Child soldiers in Washington State

It is hard for me as an outside reader to really appreciate the complexities of the struggles that other people like Stephany of Soulful Sepulcher and Becky of Involuntary Transformation have been having with the mental health system for their relatives. There is so much specific information that an outside reader can get lost. I don’t know if I am just waking up or if it is well know by others that children under 18, especially if they are institutionalized, are trialling drugs that are already on the market for eventual approval for children.

I’ve been following Becky’s blog about her son’s experience with the mental health system in Washington State. Washington State has decided that age 13 is the legal of the age to give informed consent when it comes to the mental health treatment. This is not in line with the age of consent in other types of health situations, in Washington State. Patients’ rights groups have been agitating to let adults decide whether they want mental health treatment or not, and Washington State extends this privilege to 13 year olds? This is odd, indeed, becautoday’s parents, including negligent ones, are lining up to get their young teens treated. Parents would gladly give their permission hoping for a quick fix. So, what on the one hand looks “progressive” in having young people make their own choices, on the other hand is something more sinister.

I don’t know how it works in other jurisdictions or whether Washington State is unique, but something seems rotten in the State of Washington. I don’t have the time to research the age of consent for mental health treatment in all jurisdictions but age 13 strikes me as surely the youngest. Check out the Community Health Plan of Washington here. Note what the plan says about cases of substance abuse. •Minors 13 or older may get this treatment without consent if DSHS decides minor is a “child in need of services.”

When Becky’s son turned 13, the doctor’s wrested complete control of decisions on the medications away from the mother. That’s what age of consent is all about. I have the further impression that her son was then deemed too sick to make his own decisions and fell under the complete control of the State.

Step 1 is taking the medical decision-making away from the parents of under 18s.

Step 2 is the State seizing complete control by deeming the child in need of services.

Step 3 is even more sinister because it appears, in the case of Becky’s son (and obviously countless others) that he was then enrolled in drug trials. From the impression I have I from reading Becky’s blog, these were not what the public usually thinks of as drug trials, where drugs are trialled before they are FDA approved. Her son appears to have been subjected to a variety of neuroleptics that are currently on the market but not approved for use in people under 18.

Ergo, it would seem that the pharmaceutical lobby has managed to get certain jurisdictions to lower the age of consent in mental health matters and then moves in with conducting experiments on the very young in order to win eventual approval of their products for use in children.

What I would like to find out is how widely known is it that children are trialing drugs? It is widely known that growing numbers of children are being put on antipychotics (off-label) and that the brunt of this falls on poor children but does the public know that lowering the age of consent for children means that pharma moves in and tests these drugs on child users of the mental health system? It is, of course, much easier to test these drugs if the child is institutionalized.

Person of the Year

Robert Whitaker, hands down.

I’m rushing today, so am taking the lazy way out and reprinting a review from Amazon about his 2010 book, Anatomy of an Epidemic; Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America.

Impeccably researched and documented, Whitaker’s book is based on long-term outcome studies that have received almost no publicity from psychiatry and other guardians of the psychiatric establishment, including, of course, the pharmaceutical companies that keep churning out new generations of magic bullets. It’s a multibillion dollar industry with a lot to lose were the full truth about the drug risks disclosed and understood.

While far from an anti-psychiatry or anti-drug polemic, Whitaker’s interviews with patients who are on psychiatric medications are nonetheless heartrending. Also revealing is his disclosure of the brutal treatment meted out to maverick doctors like Peter Breggin, David Healy and Loren Mosher, who all questioned the efficacy of pharmaceutical treatment of mental disorders, from schizophrenia to bipolar disorder and other maladies. Harvard Medical School-trained Breggin was in effect blacklisted. Mosher lost his position with the NIMH over his successful drug-free treatment of patients through the Soteria project he founded. And Healy promptly lost a job offer after publicizing his criticism of SSRIs and their possible relation to suicide.

Happy New Year!

Waking up from the dream

“The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend”  —Aldous Huxley

I’m new to spirituality. Spirituality is not religion but it incorporates teachings from most of the world’s great religions. Spirituality can lead to the process of becoming enlightened, to wake up from the dream state where we see ourselves divided, to the awakening or awake state (rarely fully awake) where we see unity. I’ve found that developing a spiritual side has helped me not only to understand and empathize with Chris, but also is the beginning of my own healing process.

Spirituality as a vehicle of enlightenment is not the end of pain, however. It leads to confusion and self-doubt. I see that in Chris. I’m beginning to see that in myself. I don’t claim to be enlightened, but I am learning some surprising things along the way. As I became more spiritually attuned, I believed that as Chris began to heal, I would experience a decline in my own health that would force me to undergo the same revolutionary process that he has undertaken.

I’m reading the kind of books that I never would have glanced at in my pre-spiritual days. The more I learn, the more I practice. I see how simple life is (LOVE yourself first) but there are complexities, too.

In early November, I got some troubling blood test results that in previous years would have really freaked me out and put me in a constant state of worry. (The doctor was not as concerned.) I’d been experiencing symptoms sporadically over the previous two years. By chance I went to our bookshelf and picked out a book that Ian had purchased that I didn’t know we owned. “Holy Spirit for Healing: Merging Ancient Wisdom with Modern Medicine,”  by former Catholic priest Ron Roth and Peter Occhiogrosso. Using Jesus’/Buddha’s/Mohammed’s messages, the book explains some very simple visualizations that we can use to heal ourselves.

While I was doing the spiritual healing work I asked God/the energy field/ to tell me where the problem lay. The answer that immediately popped into my head in the quiet moment of reflection was: “It’s hepatitis.” The answer coming from me/God was very clear. “It’s hepatitis.” I tucked that away as a possible cause.

After my energy work, I “knew” that any subsequent blood test results would be back to normal, but the doctor at the clinic wanted me to wait a bit longer before being retested. When I saw the clinic doctor to go over the results of the second blood test, which as I predicted, were normal, he casually mentioned that I tested positive for Hepatitis A, but he dismissed it as something that I probably picked up more than thirty years ago.

By then I had forgotten about my hepatitis prediction and didn’t make the connection with the Hepatitis A news. I decided to see a specialist later in the month to be on the safe side. The specialist could hardly believe such dramatic test results were possible in such a short period of time. He told me that, of course, he always encouraged his patients to practice spiritual healing, but it was clear to me that he felt the real answers were always medical. He thought that I might have experienced an allergic reaction to a drug, but was not able to pin it down to any medication I was taking. And, no, he also thought it was unrelated to drinking red wine.

Before Christmas I went for a third round of blood tests as part of my bi-annual company physical. Results still normal. The nurse checked to see if I was up-to-date with my vaccinations and discovered that I never got the second dose of my Hepatitis A shot. She decided that since I already had the antibodies, I didn’t need the second shot. It was only then that I recalled that my meditation had told me about the hepatitis.

Since, so far, I was no clearer as to the cause of the sky-high blood test results and I am still experiencing the same symptoms from time to time, over the Christmas holidays I sat down to meditate and changed the question to: Given all of this, what part of me needs to heal?

According to the mechanics of meditation, the answer may come immediately, or it may come over the next few hours or few days, if you pay attention.

In the wee hours of the following morning, I woke up suddenly. A voice/a thought said to me, very clearly, and this is where it gets very strange . . . “Get Chris a blood test.”

Get Chris a blood test? That’s not the answer in any way, shape or form that I thought I was expecting. How is this related to me?

I am learning, that becoming enlightened is troubling.

This strange imperative leads to new complexities. If I believe, then I must act on my belief. I’m going to have to come up with a plausible reason to say to Dr. Stern that Chris needs a thorough blood test, not like the one-off specific testing that is done for clozapine, for example. I’m going to have to figure out with Chris, what our course of action will be based on the test results. I can’t imagine that the results are going to be normal for anyone on a neuroleptic (and that’s why these tests are ordered by doctors only for a known life threatening side-effect).

From the archives of the Onion

Wonder Drug Inspires Deep, Unwavering Love of Pharmaceutical Companies

“Many individuals today lack the deep, abiding affection for drug makers that is found in healthy people, such as myself,” Pfizer CEO Hank McKinnell said. “These tragic disorders are reaching epidemic levels, and as a company dedicated to promoting the health, well-being, and long life of our company’s public image, it was imperative that we did something to combat them.”

Although many psychotropic drugs impart a generalized feeling of well-being, PharmAmorin is the first to induce and focus intense feelings of affection externally, toward for-profit drug makers. Pfizer representatives say that, if taken regularly, PharmAmorin can increase affection for and trust in its developers by as much as 96.5 percent.

READ MORE here.

A preventable death: Jesus of Nazareth

A fun new blog has caught my eye. NAMI Dearest: Helping NAMI parents overcome laziness.

Below is an excerpt from a recent post: Ancient Families of the Mentally Ill: Back when tragedies weren’t preventable with meds. . .

The untimely death of Jesus of Nazareth may have been prevented if his severe and persistent mental illness had been properly treated, but alas, there were no miraculous antipsychotic medications 2000 years ago, and they, unfortunately, were forced to crucify the young man.
 No, my friends, there was no NAMI Nazareth to assist the needy Joseph and Mary. Count your blessings.

We can see from Jesus’ family history that his mother, Mary, also suffered from untreated delusions and hallucinations. At the age of fourteen, young Mary believed she was visited by an Archangel named “Gabriel” whom she claimed appeared in order to inform her that she was pregnant with the Son of G-d. Mary suffered also from command hallucinations in which, she felt, the angel was ordering her to name her baby Jesus. It is common for schizophrenia to run in families. In fact, Mary’s mother Anna was also afflicted with hallucinatory visions of angels.

Mary’s much older guardian, Joseph the Carpenter, upon discovering her predicament, was not pleased. He was determined to leave Mary and dismiss her entirely. The stress of being unwed and pregnant in ancient times, may have triggered Mary’s genetic predisposition to mental illness, the very same illness that Jesus went on to develop during early adulthood. Joseph opted instead to assist in concealing Mary’s crime, and they were secretly married by the high priest.

Indeed, this was a troubled family, prone to instability and homeless wandering. Jesus himself was born under less than sanitary conditions, surrounded by animals and their droppings, which gives credence to the possibility that he may have been infected at birth with a schizo-virus found in the animal fecal matter. Upon the birth of Jesus, three social workers visited to assess the situation, and provided some limited assistance. Yet, even with the large taxes being assessed in Bethlehem, there was insufficient funding for helping these displaced and mentally ill homeless individuals, and Mary and baby Jesus fell through the cracks of a cold, uncaring system. No, My friends, there was no Mother’s Act. Without the support of Joseph, Mary and Jesus may have succumbed much sooner to the ravages of untreated schizophrenia.


READ MORE here.

The job application form

A friend of mine sent me a question this week that I’d like to throw out to the wider community. Her son has been offered a job that requires a physical. There are now two concerns of hers that center on disclosure and stigma. The family doctor refuses to sign off on the medical form because her son was hospitalized for three weeks at this time last year, he is no longer on meds and the doctor feels he will have relapse.

My friend understands the doctor’s position from a legal standpoint, but is upset that the diagnosis will follow him around wherever he goes. She objects to the fact that he was “diagnosed” after a 45 minute interview by a doctor. Many job forms ask about mental health history.

We are all in this boat. Frankly, I’ve been avoiding this issue because I know it will rear its ugly head when Chris eventually gets around to being employed or needing insurance. I’m just hoping that things are not as negative as they sometimes look.

Can  someone get “undiagnosed?” Or, can someone go to their doctor and demand a downgrade of their diagnosis? Since medical records are private, if someone is asked on an employment form (insurance forms are more serious if falsified) what their mental health history is, what’s the matter with saying “depression?” Now that  antipsychotics are being turned into antidepressants, where’s the harm in claiming you were suffering from depression? Who’s going to know? What about getting a driver’s license for the first time?What legal recourse is there from a discrimination point-of-view?

What have we not thought of? What words of advice can you offer us?

Pharma’s amazing miracle

If I were a parent who’s child returned from his or her first semester on campus with a prescription for Abilify or lithium in hand, I would want to sue the university for promoting drug addiction and encouraging depression. Check out this horror story in the New York Times. This story laments the number of students arriving on campus taking drugs for various mental health issues (and predictably overdosing on the drugs they brought from home), and it endorses the idea that it’s then okay to conduct surveys asking students if they are depressed. 

Pharmaceutical companies are, of course, behind these screenings. Follow the money.

She learned she had clinical depression. She eventually conquered it with psychotherapy, Cymbalta and lithium. She went on to form a Stony Brook chapter of Active Minds, a national campus-based suicide-prevention group.

On recent day, she was one of two dozen volunteers in black T-shirts reading “Chill” who stopped passers-by in the Student Activities Center during lunch hour.
 “Would you like to take a depression screening?” they asked, offering a clipboard with a one-page form to all who unplugged their ear buds. Students checked boxes if they had difficulty sleeping, felt hopeless or “had feelings of worthlessness.” They were offered a chance to speak privately with a psychologist in a nearby office. Sixteen said yes.

The depression screenings are part of a program to enlist students to monitor the mental health of peers, which is run by the four-year-old Center for Outreach and Prevention, a division of mental health services that Dr. Hwang oversaw before her promotion to director of all counseling services.

This story also is witness to the triumph of Abilify’s image and market make-over from an antipsychotic to an antidepressant.

The New York Times does not allow comments to this article. It would be flooded with critical comments if it did.

Canada’s receptivity to progress and innovation

I just posted to Twitter an article from The National Post that raised once again doubts about how sophisticated Canadians are in understanding and treating so-called “serious mental health conditions.” The article focuses on the oddity of University of Ottawa social work Professor Neree St-Amand’s views being at odds with the mainstream. Professor St-Amand believes in “empowerment” and alternative therapies, which the article cluck clucks about as being at odds with the mainstream. Canadians hate being at odds with the mainstream. The article portrays Professor Armand’s views as if they are stuck in the quaint time warp of the swinging sixties where “discredited” types like R.D. Laing held forth. There is no mention that St-Amand’s views aren’t even considered that radical these days for people who believe in mental health empowerment. Isn’t there any other live academic in Canada with these views? Singling out St-Amand makes it look like there is not.

Unfortunately, I could only “like” this article on Facebook and not post my own rebuttal to it. I tried posting a comment. The comments section wasn’t sophisticated enough to let me know if my word count exceeded its maximum. Well, I don’t like this article. I think it’s totally out-of-date and has an agenda. You be the judge.

Canadians (and I’m one) are infinitely less sophisticated than their closest neighbor, the Americans, certainly if this article and the comments to the article are any indication. I say this because Canada lacks an effective opposition in so many areas. There is simply not a critical enough mass of people in that geographically huge country to muster much effective opposition to a wide array of social, economic or political initiatives. Say what Canadians do say repeatedly about the ills of the United States, but when it comes to voices of dissent, well, the voices are few and far between in the country to the north. You need a critical mass of people and a political and economic climate that is fertile to innovation. Canada is historically very slow in this regard. This is not a good thing when it comes to innovative mental health treatment.

People who don’t know their history may find it astonishing that what is now Ontario in the early 1800s was virtually ruled by an informal “Family Compact” made up of a closed oligarchy of landowners, administrators, churchmen and businessmen who virtually monopolized public office and controlled the economy. Canada has been suffering the effects of this and other British North American elitism in one form or another ever since. Canadians by and large are more trusting of authority than in other countries. They end up with mainstream policies that they accept unquestioningly, but that often are not in their best interests if they thought about it long enough, which they don’t. The Family Compact mentality lives on in so many ways.

As a footnote to today’s post, I wrote an earlier critique of Susan Inman’s book that I also posted on Amazon.

Please feel free to send your own (short) comments on the article to the newspaper. Let’s raise the collective IQ on display. Thanks!

Who writes this stuff?

Read the recent NAMI message below. Where does it mention helping 10,000 people each day actually RECOVER from mental illness? Misery loves company is not an incentive to thrive. Let’s dump the hope and inspiration in the general sense, and raise our expectations about recovery.

NAMI.org has become a beacon of hope for more than 10,000 people each day.

Visitors to NAMI.org find information, support and the comfort of knowing that they are not alone in their experience of mental illness.

Whether through one of the site’s comprehensive education portals or personal contact through NAMI discussion groups, millions now have access to the hope and inspiration they so richly need and deserve.

NAMI needs your support to help us continue to sustain, grow and improve this valuable resource. Please donate generously.