Biopsychiatry Illuminated

THE CANDLELIGHT PROJECT
by Bob Collier

1 March 2004
Issue 83

My personal interest in biopsychiatry, and in particular its alleged 'disorders of childhood and adolescence', is essentially confined to its ideas, beliefs and perceptions, which seem to be very much at odds with my own experiences as a parent (and as a child, now I think of it).

That's all very cosy for me.

There are far too many other parents, however, who are having to deal with some truly nasty consequences of biopsychiatry's shenanigans on a daily basis - nowhere more so than in the constantly fraught and contentious circumstances of America's schools, where the forced drugging of children has, it seems, become commonplace.

In January of this year, Dennis Mountjoy, a member of the California State Assembly, introduced a bill that would have protected California's school children from that danger. It was defeated.

Not everyone, it seems, is as concerned about the safety of the developing minds and bodies of children as they could be.

This is the press release issued by Assemblyman Mountjoy's office prior to the introduction of his bill, AB 1424.

Legislation that will protect children from forced medication with dangerous psychiatric drugs will be in the Assembly Health Committee Tuesday, January 13 at 1:30 PM.

"Parents have fled the country, gone to jail, moved their children out of state. They have been falsely labeled as child abusers and they have seen their children institutionalized - all because they have refused to allow them to be subjected to powerful and dangerous drugs," Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy, R-Monrovia, said.

"The scenario is all too common: a teacher or school counselor with no medical training 'diagnoses' a child as suffering from a psychiatric disorder. School officials tell parents they must allow the child to be treated with a dangerous drug. The parents refuse. They are classified as child abusers and threatened with losing their children if they don't go along with this destructive program," continued Assemblyman Mountjoy.

Assemblyman Mountjoy's bill, AB 1424, will ensure that other parents do not suffer the same torment as Diane Booth, an East Bay mother. Ms. Booth lost her son Vincent in a battle over forced drugging. In 1999, school officials told her that the boy, then 7, suffered from ADHD, and they demanded that she allow Vincent to be drugged. When Ms. Booth refused, she was put on the list of child abusers and her son was forced into an institution where he was drugged and physically abused, she said.

Ms. Booth contrived to get her son back and fled to Canada with him. They were tracked down there. Vincent was sent back to an institution and his mother was jailed. She was released after several months, penniless. Rather than face more time in jail, she again fled to Canada, this time without her son. In fact, she has not been allowed to even communicate with him.

Los Angeles area mother Rocio Eslava at first succumbed to pressure from a school counselor and allowed her daughter to take an anti-depressant for a supposed "chemical imbalance." The daughter then began suffering severe headaches and diarrhea. She became suicidal and was taken to a mental hospital.

When a hospital psychiatrist tried to force a different anti-depressant on the girl, Ms. Eslava refused only to have the psychiatrist threaten to have her daughter taken away and placed in foster care. Ms. Eslava responded by sending her daughter to stay with relatives out of the area. The daughter promptly recovered and has continued to do well, but she and her mother were deeply affected by the forced separation.

Sacramento area resident David Smith fought a similar battle with school authorities who, even though they lacked medical qualifications, diagnosed his son as having ADHD. When he refused to drug the boy, Smith was accused of child abuse and his home was visited and searched by Child Protective Services workers. He changed his son's school, and the boy bloomed.

Assembly member Mountjoy knows first hand about the issue. "I have personally seen the terrible effects that psychiatric drugs can cause from experience with my own son," he said. "Luckily, we were able to get him off the drug very quickly as soon as we saw that it was harming him. No parent should be forced to put or keep their child on these potentially harmful drugs."

Lorraine Ruiz, a whistleblower who is at the center of a major investigation into the foster care ombudsman's office in Santa Clara County, stated, "It is common for schools to call Child Protective Services and allege medical neglect when they want to pressure a parent into putting their child onto psychiatric drugs. Already overworked CPS personnel are required to investigate. If school personnel knew what goes on in the foster care system-prostitution rings, excessive psychiatric drugging, kids moved to home after home, physical abuse, sexual abuse--they would never think of calling Child Protective Services for such a thing."

Dr. Fred Baughman, Jr., a pediatric neurologist, said that the drugging of children is not only bad for them but bad medicine.

"There is still not one single physical test that proves any one of the so-called 'disorders' is actually a disease with any detectable physical abnormality," he said. "Psychiatrists are labeling physically normal children as 'diseased' and drugging them with dangerous psychotropic drugs to change the way they behave or feel."

Cassandra Auerbach of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights of Los Angeles said that the abuse is wide ranging. "Psychiatrists testing these drugs are on the payroll of the drug companies; data about children attempting suicide after being given psychiatric drugs in clinical trials has been withheld from medical doctors and the public," she said. "Some people go completely psychotic from these drugs. Others suffer heart failure, brain damage, permanent movement disorders, liver toxicity, excessive weight gain, and addiction, to name just a few side effects."

"The intent of AB 1424 is very simple," she said. "Stop forcing parents to drug their children with these potentially fatal drugs and don't take the child away if the parents refuse."

Similar legislation has been signed into law in Arizona and Texas in 2003.

Two days ago, the following letter was published in the Fresno Bee:

Ritalin Remains
By Sharon S. Kientz
Retired Teacher
January 20, 2004

The public will little note a decision made in Sacramento on January 14 but families will remain victims unaware. AB 1424, defeated in committee, would have provided that parents cannot be charged with abuse or neglect of their children if they refuse the administration of psychotropic (mind-altering) drugs, including Ritalin, to their children. While AB 1424 was but a small step, it would have represented a break in the stranglehold that the psychiatric/pharmaceutical industry has on the treatment of so-called Attention Deficit Disorders. The diagnostic process often begins in the schools because teachers, administrators and psychologists have been seduced by the industry's propaganda, legitimized by the media, that ADD/ADHD is a biological disease. Too often the first identification of an ADD/ADHD child comes from a classroom teacher. Finding a doctor who will prescribe Ritalin is easy since most have bought into the neurobiological lie.

There is a movement among state legislatures to enact laws that prevent public school personnel from pressuring parents to medicate their children with Ritalin or other psychotropic drugs and protect parents from criminal charges if they refuse to drug their children. In 1999 the Colorado legislature was the first in the nation to address this problem when it passed a resolution warning of the possible negative effects of psychotropic drugs on schoolchildren.

Colorado passed HB 1172 in 2003 which requires each school board to adopt a policy prohibiting school personnel from recommending or requiring the use of a psychotropic drug by any student. Many states have followed suit but not California.

Nothing but a set of behaviors described in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) is the basis for a diagnosis of ADD/ADHD. It is not a biological test, but simply a behavioral one. The APA has forgotten what is normal for children and has pathologized behavior that all children engage in. Frequently claims of a "chemical imbalance" are cited by the APA as justification for the diagnosis but they confess that they "do not have an independent valid test for ADHD and there are no data to indicate that ADHD is due to brain malfunction." Dr. Peter Breggin, a psychiatrist who is the International Director of the Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, is one of the few heroes within the profession. He is the author of several books including Talking Back to Ritalin. Dr. Fred Baughman, a pediatric neurologist for 35 years, is another authority on the misdiagnosis of ADD/ADHD. Both men have testified before Congress on this issue.

A collusion exists between the APA, the pharmaceutical companies and the support group CHADD (children and adults with ADD). The APA would be a dead organization but for psychiatrists' power to prescribe drugs so there is a reciprocity of financial gain to themselves and the drug companies when mental/emotional illnesses are identified as biological and treatable with drugs. CHADD's primary recommendation to parents is Ritalin while it has received over a million dollars from Novartis, the company that produces Ritalin. Parents are not told that the Drug Enforcement Administration classifies Ritalin as a Schedule II drug in the same category as cocaine. Nor are parents informed of the side effects of Ritalin including loss of appetite, sleeplessness, tics, growth inhibition, brain shrinkage, and depression.

In 1997 I retired after a 23 year kindergarten teaching career where I saw the haste with which some teachers were wont to identify children as ADD. At staff meetings, not only were children, mostly boys, identified but strategies for convincing parents of the need for medication were proposed. In 1991 the U.S. Department of Education added a financial incentive by classifying ADD/ADHD as a learning disability for which schools could receive reimbursement under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. Between 1991 and 2000 Ritalin sales increased 500 percent. Over 5 million children now take Ritalin or similar drugs.

In 1996 PBS broadcast a program hosted by John Merrow entitled ADD: A Dubious Diagnosis. The saddest part of this program was listening to young boys tell of their pleas to parents to stop the Ritalin. One boy described himself as "not the real me, a fake person." Even sadder is my 15 year old grandson, who after six years on Ritalin, now takes a cocktail of drugs including Lithium, Serzone, Wellbutrin and Risperdal for Bi-Polar Disorder. He believes that he is a flawed human being and is unable to "be good" without his drugs. A dubious diagnosis, indeed.

Sharon S. Kientz

I've now learned that a couple of weeks ago the same Assemblyman who introduced AB 1424, Dennis Mountjoy, introduced a stronger, more comprehensive bill dealing with diagnosis by school personnel and psychotropic drugs, AB 2286.

Let's hope it's successful.

ADHD-Report.com: The concerned parents' guide to childrens' attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD/ADD)

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