Suicide, Psychiatrists and TeenScreen

Psychiatry is failing. Its practitioners now depend on drugs to treat patients. When drugs fail, they chant, "If we'd only gotten to him sooner." That's where screening comes in. You may think it's harmless. You may think it's helpful. But if psychiatrists can fail with patients they've known and treated for years; if they can misdiagnose those who sit before them, then using computer questionnaires to screen hundreds of thousands of teens is ludicrous and scary.

Did you know that babies are being diagnosed and given potent drugs? Didn't they get there early enough?

Perhaps one day a young bride will roll over in bed and find in her husband's place—a psychiatrist. Conception. Will that be early enough?

As for suicide, it's a well-known fact that the psychiatric profession, itself, has a very high rate. But, according to Peter Nathan, Ph.D., and former member of an APA committee on "troubled" psychologists, the American Psychological Association stopped releasing "relevant data" in 1970. "The APA doesn't want anyone to know that there are distressed psychologists."*

The big question for parents is: Should you trust your child's future to an organization that can't save its own peers—and a list of questions whose results are interpreted by a computer? There's only one right answer.

—Naomi Fox, June 30, 2006

*Robert Epstein, Ph.D., "Why Shrinks Have So Many Problems," Psychology Today, July/August 1997

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"Use of the psychological evaluations is growing even though there is little hard evidence that they prevent suicides. A panel of government experts concluded two years ago that the evidence to justify suicide screening was weak and that such programs, although well intentioned, had potential adverse consequences.

"The growing use of screening has coincided with a rapid increase in the number of youngsters being prescribed powerful antipsychotic medications such as Risperdal and Zyprexa that have not been specifically approved for use by children. There was a fivefold increase in the use of these drugs in children between 1993 and 2002, according to one analysis published this month in the Archives of General
Psychiatry, and a 73 percent increase in such prescriptions between 2001 and 2005, according to Medco, a firm that manages pharmacy benefits.
. . .
"'It is industrial psychology at its worst," said Michael D. Ostrolenk, a family therapist... "We think it is inappropriate to turn state schools into laboratories for psychiatry.'"

—By Shankar Vedantam, "Suicide-Risk Tests for Teens Debated," Washington Post, June 16, 2006

Helping Himself

In 2002, Dr. Bruce M. Forester, was arrested and charged with overbilling an insurance company to the tune of $60,000. The psychiatrist claimed six sessions a week when there were only two or three—and some nonexistent services supposedly took place after a patient completed therapy.

Dr. Forester surrendered his license in 2004 after being found guilty of fraud.

—Data from New York State Insurance Department, 5/13/02 and New Jersey State Board of Medical Examiners, 5/18/04

Selling Patients for Profit

Dr. Wang Chaoying, head of a mental hospital in China, reportedly drugged 20 female patients and sold them for the equivalent of thousands of dollars apiece to men who needed wives.

—Data from BBC News, “Wife-selling psyhiatrist arrested,” 8/20/03, news.bbc.co.uk

Kids Are Not Lab Rats

"We are using these medications and don't know how they work, if they work, or at what cost," said Dr. John March, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Duke University. "It amounts to a huge experiment with the lives of American kids, and what it tells us is that we've got to do something other than we're doing now"...
...
In light of how little these drugs have been studied in children, Dr. Olfson said, "to me the most striking thing was that nearly one in five psychiatric visits for young people included a prescription for antipsychotics."
...
"If you're going to put children on three or four different drugs, now you've got a potpourri of target symptoms and side effects," said Dr. Julie Magno Zito, an associate professor of pharmacy and medicine at the University of Maryland.

Dr. Zito added, "How do you even know who the kid is anymore?"

—Benedict Carey, “Use of Antipsychotics by the Young Rose Fivefold,” June 6, 2006, The New York Times, nytimes.com

Using Their Training for Torture

Some psychiatrists and psychologists have helped train military interrogators in techniques that amount to psychological torture.

Physician and psychiatrist Daniel Kusnir was appalled that people in his profession “who are supposed to heal and relieve pain” were inflicting injury instead. “It can’t be more perverse.”

—Data from “Abuse was thought out, experts say,” by M.S. Enkoji, Bee Staff Writer, Sacramento Bee, May 7, 2004

Chemical Straitjackets Restrain Children

“They are sent away for help. But when they act out, some troubled children are controlled with potentially dangerous mind-numbing drugs.”

Ohio Legal Rights Service examined 500 cases involving chemical restraints in the last five years, including:

A 10-year-old boy who was chemically restrained 69 times over 80 days with doctors prescribing up to six drugs at a time, and

A 12-year-old girl who was injected six times over nine months with high doses of Thorazine, and physically restrained 31 times by as many as three men—despite a history of being physically and sexually abused.

Dr. Ellen Bassuk, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, said, “The mental-health system is a mess. Not only are these places giving chemical restraints, but they’re prescribing risky combination and dosages of drugs that are as dangerous and inhumane.”

—Data taken from the excellent series: Drugged Into Submission (Day 1 Of 2), Forced Medication Straitjackets Kids, By Encarnacion Pyle, Sunday, April 24, 2005, The Columbus Dispatch

Harming Children

Miami psychiatrist, Jose Gustavo Valladares, was arrested for "distribution of harmful material to a minor and online solicitation of a minor for sex". Lt. Bill Schwartz, of the Miami Police Department said, "A psychiatrist is supposed to provide a safe space for his patients. I doubt that this shrink would get 'Doctor of the Year,"

—Posted online at NBC6.net, May 30, 2006

Saudi psychiatrist, Nabil Al Rowais, was arrested on charges that he traveled to California "to molest a two-and-a-half-year-old girl after exchanging numerous emails with an undercover agent posing as the toddler’s father."

—Office of Public Affairs, U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security, News Release, April 28, 2005, U.S. Attorney's Office, CA Bureau of Investigation

Psychiatrist, Allan Beitel, was arrested for "possessing and accessing child pornography."

—From a news release on May 19, 2004, "Peel Regional Police - Psychiatrist arrested for the third time," by Wendy Sims, CNW, www.newswire.ca