An extensive article published in USA Today revealed that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recorded 45 child deaths attributed to new anti-psychotic drugs, yet experts say the death toll could easily be as high as 450, as only 1 to 10% of adverse reactions are ever reported to the FDA. Equally alarming is that the number of anti-psychotic drugs prescribed for 2 to 18-year-olds grew from under 500,000 in 1995, to approximately 2.5 million in 2002 — a 400% increase, while sales of anti-psychotic drugs have soared 1,500%, from $500 million in 1991 to more than $8 billion in 2003.
The anti-psychotic drug deaths mark the third major category of lethal psychiatric drugs being prescribed to millions of American children; antidepressants now require the FDA’s “black box” warning for causing suicidal reactions in children and teens; an FDA advisory committee has warned that ADHD drugs should carry “black box” warnings for causing strokes, heart attacks and sudden death in children. More than a dozen warnings have been issued internationally on psychiatric drugs causing children and adolescents side effects including liver damage, cardiac failure, strokes, hallucinations, psychosis, mania, violence, suicide and death. Yet these drugs continue to be prescribed to more than 17 million children worldwide.
Brian Beaumont, president of the Vancouver Chapter of the psychiatric watchdog organization, Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), said, “Psychiatrists have created a multi billion-dollar child drugging market that puts profit above children’s lives. Psychiatrists fraudulently promote childhood behaviors as “diseases”, or “illnesses” requiring the administration of powerful, mind-altering drugs despite the lack of any blood test, brain scan or “chemical imbalance” test that can prove any mental “disorder” is a medical condition”.
Psychiatry’s financial incentive for pathologizing behaviors and manufacturing “diseases” was disclosed last month in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, which found 100% of the psychiatrists determining the criteria for so-called “mood disorders” (which includes “bipolar disorder” and “schizophrenia/psychotic disorders”) for inclusion in the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical of Mental Disorders (DSM) were financially involved with drug companies that manufacture the drugs.
Earlier anti-psychotic drugs caused a fatal toxic reaction called neuroleptic malignant syndrome, killing an estimated 100,000 Americans. It took 20 years before the APA issued a warning letter in 1985 to its members, and then only after several highly publicized lawsuits that “found psychiatrists and their institutions negligent for failing to warn patients of the drug-related risk.”
Parents have charged that they have been left at the mercy of psychiatry’s misinformation and that children are dying because of it. Ellen Liversidge whose son died in 2002 after falling into a coma from an anti-psychotic drug, states, “There was no warning on the label and no warning from the doctor… Do we need to have so many more people killed? Do we need a whole bunch more newspaper articles? What is it going to take for the FDA to act?”
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was established by the Church of Scientology in 1969 to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights. It has been the most effective organization in the world in helping enact informed consent laws on the dangers of psychiatric drugs prescribed to millions of unsuspecting men, women and children.
For more information, log onto http://www.cchr.org
