Psychiatric Drugs - Engineering Children
New Scientist just days ago came out with an article Prescribing of hyperactivity drugs is out of control that discusses the mind boggling figures of child drugging at the hands of psychiatrists in the U.S.A.
ADHD is the diagnosis that accounts for close to 4 million prescriptions of mind-altering drugs such as methylphenidate, marketed as Ritalin, to "treat" the "condition".
Vera Hassner Sharav of the Alliance for Human Research Protection - AHRP, in her article An Out of Control Profession - New Scientist / Infant Mental Health Now Targeted by Psychiatry - MSNBC describes the often permanent damage these drugs do:
Scientists have known that as with chronic use of Cocaine, ADHD drugs cause profound long-term changes in cognitive and other mental functions. Indeed, in 1996, Dr. Steve Hyman, the former director of the National Institute of Mental Health (now Harvard Provost) wrote: These drugs cause "molecular and cellular changes in neural function that are produced as adaptations to chronic administration of addictive drugs such as psychostimulants." Chronic exposure to psychotropic drugs, he wrote, "creates perturbations in neurotransmitter function that likely exceed the strength or time course of almost any natural stimulus."
Vera's almost exasperated question at the end of her comment is
"What evil Pied Piper has mesmerized American adults into suspending their own judgment and common sense to the detriment of their children? Why are intelligent parents blindly following medically unsound directives whereas parents in other parts of the world do not succumb to the lure of 'quick fixes?' How can the 'experts' who have knowingly recommended harm-producing drugs for children be trusted?"The answer, I would suggest, is that the "experts" of course cannot be trusted. We must have something else than grey matter in our heads if we listen to that particular "authority". There is indeed a pied piper leading us astray. Seth Farber calls it Institutional Mental Health in his excellent essay titled Institutional Mental Health and Social Control: The Ravages of Epistemological Hubris.
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Institutional Mental Health and Social Control: The Ravages of Epistemological Hubris
There is a widespread misconception in society that Institutional Mental Health (this term is intended to cover psychiatrists, psychologists and other "mental health" professionals) provides valuable services to individuals in need of help and generally attempts to foster personal change or "growth". I argue in this paper that the praxis of Institutional Mental Health is based on a model that is not oriented primarily toward generating change, but toward maintaining social control. Thus, this model is problematic on ethical as well as on epistemological grounds: it underestimates the individual's capacity for change and it consequently undermines this very capacity. (more...)
This essay by Seth Farber of the Network Against Coercive Psychiatry is not a light read, but it is immensely important to fully understanding what is happening. It allows us to put the millions of ADHD diagnoses, the recently established medical algorithms or "drug prescription guides" as well as the teen screen programs now pushed in schools and a whole host of other things into perspective.We can intuit the design behind these goings-on.
Certainly, psychiatry is not just using dangerous drugs to "treat children", because it doesn't know better.
Those drugs are used with a precise design - engineering children into becoming perfect subjects in that brave new world that is inching ever closer...
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If you would like to descend into this rabbit hole a bit more deeply, here are, again, the links:
New Scientist: Prescribing of hyperactivity drugs is out of control
MSNBC: When babies see shrinks
AHRP Comment: An Out of Control Profession_NewScientist / Infant Mental Health Now Targeted by Psychiatry_MSNBC
Seth Farber: Institutional Mental Health and Social Control: The Ravages of Epistemological Hubris
See also:The Austrialian: Child drugs linked to heart attack
March 27, 2006
CHILDREN as young as five have suffered strokes, heart attacks, hallucinations and convulsions after taking drugs to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Documents obtained by The Australian reveal that almost 400 serious adverse reactions have been reported to the Therapeutic Goods Administration, some involving children as young as three. Cases include the sudden death of a seven-year-old, and a five-year-old who suffered a stroke after taking Ritalin. Children also experienced heart palpitations and shortness of breath after taking Dexamphetamine...Psychiatric Drugs: An Assault on the Human Condition
Street Spirit Interview with Robert Whitaker
Investigative reporter Robert Whitaker, author of the groundbreaking book Mad In America, is now pursuing a fascinating line of research into how the mammoth psychiatric drug industry is endangering the American public by covering up the untold cases of suffering, anguish and disease caused by the most widely prescribed antidepressants and antipsychotic medications.CATIE study results Contradict Current Clinical Practice & Treatment Guidelines
Tuesday, 04 April 2006
It is instructive to learn flat out that psychiatry's biological treatment paradigm—which relies solely on drugs—no longer mentions recovery nor even pretends to improve patients' ability to engage in normal daily life functions—i.e., work, study, interact, marry. Psychiatry's endpoint criteria for measuring treatment effectiveness for patients with schizophrenia, is "how long patients stayed with the new drug!!!"Pharma company Influence - Medical Education Promotes OffLabel Use of Antipsychotic Drugs
Wednesday, 05 April 2006
Psychiatry's professional practice paradigm has received a major blow. The most widely prescribed treatments received a resounding failing grade from the most comprehensive schizophrenia treatment study (CATIE) conducted by a consortium of leading U.S. psychiatrists who evaluated the efficacy of widely prescribed atypical antipsychotics -- including risperidone (Risperdal), olanzapine (Zyprexa) quetiapine (Seroquel ), ziprasidone (Geodon), and clozapine (Clozaril). As Dr. Carol Tamminga -a leading research psychiatrist - acknowledges in an editorial in the American Journal of Psychiatry, not only are these drugs shown to be ineffective for the condition for
which they were approved by the FDA: "the side effect outcomes are staggering in their magnitude and extent and demonstrate the significant medication burden for persons with schizophrenia..."Experts say antidepressant drugs cause suicides instead of preventing them
Listening to Prozac
How do new disorders get into the DSM?
By Annie Murphy Paul
Posted Tuesday, May 2, 2006
More than half the experts who compile the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders have ties to the pharmaceutical industry, according to a study published last month in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics. Produced by the American Psychiatric Association, the DSM is the guidebook used by mental-health professionals to diagnose mental illness. Fifty-six percent of its contributors have received research funding, speaking or consulting fees, or other forms of financial compensation from drug companies, the recent study reported (though the authors did not determine whether these relationships existed before, during, or after the experts worked on the manual).Government's Big Lie: The "Crisis" of Babies With Undiagnosed Mental Illness
By Laura Adelmann
To the federal government, many newborns, toddlers and preschoolers are undiagnosed mental cases with dire need of "treatment" (read: drugs). Following the appalling trend of labeling school children with an ever-expanding list of mental disorders and medicating them with the cocaine-class of drugs like Adderall and Ritalin, government is promoting universal mental health screening and treatment - beginning with babies.
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Tuesday April 4 2006
updated on Thursday December 9 2010URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2006/04/04/psychiatric_drugs_engineering_children.htm
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