5/9-5/23: PSYCHIATRY EXHIBIT IN DC EXPOSES DRUG DANGERS (2301 M St NW Washington DC 20037)
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Date: 2008-05-08, 11:08PM EDT
Dr. Eric Huntington, president of the DC chapter of the watchdog group Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) opened the group’s exhibit, “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death,” at 2301 M Street (3rd floor). Dr. Huntington said the exhibit, opened free to the public until May 29, is a wake-up call if we want to curb the number of American children that commit suicide or die each year due to psychiatric drugs. Based on Food and Drug Administration Adverse Drug Reaction Reports, an estimated 1,300 children and adolescents taking prescribed psychiatric drugs die each year.
Statistics released in this month’s journal Pediatrics show that foster care children in the U.S. are prescribed antipsychotic drugs at about six times the rate of children in the UK. Antipsychotic drugs are known to cause life threatening diabetes, with several manufacturers currently facing multi-million suits for their failure to warn of the risk.
In January, the New York Times looked at the increase in psychotropic drug use in the pediatric population and reported “the more psychiatrists have earned from drug makers, the more they have prescribed a new class of powerful medicines known as atypical [new] antipsychotics to children.”
Of the 8 million children and adolescents taking psychiatric drugs, 2.5 million are prescribed antipsychotics and 1.5 million take antidepressants. An estimated 4 million children take stimulants. The FDA warns that psychotropic drug side effects can include psychosis, hallucinations, hostility, suicide, strokes, heart attacks and sudden death.
Dr. Huntington said, “The underlying problem is the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) that redefines normal childhood behavior as a ‘mental disorder.’ Between the first and third edition of the DSM, there was almost a 1,000 percent increase in the number of pediatric disorders added to the DSM that subsequently led to soaring psychiatric drug prescription rates.”
A 2006 Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics study determined that 56 percent of psychiatrists on panels determining what disorders would be included in the DSM-IV had undisclosed financial interests in drug companies. Researchers also found that 100 percent of the psychiatrists on panels overseeing so-called “mood disorders” (which includes “bipolar disorder”) and “schizophrenia/psychotic disorders” were financially involved with drug companies that manufacture the drugs prescribed for these conditions, the sales of which are around $40 billion a year worldwide.
Lisa Cosgrove, a Clinical and Research Psychologist from the University of Massachusetts in Boston and co-researcher in the study reported that these disorders are not based on medical science: “No blood tests exist for the disorders in the DSM. It relies on judgments from practitioners who rely on the manual.”
Earlier this year it was exposed that more than half of the psychiatrists on the task force for DSM-V, due to be published in 2012 also have financial ties to drug companies.
Speaking at the exhibit launch yesterday, Dr. Jeffrey A. Schaler Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Justice, Law and Society, at American University, said, “Psychiatrists had to invent their own book of diseases. It’s called the DSM--a work of fiction. Every disorder listed in the DSM is invented. Every disease listed in a pathology textbook is discovered. Real doctors only treat people by consent. Psychiatrists treat people against their consent. Real doctors won’t administer drugs to someone who doesn’t want them. Only psychiatrists will do that.”
Dr. Huntington added: “We want people to have information that is not made available by psychiatrists to them so that they can be better informed and make informed decisions.”
Dr. David Stein, Ph.D., lecturer at the Social Work and Criminal Justice department at Virginia State University and author of Unraveling the ADD-ADHD Fiasco: Successful Parenting Without Drugs, has taught psychopharmacology for 25 years and also helped open the exhibit. “Psychiatric drugs are toxic, they’re poisonous,” he said. “Drugs don’t change the problem. They don’t teach you how to think. They don’t teach you how to study. They don’t teach you self-discipline. But they are lucrative. A single pill for a pharmaceutical company is worth billions and is often their main source of profit…The problem is you can have a healthy child in front of you one minute, and dead on the floor in the next due to these drugs,” he said.
Psychiatry: An Industry of Death Exhibit is opened until May 29 and can be toured on the 3rd floor at 2301 M Street NW, Washington. Hours are Monday to Friday, 12:00 noon to 8 p.m. and Saturday’s 10 a.m. – 8:00 p.m.
CCHR was co-founded by the Church of Scientology and Dr. Thomas Szasz, professor of psychiatry emeritus from SUNY in Syracuse.
- Location: 2301 M St NW Washington DC 20037
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