The Epidemic of Mental Illness

greg334

Veteran Expediter
Wow Bunch of clacking hens...


I go on a business trip for a couple days, just killing time checking in to a few sites and this is what happens to the soap box?


While I'm waiting for my plane to arrive so I can make my way back home, I've got some time to respond to this thread and some of the seemingly uninformed comments. Being it is a subject that I am passionate about, I can see only a couple of us here on EO knows exactly what Turtle has posted and why it is important.


The first thing that I have to say, and it is repeating what I said before – all these drugs have not been tested on children under the age of 17. The Pharma companies, one of which I worked for and helped with these outside studies, did not test any of their drugs on kids because the FDA would not allow it. They like other companies depended on and used outside studies which have a narrow question to answer or sponsor studies with a specific and very narrow requirements to limit liabilities or a chance of rejecting an SNDA. They, like others do not report any of the studies that they 'throw out' that didn't meet the outcome they wanted to meet and are not required to even disclose the ones they paid for. On top of this, our own FDA is … well... a rather useless organization and has actually done more harm than good in some of the processes they tried to streamline – like fast tracking NDAs. AND what matters most is we are one of two or three countries who allow advertising of drugs – a VERY bad thing.


The second thing I have to say is would you allow your (pick an age, 9 y ears old is a good one) kid take LSD?


If you are a parent who has given your kid any drugs like anti-depressants and they are under the age of 17, it is the same as giving them LSD. I'm not kidding and you can be offended or laugh all you want – it is very serious. LSD and a lot of these other psychotherapy drugs alter the mind through altering the way the nerves react or the way the pathways are used, unlike LSD, these drugs will and the worry is it can often cause permanent changes in the minds of children. It is very stupid to give a 9 year old LSD as much as it is to give them Zoloft.


The last thing that I have to say is many scrips are written by GPs and not by qualified doctors. A general practitioner know a little about mental health as they do about Cancer. You don't want your GP to write a script for Chemo as much as you don't want one to write a script for mental health drugs. The same has to be said about changing drugs, 20 to 40 days is the time needed to move from one drug to another is what the pharma companies found out and many many mental health professionals know this but ignore it.


Turtle's post is important, it isn't about joking around on who grew up how but how we all allow ourselves to be fooled into thinking we can have better lives through chemicals. We are ignoring some of these issues because we lump behavior of our kids into two categories while the adults have a few more that they are lumped into. One thing that gets me is the expansion of bi-polar behavior which was done to cover things that are normal. You must be bi-polar if you have mood swings but PMS does this (for the females who I heard are the leading the men in the bi-polar category).


The psychiatric people who tell us what is mental illness and what isn't, is changing things without a lot of real science behind these changes and what was normal back in the 60's is not normal today and needs to be professionally treated. THIS IS about the money made in practices with marginal mental health people who seem to lump everyone into the same mold. See mental health is not a cut and dry thing, medicating someone is not always needed and it sometimes takes a few times around to figure out what's going on.


By the way Layout, Obama has been the only president who has addressed mental health issues for combat vets, no other president has done that. So many of them are now getting care that they need and the VA has been hiring for that.


Got to go, planes here and they are waving me to it.





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skyraider

Veteran Expediter
US Navy
Wow Bunch of clacking hens...


I go on a business trip for a couple days, just killing time checking in to a few sites and this is what happens to the soap box?


While I'm waiting for my plane to arrive so I can make my way back home, I've got some time to respond to this thread and some of the seemingly uninformed comments. Being it is a subject that I am passionate about, I can see only a couple of us here on EO knows exactly what Turtle has posted and why it is important.


The first thing that I have to say, and it is repeating what I said before – all these drugs have not been tested on children under the age of 17. The Pharma companies, one of which I worked for and helped with these outside studies, did not test any of their drugs on kids because the FDA would not allow it. They like other companies depended on and used outside studies which have a narrow question to answer or sponsor studies with a specific and very narrow requirements to limit liabilities or a chance of rejecting an SNDA. They, like others do not report any of the studies that they 'throw out' that didn't meet the outcome they wanted to meet and are not required to even disclose the ones they paid for. On top of this, our own FDA is … well... a rather useless organization and has actually done more harm than good in some of the processes they tried to streamline – like fast tracking NDAs. AND what matters most is we are one of two or three countries who allow advertising of drugs – a VERY bad thing.


The second thing I have to say is would you allow your (pick an age, 9 y ears old is a good one) kid take LSD?


If you are a parent who has given your kid any drugs like anti-depressants and they are under the age of 17, it is the same as giving them LSD. I'm not kidding and you can be offended or laugh all you want – it is very serious. LSD and a lot of these other psychotherapy drugs alter the mind through altering the way the nerves react or the way the pathways are used, unlike LSD, these drugs will and the worry is it can often cause permanent changes in the minds of children. It is very stupid to give a 9 year old LSD as much as it is to give them Zoloft.


The last thing that I have to say is many scrips are written by GPs and not by qualified doctors. A general practitioner know a little about mental health as they do about Cancer. You don't want your GP to write a script for Chemo as much as you don't want one to write a script for mental health drugs. The same has to be said about changing drugs, 20 to 40 days is the time needed to move from one drug to another is what the pharma companies found out and many many mental health professionals know this but ignore it.


Turtle's post is important, it isn't about joking around on who grew up how but how we all allow ourselves to be fooled into thinking we can have better lives through chemicals. We are ignoring some of these issues because we lump behavior of our kids into two categories while the adults have a few more that they are lumped into. One thing that gets me is the expansion of bi-polar behavior which was done to cover things that are normal. You must be bi-polar if you have mood swings but PMS does this (for the females who I heard are the leading the men in the bi-polar category).


The psychiatric people who tell us what is mental illness and what isn't, is changing things without a lot of real science behind these changes and what was normal back in the 60's is not normal today and needs to be professionally treated. THIS IS about the money made in practices with marginal mental health people who seem to lump everyone into the same mold. See mental health is not a cut and dry thing, medicating someone is not always needed and it sometimes takes a few times around to figure out what's going on.


By the way Layout, Obama has been the only president who has addressed mental health issues for combat vets, no other president has done that. So many of them are now getting care that they need and the VA has been hiring for that.


Got to go, planes here and they are waving me to it.





Posted by virtual post software – your secure connection from anywhere in the world from your desktop.

why would u get waved to a plane, are u in Honduras or Pangopango?:D
 

Camper

Not a Member
I think Hospitals have their own game going as well...

I had a problem...and required 2 stitches emergency...billed 978$....with the bill they hand you a financial hardship apps.....then they dropped it to $300 almost automatically....if I hd insurance they would have paid the whole 978....so are hospitals intentional over charging and the insurance companies get cheated? or is $300 the real cost?

Hospitals are part of that triangle of collusion.



Posted with my Droid EO Forum App
 

Turtle

Administrator
Staff member
Retired Expediter
This thread isn't (or rather wasn't supposed to be) about returning soldiers not getting enough down time, hospital billing rackets, kids of yore not having time to get depressed, divorce rates, getting government out of health care, people not taking responsibility for their actions, Socialism, people having a bad day and not being able to cope, the poverty rate, cold beer, steaks, or hunkering (one deMoot point for that one, BTW).

Clacking hens is right. Greg is spot on about these psychotropic drugs being like LSD. And as he noted, it's not even like LSD, as they are precisely the same in what they do and how they work. Zoloft, Prozac, Zyprexa, Abilify, LSD, they all work the same way. They can not only do permanent damage to kids, but to adults as well. People who have never been on a psychotropic drug do not "go postal". Every school shooting (including the guy at VA Tech, the students at Columbine, the milk truck driver at the Amish school, all of them), mall shooting, restaurant shooting, the Tuscon shooter, all of them, every single seemingly random shooting can all be tied directly to mind-altering psychotropic drugs like the "atypicals" discussed in the article.

He is also spot on about perfectly normal behavior, like mood swings brought on by PMS or any number of other perfectly normal factors, as now being diagnosed as a mental illness with a pill being the cure. Older people who want to be active are given these drugs to calm them down, sedate them, control them. Normal childhood behavior is diagnosed as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and gets restrained with these drugs, simply because the parent/baby-sitter/teacher doesn't want to deal with it. 75% of prescriptions for Ritalin are for children with boys four times more likely to be on it than girls.

The list of school-age children who have gone on violent rampages is growing at a disturbing rate, shootings are the headline grabbers, but students attacking other students, teachers, bus drivers, etc., are at astoundingly high levels. Just three weeks after the Columbine shootings, President Clinton hosted a White House conference on youth violence. The president declared it a strategy session to seek "the best ideas from people who can really make a difference: parents and young people, teachers and religious leaders, law enforcement, gun manufacturers, representatives of the entertainment industry and those of us here in government."

No mention of, and no attendance of, mental health professionals who deal with, and are paid by, psychotropic drugs. Few in the mental-health community have been willing to talk about even the possibility that the heavily prescribed drugs and violence may be linked, yet all of them know it does. Those who try to investigate quickly learn that virtually all data concerning violence and psychotropic drugs are protected by the confidentiality provided minors and doctor-patient confidentiality deal. It is only when a highly publicized shootings like Columbine or Pearl, MS or the VA Tech shootings and others where this information has been made available to the public.

Do any of you remember the incident in 2009 where the Stamford, Connecticut woman's 200 pound pet chimpanzee suddenly went bananas and attacked another woman visiting the chimp's owner? The chimp was a 15 year old otherwise very docile creature who had starred in commercials for Old Navy, Coca-Cola, and had been in a few TV shows. The female victim was a frequent visitor and knew the chimp well, and the chimp (Travis) knew her and was very comfortable around her. She was immediately attacked as she was exiting her car upon arriving at the house. The chimpanzee literally ripped her face off.

The chimp was raised from a baby, rode in a car every day, opened and closed his doors, was toilet trained, dressed himself, took his own bath, ate at the table and drank wine from a stemmed glass. He also brushed his teeth using a Water Pik, logged onto the computer to look at pictures, and watched television using the remote control.

He was also on Xanax.

Turns out, whenever he became agitated, as he had been early that morning, Travis would be given a Xanax dissolved in his tea to calm him down. Whoops.

Physicians, including psychiatrists, take the Hippocratic Oath - Do No Harm. Yet the vast majority of psychiatrists do exactly that, setting aside the Oath in favor of money.

Did anyone read the link to the Palm Beach Post? If you haven't, you should. That link was to Part 2 of a multi-part story. Here's Part 1: Huge doses of potent antipsychotics flow into state jails for troubled kids.

The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice is far from unique. It's happening all around the country. But in these juvenile detention facilities, you're got troubled kids, being medicated with mind-altering, antipsychotic, psychotropic drugs. That's insane.

The kicker is, the Florida DJJ, like most states, doesn't track prescriptions and has no way of telling whether doctors are putting kids on pills simply to make them easier to control. They have no idea who's getting the drugs, how much, or how often. In most cases, the drugs are prescribed by contract doctors who have taken huge speaker fees and other gifts from makers of antipsychotic pills, and have then been shown to almost immediately beging prescribing these drugs.

"This is a very important issue," said Broward County Public Defender Howard Fink*elstein, whose office represents children in juvenile court. "If kids are being given these drugs without proper diagnosis, and it is being used as a 'chemical restraint,' I would characterize it as a crime. A battery - a battery of the brain each and every time it is given."

In 2007, for example, DJJ bought more than twice as much Seroquel as ibuprofen. Overall, in 24 months, the department bought 326,081 tablets of Seroquel, Abilify, Risperdal and other antipsychotic drugs for use in state-operated jails and homes for children.

That's enough to hand out 446 pills a day, seven days a week, for two years in a row, to kids in jails and programs that can hold no more than 2,300 boys and girls on a given day.

The pills can cause suicidal thoughts in kids, as well as weight gain, high blood sugar, diabetes, heart problems and uncontrollable facial twitches and body tics, clinical trials have shown.

Even so, antipsychotics were among the top drugs bought for children in state-operated jails and residential programs.

Not only that, but Seroquel, for example, the prescribed drug of choice in many juvenile facilities around the country, is bought primarily in the highest dosage available, 400 milligrams. To be given to teenagers. Often these are given two and three times a day.

"She would take them, come back, probably mess around for about half an hour, and then out like a light," Paula said. "By the time we all woke up at 6 o'clock the next the morning, I mean, she's still laying in bed and won't get up. We usually would have to push her out of the door by the time we went to breakfast."

The Seroquel regimens described by Paula amounted to alarmingly high doses, said Dr. Glenn Currier, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Rochester in New York.

"That is an over-the-limit adult dose for refractory schizophrenics" - people who are severely mentally ill and not responding to normal amounts of medication, Currier said. "I have heard of doses that high in large adult males. But not in girls."

"DJJ expressly prohibits the use of these medications as a chemical restraint. We have policy in our health services manual, mirrored in our mental health services manual, that speaks directly to this," DDJ spokeswoman Samadhi Jones said.

Antoinette Appel, a Tamarac neuropsychologist, said she was suspicious of the amounts of drugs used by DJJ. "They're not allowed to put kids in restraints, so they put kids in restraints this way,"

In Okeechobee (girl's DJJ camp), Paula (inmate) said, she could tell when her bunk mates' medications were wearing off.

One evening, Paula said, a nasty storm swept over the Okeechobee camp, making the lights flicker in the cafeteria as she worked in the kitchen. Rather than send the girls out to get their daily doses, camp workers herded them in for dinner.

What happened next made a lasting impression on Paula. The room was packed with about 70 girls, and a third or more of them were coming off their meds, she said. One group started fighting, and then another, until the entire pack was tangled in a wild melee.

"Trays start flying and food starts hitting people in the face, and people are climbing over each other to try to hit each other," Paula said.

If the girls weren't taking antipsychotics, "I don't think they would be this on edge, this irritable," she said. "It was absolute chaos."


So we've got doctors taking big money from Big Pharma and as soon as they do, they start handing out psychotropics like their Tic Tacs to teenagers in juvenile detention, with the taxpayers footing the bill. The teens get out of detention, get off their meds, and go nuts. Many go nuts while still on them. They can't help it, their brains have been scrambled.

Normal people go to the doctor for that or that, and in casual conversation if comes up where this or that irritates you, or you occasionally have trouble sleeping, mood swings, or you have Dry-Eye Restless Leg Dandruff Syndrome, and the doctor happily Does Harm by giving you something that will give you the ability to have the ability to overcome these severe and debilitating conditions, he gives you Abilify.

I'm not anti-meds by a long shot. I do not take medications lightly, however. I do know that every medication prevents your body from performing a natural function, or alters that function in an unnatural way. That's how they work. And sometimes you need to have that. But there are simply too many prescriptions being written that are unnecessary, and harmful.

Mental illness is at literal epidemic levels in the country, and it's not because a lot of people are mental ill or because they consume food preservatives, it's because they are diagnosed with it when they do not have it, it's because of of money, pure and simple.

And it's why Psychiatrists (and far too many general practitioners) and Pharmaceutical Companies are Pure Evil.

Just something to think about. :)
 

Pilgrim

Veteran Expediter
Retired Expediter
This whole subject is spot on, especially when referring to Florida. My family has some direct experience with that state and it's lackadaisical drug regulation. Our adult daughter lived there for four years, and in that short time turned from a well balanced, successful businesswoman to a severely depressed mental train wreck. This all happened because one of her so-called "girlfriends" introduced her to a pill-pushing psychiatrist who would write a prescription to anyone for anything. She started with adderall (a ritalin derivative) to supposedly keep her weight down, and went downhill from there to wellbutrin, effexor, zanax, various sleeping pills and finally hydrocodone and oxycontin. This "doctor" had no reservation about handing out several of these at a time. When we went down there to collect her and her belongings after she lost her job, we found scripts written several at a time, even post-dated. Naturally, we reported this quack to every state agency we could think of - but to our knowledge nothing ever happened and he is still practicing. She came back home a little over six years ago, has gone through extensive therapy and is completely off these drugs but is still not mentally capable of holding a demanding job. Bottom line is, anyone taking these anti-depressants should STOP. Get a 2d or 3d opinion and an independent evaluation to see if you really need this stuff. More than likely, to discontinue taking these chemicals would help most people function better both mentally and physically. Last but not least - if anyone tries to prescribe ritalin, adderall, or anything similar to one of your kids, just say NO and find another doctor.
 

layoutshooter

Veteran Expediter
Retired Expediter
These same type of perscription abuses are taking place in the military as part of the "new" awareness" of the problems that soldiers are having when returning from combat tours. They are pumping these people with all kinds of drugs and giving them a medical discharge. Some of these people are on as many as 8 or 9 scripts a day. Many to offset the side affects of others that they are taking. Weight gain, blood pressure problems etc is common. These people walk around like zombies, slurring words, barely able to stay awake. I shudder to think what the long term affects are going to be.
 

skyraider

Veteran Expediter
US Navy
My goodness some of u all are definitely in the 8 paragraph mode today. Me, I just installed my 8 inch deep swimming pool by 6 feet diameter from Kmart. One cooler of beer, a beach umbrella and 2 birddogs in the pool. I just love home vacations dont u. Yep me and jimmy singing, Cheeseburgers in Paradise, now u got a visual on that gang?:eek: My thong is rid'n up on me though, knew it would. U all come on over, bring ur own pool and birddogs if u got'm, and whatever u want to drink.:)
 

chefdennis

Veteran Expediter
Hey i have that same pool on my deck and was sitting in it with my 10 month old grandson earlier..and yeap had that coolf beer right there too...but then it was time to fire up the smoker (well really the orion cooker) and smoke 15 lbs of chicken breast for the me the wife and the rest of the family..none of which have been or are on ritalin or and anti-depressents....that stuff will screw with your head....

We are a beer dependent family here... you know the ones that use to be called drunks....:D
 

skyraider

Veteran Expediter
US Navy
Hey i have that same pool on my deck and was sitting in it with my 10 month old grandson earlier..and yeap had that coolf beer right there too...but then it was time to fire up the smoker (well really the orion cooker) and smoke 15 lbs of chicken breast for the me the wife and the rest of the family..none of which have been or are on ritalin or and anti-depressents....that stuff will screw with your head....

We are a beer dependent family here... you know the ones that use to be called drunks....:D

lmaoff:D.........................
 

greg334

Veteran Expediter
why would u get waved to a plane, are u in Honduras or Pangopango?:D

It was a private plane and no I wasn't in those places, I was in the Great North for work. AND I got seriously sunburned while I was there - who would have thought.
 

cheri1122

Veteran Expediter
Driver
I read the article [in Al Jazeera!] a bit ago, and am appalled at how blatantly the pharm mfrs buy the Drs, and ruin people's health [the 'atypicals', or newer psyche drugs, can cause diabetes and obesi people's lives. People who believe that a doctor has their best interests foremost in his/her plan of care.
For the evil that is greed.
Who just said the other day [in another thread] that "the wealthy get that way by hard work"? Well, here's a pretty good example of just how hard they work, innit? :mad:
 

chefdennis

Veteran Expediter
Eddie wrote:

After reading the replies...Y'all got A.D.D, get back on your meds!

Where is that cooler??? wait there is a can of Bud Light there in the corner on the deck...."Breakfast of Champions" ,even warm...:D

ohhhh what is that "shiny object..!?!?" :p
 

Turtle

Administrator
Staff member
Retired Expediter
Thanks guys, I appreciate you staying intelligently on-topic here. Nice thought provoking discussions.
 

greg334

Veteran Expediter
Thanks guys, I appreciate you staying intelligently on-topic here. Nice thought provoking discussions.

Well Turtle our posts didn't include those words like Liberal/Conservative, Left/Right, Obama/Obummer/Obum/barry or anything like that so they didn't want to hear about it.
 

skyraider

Veteran Expediter
US Navy
Well Turtle our posts didn't include those words like Liberal/Conservative, Left/Right, Obama/Obummer/Obum/barry or anything like that so they didn't want to hear about it.

They will not listen to me either, I try.:eek:
 

Tennesseahawk

Veteran Expediter
Well Turtle our posts didn't include those words like Liberal/Conservative, Left/Right, Obama/Obummer/Obum/barry or anything like that so they didn't want to hear about it.

Actually, once it became about you, and your area of expertise, everyone seemed to have lost interest.
 
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