and staffing shortages, it makes for smart economics.
Florida fairly inundates juvenile offenders with this stuff.
The Palm Beach Post reported last week that the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice has been buying twice as many doses of the powerful anti-psychotic Seroquel as it does ibuprofen. As if the state anticipated more outbreaks of schizophrenia than headaches or minor muscle pain.
The Post found that Florida purchased 326,081 tablets of Seroquel, Abilify, Risperdal and other antipsychotic drugs during a two-year period for the boys and girls who occupy the 2,300 beds in state-run residential facilities. (Most of the state’s juvenile offenders are held in jails operated by for-profit contractors. Records revealing the quantity of medications that private companies pour down their prisoners’ gullets were not available.)
Such drugs, meant for adults, are known to send children into suicidal despair, along with risking heart problems, weight gain, diabetes and facial tics. Yet, the DJJ and its contract psychiatrists push them willynilly onto their young wards.
It’s not as if state officials have been unaware of the risks facing children prescribed “off label” uses (unapproved by the FDA) of these pharmaceuticals. Even as the state doled out Seroquel like candy to kids in DJJ jails, the Florida Attorney General’s office was entering into a lawsuit with 36 other states against drug manufacturer AstraZeneca for promoting dangerous, off-label uses of Seroquel for treating both the young and the elderly. (AstraZeneca agreed to settle the lawsuit in March for $68.5 million and to stop marketing the drug for unauthorized uses.)
It was as if the schizophrenics most in need of Seroquel were roaming the halls of government, not the juvenile jails.
“This is the face of all these budget cuts; what happens when you eliminate social workers and prison guards,” said Broward Public Defender Howard Finkelstein. He suspects that DJJ has compensated for the staff shortages at state lockups by pumping “the most powerful drugs known to man into children who have not been diagnosed for psychiatric problems.”
Finkelstein says he assigned two of his staff attorneys last week to visit juvenile lock-ups and investigate what he calls the “zombification” of young offenders who had been represented by his office.
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi opened her own investigation last week. Bondi’s staff attorneys are interested in the Post’s report that psychiatrists prescribing off-label uses of such astounding quantities of the profitable anti-psychotics for DJJ prisoners (at taxpayer expense) had been greased by drug manufacturers with some $250,000 in gifts and speaking fees.
The DJJ drug scandal seems all the more maddening considering that it follows a similar uproar just two years ago after the suicide of a seven-year-old Margate foster child. Young Gabriel Myers had been given adult dosages of three anti-psychotics before he hung himself.
The Gabriel Myers Task Force, made up of child advocates, state officials, political leaders and judges from across the state, spent a year investigating whether the Florida Department of Children and Families had administered dangerous drugs as “chemical restraints” for troublesome foster children.
Foster kids, as it turned out, weren’t the only victims of the on-the-cheap ethic. But don’t think of children reduced to zombies. Think of all the money we save on prison guards.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/05/28/2240617/creating.html
http://www.cchrint.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/zombies.jpgMiami Herald
Creating juvenile zombies, Florida-style
May 28, 2011
By Fred Grimm... more
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Bradley Manning, the US soldier accused of passing on some 720,000 diplomatic and military documents to the whistle-blower site Wikileaks, "should never have been sent to Iraq." An investigative film by the Guardian says that Manning was so "mentally fragile" prior to his deployment to Iraq that he urinated on himself, routinely shouted at officers, displayed violent behavior and had regular psychiatric evaluations
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2011/may/27/bradley-manning-wikileaks-iraq-videoBradley Manning, the US soldier accused of passing on some 720,000 diplomatic and... more
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In Florida's juvenile jails, psychiatrists entrusted with diagnosing and prescribing drugs for wayward children have taken huge speaker fees from drug makers - companies that profit handsomely when doctors put kids on antipsychotic pills.
The psychiatrists were hired by a state juvenile justice system that has plied kids with heavy doses of the powerful medications, and the physicians have prescribed antipsychotics even before they were approved by federal regulators as safe for children.
One in three of the psychiatrists who have contracted with the state Department of Juvenile Justice in the past five years has taken speaker fees or gifts from companies that make antipsychotic medications, a Palm Beach Post investigation has found.
In two years, the four top paid doctors combined to accept more than $190,000 - all while working for DJJ. Three of the four psychiatrists still are seeing patients in state jails and residential programs.
Read Full Story: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/dosed-in-juvie-jail-drug-firms-pay-state-1491309.htmlIn Florida's juvenile jails, psychiatrists entrusted with diagnosing and... more
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Taking antidepressants may raise the risk of heart disease in men. They can thicken artery walls through an as yet unknown mechanism.
The drugs seem to accelerate atherosclerosis by increasing the thickness of the "intima media", the inner and middle layers of the arteries. They particularly affect the carotid arteries that feed blood to your brain.
According to the Los Angeles Times:
"... [T]he intima-media thickness of men taking antidepressants was 37 microns (about 5 percent) thicker than that of men not taking the drugs. When the team looked at 59 twin pairs in which one twin was taking the drugs and the second was not, the artery was 41 microns thicker in the twin taking the drugs."
LA Times Ref: http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb-antidepressants-heart-disease-04022011,0,999114.story?track=rss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1nbZCNDgbY&feature=player_embeddedTaking antidepressants may raise the risk of heart disease in men. They can thicken... more
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Adult picky eaters: Food preferences tend to be bland, white or pale colored - plain pasta or cheese pizza are said to be common foods along with French fries and chicken fingers. Some picky eaters stick to foods with a common texture or taste.
Orthorexics: Those affected may start by eliminating processed foods, anything with artificial colorings or flavorings as well as foods that have come into contact with pesticides. Beyond that, orthorexics may also shun caffeine, alcohol, sugar, salt, wheat and dairy foods. Some limit themselves to raw foods.
Check out this mobile phone app that guides healthy food choices.
What are the risks?
Health consequences: Limiting your diet to only a few foods - because you’re a picky eater or have a long list of foods you deem unhealthy - can lead to potentially dangerous nutritional deficiencies. At its most extreme, a diet limited to only a few foods perceived to be healthy is described as orthorexia nervosa and can lead to the same emaciation and health risks seen with anorexia nervosa.
Social Isolation: Being an adult picky eater can take an enormous social toll. Out of embarrassment, these folks avoid dining with friends or co-workers. Heather Hill tries to hide her eating habits from her children for fear that they will pick them up. Going to extremes in an effort to eat only healthy foods can also be socially isolating and can undermine personal relationships.
How are these disorders treated?
Adult Selective Eating: Techniques that have proven successful in treating kids who are picky eaters - learning assertiveness skills and systematically trying new foods - are being used on adults, but it’s still too soon to know whether they work.
Orthorexia: Cognitive behavior therapy designed to change obsessive thought patterns regarding food is usually recommended.
http://health.yahoo.net/experts/dayinhealth/new-eating-disorders-are-they-realAdult picky eaters: Food preferences tend to be bland, white or pale colored - plain... more
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In the UK, children are under assault, diagnosed with fraudulent mental disorders and forced onto dangerous and addictive psychotropic drugs.
With prescription sales rocketing and government screening programmes on the rise, the stimulent drug industry is big business, raking in over £33 million a year in the UK alone.
But how much is this plague costing our children?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uOlJ7y_DWg&feature=player_embedded#at=25In the UK, children are under assault, diagnosed with fraudulent mental disorders and... more
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The effects of the Fukushima plant are just one thing the people of the earthquake/tsunami region will have to face. The psychological effects are just as devastating, and actually not getting the attention they should be getting.
Excerpt:
"Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) plans to support a team of six psychologists who will treat survivors of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit northeast Japan March 11.
For the past 12 days, a 12-person MSF team has been treating patients with chronic diseases in one of the areas worst affected by the disasters. A psychologist was also sent in earlier this week to evaluate mental health needs.
“Many people now are in a phase of acute stress disorder, which is a totally natural response to this level of trauma,” said Ritsuko Nishimae, a clinical psychologist working with the MSF team in Minami Sanriku. “If they are not able to get proper support psychologically, there is an increased possibility that they could develop post-traumatic stress disorder (P.T.S.D),” said the psychologist.
Ritsuko has been working in the field for the last two days, getting an accurate picture of needs, as well as working with disaster survivors. “I talk with them and listen to their experiences and to what they need now," Ritsuko said. "Gradually, they open their feelings and express their thoughts and show emotion. This process is very effective to release stress."
The psychologists with whom MSF plans to work come from the Japanese Society of Certified Clinical Psychologists. MSF will assist them as they identify populations in need of assistance and will provide logistical support.
MSF medical teams continue to work in evacuation centers in Minami Sanriku, in northern Miyagi prefecture, and has also started supporting a Japanese doctor who was working in the town of Taro, in Iwate prefecture. The main activity continues to be consultations with elderly patients suffering from chronic diseases such as hypertension or diabetes."The effects of the Fukushima plant are just one thing the people of the... more
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Now here’s a Psychologist we can all turn to in our darkest hours, someone who will listen to your innermost thoughts and solve them with torture. After listening carefully to your troubles you can then look forward to a nice long, painful recovery.
Put your minds at ease, the White house has solved all your mental health problems.
One of the most intense scandals the field of psychology has faced over the last decade is the involvement of several of its members in enabling Bush's worldwide torture regime. Numerous health professionals worked for the U.S. government to help understand how best to mentally degrade and break down detainees. At the center of that controversy was -- and is -- Dr. Larry James. James, a retired Army colonel, was the Chief Psychologist at Guantanamo in 2003, at the height of the abuses at that camp, and then served in the same position at Abu Ghraib during 2004.Now here’s a Psychologist we can all turn to in our darkest hours, someone who... more
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Just who are the 2.3 million Americans sitting in our prisons and total 7 million American’s populating our prison-industrial complex?
“The Justice Department estimates that 16 percent of the adult inmates in American prisons—more than 350,000 of those incarcerated—suffer from mental illness; the percentage among juveniles is even higher. And 2007 Justice statistics showed that nearly 60 percent of the state prisoners serving time for a drug offense had no history of violence and four out of five drug arrests were for drug possession, not sales. Webb also reminds us that while drug use varies little by ethnic group in the United States, African-Americans—estimated at 14 percent of regular drug users—make up 56 percent of those in state prison for drug crimes. We know all of this. The question is how long we want to avoid dealing with it.” Cage Match: Guantanamo is the least of America's prison problems. http://www.slate.com/id/2219787/
Plans to gut mental health spending in Texas will not only destroy lives, but overwhelm jails, emergency rooms, and taxpayers’ wallets
“Texas ranks 49th in spending on mental health, according to the Texas Medical Association. Yet despite the state’s long history of underfunding mental health care, Evans and others are frustrated to see lawmakers pushing the bar even lower. Current state budget proposals would make deep cuts to community mental health programs — programs that have proven effective at keeping the mentally ill, homeless, and drug-addicted out of jail and in treatment.”Just who are the 2.3 million Americans sitting in our prisons and total 7 million... more
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25-year-old Cornelius Arie Smith-Voorkamp was arrested and jailed for stealing two lightbulbs and a quake-damage light fixture from a house that had been damaged in the earthquake that struck Christchurch on February 22. Smith-Voorkamp has Asperger's Syndrome and, according to the New Zealand Herald, a 'mental disability that compels him to take light fixtures.' He was not only beaten by two officer, but 'taunted by New Zealand Army personnel,' and still has a black eye a week afterwards, says his lawyer, Simon Buckingham.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=1071103825-year-old Cornelius Arie Smith-Voorkamp was arrested and jailed for stealing two... more
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Could psychiatric drugs be fuelling an epidemic of mental illness? Robert Whitaker, the award-winning author of a new book on the subject, raises disturbing questions for psychiatry. CARL O’BRIEN reports
WHEN ROBERT Whitaker, an award-winning medical reporter, came upon a study by the World Health Organisation on outcomes for patients with schizophrenia a few years ago, he was puzzled.
It said the best outcomes were for people from some of the poorest countries in the world – India, Colombia, Nigeria – rather than the richest countries. It didn’t make sense. How could the outcomes be so poor for well-off nations with access to specialist drugs?
“I was startled to find that just a small percentage of patients in those poor countries were on medication for their condition,” says Whitaker.
“At the same time, I discovered that the number of disabled mentally ill in the US had tripled over the past 20 years.”
It prompted a flurry of queries, but they all boiled down to a single, central question: why has the number of people plagued with mental illness problems been skyrocketing at a time when we have access to medicine that is supposed to be more effective than ever before?
The result of Whitaker’s investigation is Anatomy of an Epidemic, the first major book to investigate the long-term outcomes of patients treated with psychiatric drugs. Through thorough research and personal testimonies, he draws a chilling overall conclusion: that the drugs we so widely use may be doing more harm than good.
The book, published last year, is causing a stir in the US and prompting fiery responses from some members of the psychiatric profession. But it is also causing significant numbers of professionals to rethink their approach to prescribing drugs.
“It’s been a slowly, gathering impact. In the US, this is a very sensitive subject and immediately brings up all sorts of tensions,” he says.
Ironically, for an issue which is fast becoming a burning question in psychiatry, the question of how effective psychiatric drugs are over the longer term isn’t a new one.
Whitaker points to a paper by Jonathan Cole – regarded as the father of American psycho-pharmacology – in the 1970s entitled Is the Cure Worse Than the Disease? This indicated that anti-psychotic medication wasn’t the magic bullet that many hoped it was.
Cole reviewed all of the long-term effects the drugs could cause and observed that studies had shown that at least 50 per cent of all schizophrenia patients could fare well without the medication.
“Every schizophrenic outpatient maintained on anti-psychotic medication should have the benefit of an adequate trial without drugs,” Cole wrote at the time.
Whitaker maintains that psychiatry, in effect, shut off further public discussion of this sort. In the 1970s, he says, psychiatry was fighting for survival. The two main classes of drugs – anti-psychotics and benzodiazepines such as Valium – were increasingly regarded as harmful and sales declined.
At the same time, there was a dramatic increase in the number of counsellors and psychologists offering talk therapy and other non-drug based approaches.
“Psychiatry saw itself in competition for patients with these other therapists, and in the late 1970s, the field realised that its advantage in the marketplace was its prescribing powers . . . it consciously sought to tell a public story that would support the use of its medications, and embraced the ‘medical model’ of psychiatric disorders.”
But many studies show that psychiatric drugs – such as anti-depressants – are highly effective. There are tens of thousands of people who will attest to benefits of these drugs. Many say they simply couldn’t survive without them.
Whitaker counters he is not advocating the total avoidance of drugs. The short-term effects of many drugs are clearly beneficial. But, he says, when you look at the long-term impact of them, the literature consistently shows incredibly poor outcomes, with many becoming chronically ill as a result.
Most of these studies, he says, have received little or no coverage or have been “spun” to veil the real findings. It’s not in the interests of psychiatry or the pharmaceutical industry to highlight them.
He says the literature shows that many people can recover without recourse to drugs. As a result, more caution is needed and drugs should be administered more sparingly.
“You have to raise the question of what happens to medicated patients in the long term, compared with what happened in previous times,” he says.
There are obvious lines of attack against Whitaker’s findings: one is that the rise in the number of disabled mentally ill people is not due to medication, but may be due to other factors such as better diagnosis.
Whitaker says: “I agree that the correlation between the two – increased use of psychiatric medications and increased disability numbers – does not mean that the increased use of psychotropics caused the rise. But I never claimed that it did. As I say in the opening chapter of the book, the disability numbers simply raise a question.”
He agrees that the broadening of diagnostic categories has led to an ever-greater number of adults and children under the “psychiatric tent”. But, he maintains, if psychiatric medications were effective long-term treatments which helped people function well, then that increase in diagnosis and treatment shouldn’t lead to a rise in disability. “If you have drugs that exacerbate the long-term course of an ‘illness’ or can transform a milder illness into a more serious one, then the more that illness is diagnosed and treated, the greater the toll that illness will take on society.”
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/health/2011/0222/1224290501283.htmlCould psychiatric drugs be fuelling an epidemic of mental illness? Robert Whitaker,... more
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Electroshock, renamed electroconvulsive therapy or ECT is not only still being given to hundreds of thousands per year, but frequently without their consent. Documented effects of electroshock include short and long term memory loss, brain seizures, life-threatening cardiovascular events and death. Psychiatrists admit they don't know how ECT "works" but that doesn't stop them from administering it to hundreds of thousands of people per year, including the elderly, children and pregnant women. Recently, press have reported that ECT is making a "comeback" but what most don't realize, is that electroshock (ECT) never went away.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeCmLXpWkT4&feature=player_embeddedElectroshock, renamed electroconvulsive therapy or ECT is not only still being given... more
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Stick a fork in it: In the long term, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is done for.
That’s according to Gary Greenberg, a practicing psychotherapist and author of “Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness,” a feature story in Wired magazine’s January issue about the controversy surrounding the upcoming fifth edition of the DSM, which has been called psychiatry’s bible.
The DSM has been the definitive almanac of psychiatric disease for decades. But the effort to update the book has highlighted the challenge of categorizing slippery, subjective mental states with the same certainty as, say, high blood pressure.
In this edition of the Storyboard podcast, Greenberg and Wired senior editor Bill Wasik join regular host Adam Rogers for a mind-bending conversation about the drama behind the DSM-V and the quest to name our pain.Stick a fork in it: In the long term, the American Psychiatric Association’s... more
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Living as a dyslexic can be a difficult experience, especially when it comes to college courses. However, you should know that you’re not alone in your journey. With these helpful links, you can find resources including learning tools, communities, and advice for living and studying with dyslexia.
LINK : http://www.onlinecollegecourses.com/2011/02/14/70-excellent-links-for-dyslexia-support/Living as a dyslexic can be a difficult experience, especially when it comes to... more
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HAVANA, Jan 25, 2011 (IPS) - The trial of staff at the Havana Psychiatric Hospital for the deaths of 26 patients who died of cold and neglect revealed a dark chapter in an institution that was once a shining symbol of Cuba's much lauded health care system, and drew reactions of shock and criticism.
Cuba's main newspaper, Granma, broke the silence Monday surrounding the case, which occurred just over a year ago. The paper reported that prosecutors are seeking prison terms of six to 14 years for an unspecified number of administrators and staff, who were on trial from Jan. 17 to 22.
They were charged with abandonment and neglect of minors, disabled and ill people, and with embezzlement.
The sentences are expected to be handed down in the next few days. The defendants --who were not identified by name -- include the hospital director, the vice directors of the psychiatric, surgical clinic, nursing and administrative areas, and the head nutritionist.
The 26 psychiatric hospital patients died during an unusual cold spell in mid-January 2010.
Granma, the mouthpiece of the governing Communist Party, reported that the hospital staff failed to take the necessary measures to keep the patients warm, and did not provide them with adequate nutrition.
A clinical assessment of the patients found "signs of malnutrition and a large number of cases of anemia and vitamin deficiency," despite the fact that the hospital received enough food for 2,458 patients, while only 1,484 beds were occupied at the time.
Read Full Article: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54232HAVANA, Jan 25, 2011 (IPS) - The trial of staff at the Havana Psychiatric Hospital for... more
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A West Georgia Sheriff is defending his deputy’s decision to arrest, handcuff and jail a mentally challenged student who acted up in the classroom.
Tessie Collins, 17, was booked into the Haralson County Jail on Tuesday on charges of simple battery and obstruction of a law enforcement after a school resource officer witnessed her pinch a student and a teacher at Haralson County High School.
“The officer had to do something,” Sheriff Eddie Mixon told Channel 2’s Mike Petchenik. “In my opinion, it was handled with kid gloves. You got to stop it. That’s our job, it’s to stop the violence.”
Mixon said Collins was released from jail on her own recognizance several hours after her arrest.
“I’m furious,” said Tessie’s mother, Ann Collins.
Collins told Petchenik that her daughter has developmental delays that give her the mental capacity of an 8-year-old child. She said the school system is well aware of her daughter’s tendency to pinch people when they “invade her space.”
“She should be secluded by herself or a parent is called to come pick her up,” she said. “It’s just a misunderstanding. She doesn’t know what she’s doing and that should have been taken into consideration.”
Haralson County School Superintendent Brett Stanton wouldn’t discuss the particulars of the incident but told Petchenik he would be investigating what happened.
“I feel I have a responsibility to look into that concern and make sure that, from my standpoint, it’s been reviewed and examined,” said Stanton.
Stanton said there were 150 special education students at the high school. He said the district has procedures in place to deal with each one’s behavior. But, he said, if a student broke the law, it would be up to the school resource officer to handle the situation.
“Just because the student falls into that category of being special education or a student with disabilities, doesn’t mean they are given carte-blanche to break school rules or anything like that,” he said.
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/26808869/detail.html?cxntlid=cmg_cntnt_rssA West Georgia Sheriff is defending his deputy’s decision to arrest, handcuff... more
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More than a quarter of people in the United States who take antidepressants have never been diagnosed with any of the conditions the drugs are typically used to treat, according to a study.
As a result, millions could be exposed to side effects from the medicines without proven health benefits, said Jina Pagura, a psychologist and currently a medical student at the University of Manitoba, and colleagues who worked on the study.
"We cannot be sure that the risks and side effects of antidepressants are worth the benefit of taking them for people who do not meet criteria for major depression," Pagura said in an e-mail to Reuters Health.
For the study, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, Pagura and colleagues tapped into data from the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiologic Surveys, which include a nationally representative sample of more than 20,000 U.S. adults interviewed between 2001 and 2003.
Roughly one in ten people told interviewers they had been taking antidepressants during the previous year, yet a quarter of those people had never been diagnosed with any of the conditions that doctors usually treat with the medications, such as major depression and anxiety disorder.
"There are undoubtedly many people being prescribed antidepressants that may not be effective for them, but there are also millions of Americans suffering from depression who are not being prescribed antidepressants or are being prescribed them at a suboptimal dose," said Jeffrey Harman, in health services at the University of Florida in Gainesville, who was not involved in the study.
Read more: http://www.canada.com/Depression+medication+often+used+valid+psychiatric+reason+Study/4255830/story.html#ixzz1DfIrnnuZMore than a quarter of people in the United States who take antidepressants have never... more
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