Making a Killing: The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging 

“Have you been diagnosed with depression and struggle with sadness?” “Maybe you are scared of being criticized.” “Loss of interest, aches and pains … and always thinking something terrible.” “Ask your doctor about Effexor XR.” “Ask your doctor about Cymbalta.” “Talk to your doctor about Zoloft.” “Talk to your healthcare professionals.” “Talk to your doctor today.” “Talk to your doctor.” “Talk to your doctor immediately.” “Talk with your doctor.”       

Over 40 years ago leading psychiatrists met in Puerto Rico to map out their vision of the future. “We see a developing potential for nearly a total control of human emotional status, mental functioning, and will to act.” —Psychiatrist Wayne O. Evans 1967.  

Their plan? To create, by the year of 2000, a range of psychiatric drugs regulating every aspect of human behavior.  

(1:34) Today, 100,000,000 people worldwide are on psychiatric drugs. How did this happen? “Psychiatrists convinced them they were sick.”  (1:46, Mike Adams, consumer health advocate) They want you to think the disease from birth and all those experiences of life, childhood, adolescent, teenager years, adulthood, being a senior citizen. These are all various stages of disease. (1:55, Pamela Seefeld, clinical pharmacist) Let’s all face it, we’ve all been depressed at one time. We’ve all been anxious at one time. These are normal emotions that we feel.   

(2:01, Ben Hansen, investigative researcher) Every emotional and spiritual problem is reduced to a label. (2:07, Dr. Pamela Popper, clinical founder & director) And of course, all of these diseases require pharmaceutical treatments. This is big big big business.   

(2:12) While generating a healthy income, claiming to be medical professionals. Psychiatrists will freely confess that their profession is devoid of science. (2:23, Psychiatrist, New Jersey) “We don’t really have any specific blood tests or other tests that are definitive for any mental illness whatsoever.” (2:33, Psychiatrist, Pennsylvania) “It would be neat if it would become much more scientific.”  

(2:36, Psychiatrist, Mexico) “Well, if you go to my office and you tell me that you are depressed.  There is nothing and no blood sample or whatever tests.”  (2:42, Psychiatrist, Greece) “There are no current available test to verify your diagnosis.” (2:47, Psychiatrist, Massachusetts) “I don’t use any tests.”  

(2:48, Psychiatrist, Germany) “We do not have a test to say, well, this is the disorder and this is the best medication for this disorder.” (2:56, Psychiatrist, Michigan) “For many years, we thought we had the test but it turned out that they weren’t of any value.”  

(3:08, Gwen Olsen, former drug sales rep.) “By the time the drugs approved and hits the general population, we don’t know even 50% of the side effects that are involved with these drugs.” 

(3:15, Dr. David Stein, professor of psychology, Longwood University) These pills cause heart attacks and liver problems, immune system problems and lots of other medical problems so you are playing with fire. 

(3:25) Everyday, psychiatric drugs cause serious adverse reactions. And, while psychiatrists and drug companies fully understand the dangers of the drugs they sell. Their unsuspecting customers are left to suffer the consequences. 

(3:42, Alan, daughter hanged herself while on Zoloft) Everything became worse, each mood swing was worse. (3:47, Rebecca, son prescribed Adderall) He would have chronic headaches, chronic nausea, you know not feeling good. (3:51, Marion, daughter prescribed Zoloft) She is very agitated, very very jumpy. She was having horrible hallucination.  That night she was disintegrating.   

(4:01, Anne, brother committed suicide while on Lexapro) Once he started on that drug he just … the clouds just stayed over him and darker and darker. (4:07, Diane son, committed suicide while on Lexapro) He thought there wasn’t anything worth living … to kill himself … that was the drug. 

(4:12, Roy, son committed suicide while on Clozaril) At least I would like to say I love you.  I didn’t get a chance to do that. (4:17) In addition to crippling scores of people daily, every month psychiatric drugs kill an estimate 3000 but the human devastation would never have gotten this high if psychiatrist hadn’t work hand in hand with drug companies to promote their drugs to doctors throughout the world. Today, 70% of all psychiatric drugs are prescribed by general physicians and how was this accomplished?  Marketing.   

(4:47, Michael Oldani, former drug sales rep.) It’s about creating a good story that uses science that convinces the physician to think about writing prescription. (4:55, Cathen Slattery-Moschkau, former drug sales rep.)  This is not science, this is incredibly effective marketing.  It has nothing to do with science.   

(5:00, Shane Ellison, former drug research, chemist, Eli Lilly) They use what I called Statistical Contortionism, basically just obscure numbers, make everything look fantastic, you hide the bad numbers. (5:08, Dr. David Stein, professor of Psychology, Longwood University) They are learning every trick in the book. They are evolving into efficient marketing machines and it’s working.   

(5:16, Gwen Olsen, former drug sales rep.) There is definitely an unholy alliance between psychiatry and pharmaceutical sales.  That’s a marriage made in heaven. (5:21, Kay Carlson, former drug sales rep.) They are like conjoining twins, they join at the wallet.   

(5:25) And with 374 mental disorders filling Psychiatry’s Diagnostic Manual and more on the way. Business is booming.  Pharmaceutical companies have expanded their roster of psychiatric drugs from 44 in 1966 to 174 today. The top 5 psychiatric drugs combined, grows more money than the gross national product of each over half the countries on earth. Altogether the psychiatric industry rakes in a third of a trillion dollars a year.  How could this have happened? It’s a tale of deception that may be difficult to believe, but fatal to ignore.   

(6:18) We took him to a psychiatrist and within a matter of minutes, he asks you ADHA and here’s your drug … medicated and 5 minutes later he was on Zyprexa. (6:35) He saw the psychiatrist and prescribed the medicine for 20 minutes. (6:38) The guy didn’t even look at her. He talked to her a little bit, now, how can you tell if somebody is ADHA or not ADHA from just a few minutes talking to her? (6:47) Next thing I know I am getting handed a handful of Xanax. That’s how easy it’s to get these drugs.  Just so easy, just passed to me like candy.  That simple.   

Psychiatry’s Drug Push    

(7:00, Jim Harper, founder, Drug Rehab program) If a person were to walk in off the street, sat down with a psychiatrist, the chances of him being prescribed a drug before he would leave the office, I would have to put it at 100%. (7:16, Andrew W. Saul, PhD, author and lecturer) Psychiatrists prescribe drugs they might have different ways of diagnosing. They might have different ways of interacting with the patient but it’s rare to find a psychiatrist that uses no drugs.   

(7:27, Dr. Garry Gordon, Physician) The psychiatrists today are in quotes admitting that they can’t cure these mental illnesses and therefore they are going to manage the illness by using a drug. (7:37, Dr. Pamela Popper, Clinic founder and director) 50 years ago, a person who is going through a divorce would have relied on family, friends, clergy and with family doctors to a certain extent for a conversation to work through the issue, certainly they wouldn’t be medicated. (7:49) That was before the era of psychiatric drugs.   

(7:56) Psychiatrists occupying the lowest rank of the medical professional worked almost exclusively in mental institutions with no cures. (8:02) There was little chance they would ever be respected by the public and their peers as real doctors. (8:09, Jonathan Emord, attorney, Emord & Assoc.)  Psychiatrists have for years been on the fringe of medicine, typically the standard doctor in turns would have very low regards for psychiatrist because it was understood not to be a very clear science or art. (8:25, Dr. Ron Leifer, Psychiatrist) Psychiatrists wanted to be viewed as physicians as doctors and in order to be viewed as physicians and doctors the people they dealt with had to be viewed as patients and if doctors dealt with diseases then the patients had to be diseased.   

(8:39, Dr. Rima Laibow, Psychiatrist) Psychiatrists had a wonderful opportunity they felt to become respected in the eyes of their peers. They raise to create a whole diagnostic book called the DSM, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which was created by consensus. (9:00, Dr. Thomas Dorman, Physician) A group of psychologists and psychiatrists get together and they made comment and observations they have a vote and they now classified a new disease and they give it a number and graduate it to the DSM classification. (9:13, Timothy Scott, Psychologist) And it is a dangerous book. It’s a book that has many disorders that could apply to anyone of us because the disorders are not real medical diseases and they are things that apply nearly all of us at time.  Are you afraid of meeting new people? Are you afraid of speaking in front of a large crowd of people? Does it make you nervous to go and talk to your boss about complaints?   

(9:35, Lauren DeWitt, R.PH, registered pharmacist) You can invent a mental disorder based on a checklist of symptoms, then it’s exactly how the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual the billing bible for psychiatry works. (9:45) Since the DSM’s 1st edition in 1952, the number of diagnoses has steadily grown from a slender of 130-page booklet listing 106 so called mental disorders, the DSM has bloated to a voluminous 886 pages. (10:05) It is only through the use of this book that psychiatrist can diagnose, drug and bill for services.   

(10:11) In fact the psychiatric industry currently uses the DSM to collect over $72 billion in private and government insurance money. (10:21, Timothy Scott, Psychologist) The DSM is used to diagnose and give a label and the label is used for billing purposes.  That’s how they get paid. (10:20, Dr. Thomas Szasz, Psychiatrist) You have to have a term in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in order to then call it a disease and treat it as a disease and write a prescription for it.   

(10:44, Kay Carlson, former drug sales rep) And so because they can vote in, they can create, and then the drug industry can just take over and market their drugs for those new disorders. (10:55, Dr. Rima Laibow, Psychiatrist) And those drugs were welcomed by psychiatry leaders because it makes us real doctors.   

(11:03, Dr. Moira Dolan, Physician) Of course first the public had to believe that there was something wrong with them and that thing wrong was biochemical and that could then be treated by a drug which was supposed to cure all. (11:14, John Bosley, former research psychologist, national institute of mental health) And so it was relatively easy I think to say well look, let’s start looking at mental illnesses fundamentally, a matter of chemical imbalance in the brain.   

(11:25, John Sommers – Flanagan, professor of Counselor ed., University of Montana) Chemical imbalance is a term that used as a marketing ploy as opposed to anything that there’s scientific evidence to support. (11:34, Dr. Thomas Szasz, Psychiatrist) Nobody has yet measured, demonstrated or created a test to show that somebody has a chemical imbalance in their brain, period.   

(11:44, Andy Vickery, trial lawyer, Vickery Waldner & Mallia LLP) How do you market a drug that restores the chemical balance or correct a chemical imbalance? How can you do that? In good conscious if you don’t even know what one is. (11:59, Dr. Rima Laibow, psychiatrist) The whole myth of the chemical imbalance was created to sell drugs.  And while psychiatrist and drug companies have used this myth to make billions moving vast quantities of psychiatric drugs into the bodies of unsuspecting consumers. The public has paid the ultimate price.   

(12:22) An estimated half of all Americans who commit suicide are on psychiatric drugs. (12:27) Annually, psychiatric drugs are estimated to kill more than 2.5 times more people than are killed by homicide and who is entrusted with protecting the public against these dangerous psychiatric drugs?  In the United States, it is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) whose psychiatric drug advisory panels are dominated by psychiatrists who shuttle between the drug industry, academia, private practice and government, the so called “revolving door.” 12:58, James Turner, Attorney, Swankin & Turner) The revolving door of the FDA is one of the primary reasons why the system that we have worked so poorly.  That revolving door is a direct result of the fact that a group of people with the same mindset are putting in the positions of being regulators and in the positions of being formulators and sell it and market.   

(13:22, Jonathan Emord, attorney, Emord & associates) The panels that are formed by the FDA to evaluate these drugs are psychiatrists who are on these panels almost all of them have conflicts of interest where they have directly or indirectly receive funding from various industries and various parties within the industries, these drugs they are evaluating. (13:40, Ralph Fucetola, attorney) So there is this tight little relationship between psychiatrist and pharmaceutical industry and FDA where each supporting each other and yet the mental health of the population has not improved.   

(13:51) Take for example the FDA drug evaluation panel that approved the anti-depressant, Paxil. (14:01) Every psychiatrist on that panel has financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry and these conflicts of interest have been random enough to prompt congressional investigation. (14:12, Rep. Dan Burton, US Congressman) When I checked these advisory committees to make recommendations to the FDA. They are always approved, always approved by the advisory committee. I found that the work conflicts of interest. I found that many people of the advisory committees have never filed a proper report on stocks and bounds they own that might be viewed as a conflict of interest and they are by law supposed to do that. (14:39) And this network of financial conflict of interest between psychiatry, the drug industry and the FDA became even more in trench in 1992 after passage of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act also known as PDUFA. Through this bill the FDA would be paid a fee of $100,000 dollars per drug to ensure that psychiatric medications would be rushed through the approval process and into the hands of prescribers faster than ever.   

(15:05, Dr. Howard Brody, Bio-ethicicst, University of Texas) Congress told the FDA, your job is no longer to make sure drugs are squeaky clean safe before they get out on the market, your job now is hurry up and get new drugs on the market faster. (15:15, Dr. Moira Dolan, Physician) It acted to set the priorities of the FDA so if there was a fee pay for a particular drug approval, it could be put on a fast track and rush to market with less than usual scrutiny of the FDA would have given. (15:35) And this fast track has triggered safety for sales. Since the passage of the PDUFA, times spent on drug evaluation plunge from almost 2 years in 1992 to only 6 months. 4 years later, meanwhile, the number of new drugs released to the public doubled. The fast track is disastrous for public safety, it rakes huge profit for psychiatry and the drug industry because the sooner the drug is approved the sooner it makes money and the money is big.   

(16:10) Everyday the average psychiatric drug grosses over 7.7 million dollars. One drug Zyprexa rakes in almost 12 million dollars daily and even though FDA now charges over $1,000,000 per new drug application, the pharmaceutical fast track shows no signs of slowing. (16:30, Laurew DeWitt, R.PH.  Registered Pharmacist) If you look at the relationship between the FDA, the pharmaceutical industry and the psychiatrist, there are some of game that they are playing there and what is the game. Well, you could say it‘s money, definitely money.   

(16:44, Andrew W. Saul, PhD, Author & lecturer) And when you follow the money, you realize there is no money in health, there is big money in disease. (16:50, Linda Eldridge, health care consultant) That’s why all you hear about is managing disease or treating disease, you know, don’t really talking about curing disease. (16:55, Jonathan Emord, attorney, Emord & Associate) And so psychiatrist has become mainstream doctors in America and that is because of the pharmaceutical industry. They can thank the pharmaceutical industry because they become mainstream because they have a lot of money than they used to and the drug industry can thank them because now they have thousands of soldiers in their army distributing these drugs to everybody.   

(17:16) From the smallest infant to the oldest senior citizen, no one is immune from any of the hundreds of fictitious disorders invented by psychiatrists that fuel a multi-billion dollars psychiatric drug industry and everyday psychiatrists are casting their nets ever wilder and all it takes, another psychiatric label.   

(17:47) Making a killing: disease mongering (18:34) An apparent flood of mental illness is all around us. Where is this coming from? Psychiatrists whose Diagnostic and Statistical Manual can label anyone walking the earth today as mentally ill. (18:49, Ben Hansen, Investigative researcher) Psychiatrists I believed, they look at every human being and they divide humans into 2 classes. 

Clients and potential clients.   

(18:57, Dr. Moira Dolan, Physician) We see that there’s no more problem in any field than in the field of the mental disorders where one disease after another is invented and then popularized and the public is made to worry about it. (19:12, Dr. Holly Lucille, Physician) It’s a disease mongering, it’s the selling of sickness you know. Sometimes it’s a drug in search of the market and it’s given public awareness to minor conditions with the ultimate goal to sell more medications, it’s not caring for people. (19:26, Shane Ellison, former drug research, Chemist Eli Lilly) When you ran out of symptoms, you don’t have any more clientele to market to, so you have to invent disease and for psychiatric medications you can invent diseases all day long, look at human variation.   

(19:44, Michael Oldani, former. Drug sales rep.)  Everyday things like shyness, sadness or even situational depressions like grieving, postpartum depression, they all become study and prescriptions start to get written for these drugs. (20:00, Jonathan Emord, attorney, Emoro & Associate) Before these drugs were introduced in the market, people who have these conditions would not have been given any drug at all, and so it’s the branding of a disease and it is the branding of a drug for the treatment of the disease, that did not exist before the industry made the disease.   

(20:19) Case and point, “shyness” – a common life situation voted by psychiatrists into their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual under the name “Social Anxiety Disorder”. (20:33, Evelyn Pringle, investigative journalist) You know people are nervous, well, they come up and say Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) they call SAD. (20:40, Jonathan Emord, attorney, Emord & associate) And the connotation is that everybody ought to be happy and here’s a drug that can make you happy so that a common occurrence which is every now and again everybody sad, we ought to be treated with a drug.   

(20:52, Evelyn Pringle, investigative journalist) Then they’ll get this PR (public relation) firm to drum up a business list and put all the studies that find, you know, that so many people afflicted with the SAD and starting to put in magazines, putting it on TV, they’ll start a patient advocacy group to say that, you know, we all affected by this and they’ll come up with, Paxil works for this, so they go to the FDA and say we ran this study and this works for this new invented disorder and that is SAD “Social Anxiety Disorder”, millions of people suffer from it and it’s purely fictional.  It’s a normal human emotional that everybody experiences at certain times or another but they made it into a disease.   

(21:35, Arlene Tessitore, former manager, Pharmaceutical marketing Co.) Paxil once got approved by FDA as the first antidepressant to be used for Social Anxiety. It took off huge and it just moved from No.3 in the market among its peer drugs to No. 1 in the market. (21:51) Society Anxiety Disorder is just one of many made-up Psychiatric disorders fueling the boom in psychiatric drug prescriptions. Psychiatrists work to promote with the latest diseases going to be. These days bipolar is getting that same type of promotion.   

(22:11, John Sommers – Flanagan professor of Counselor education, University of Montana) Everybody’s been educated by their bipolar illness when in fact we all have emotional ups and downs, it is distinctively human. 

(22:19, Dr. Walter Afield, Psychiatrist) Now Bipolar is flowing around like water, you’ve got bipolar, I’ve got bipolar. I am up today, I am manic when I go home tonight I am depressed because I am tired, I am not sure I have bipolar disease, it’s the outcome. (22:33) Have you ever worried with seeing all the increased media on it that you might have mental disorders? Yes. And which one is that? I would say Bipolar, you know they talk about Bipolar a lot. Bipolar, I know a lot about Bipolar. 2 friends with both of them diagnosed Bipolar.  … 

(23:14) There are 3 personality disorders and then the most recent is Bipolar and that’s just been in the past year. (23:22) Spearheading the popularizing of Bipolar Disorder especially in children is psychiatrist Dr. Joseph Biederman, a paid speaker, advisor and researcher for 25 different drug companies. (23:36, Evelyn Pringle, investigative journalist) In 1996, drug companies funded all these money to this Dr. Biederman was well-known. He’s the one who came up and said there’s Bipolar Disorder in little kids, this was unheard of, there was no Bipolar Disorder in any kids. He came up with the study and published the articles all over the world and other doctors followed his leads, the Bipolar in little kid.   

(24:00) Due to the constant promotion by Dr. Biederman and his colleague, there has been a 4000% increase of the diagnoses of bipolar in children since 1994. While the number of anti-psychotic prescribed to them has been 5 fold to an estimate 2.5 million prescriptions. In 2008, Dr. Biederman was exposed by a senate investigation for failing to report 1.6 million dollars in personal income from pharmaceutical companies but the damage had been done because of the Bipolar fad created by Dr. Biederman. (24:40) Anti-psychotic, some of the most powerful psychiatric drugs being prescribed are psychiatry’s drugs of choice. The top 3 best selling anti-psychotics together grows $25,000 every minute and no matter how big the psychiatric drug industry gets, psychiatrists are hard at work providing the diagnoses to make it even bigger.   

(25:04) Let’s say this is the pie right here of a certain class of medications and this is a pretty profitable pie and everybody wants a piece of that pie but what would happen if we make that pie even bigger and how you make the pie even bigger is by expanding the uses for those drugs. (25:25, Shane Ellison, former drug research Chemist, Eli Lilly) They already got a drug that’s approved on the shelf, you just pull it off the shelf, rename it, re-package it and say, look, we’ve got the new drug for a new illness. (25:32, Ben Hansen, investigative researcher) When Prozac’s pattern ran out, that Eli Lilly had to look for a new source of profit so all they did was changed the name of the drug from Prozac to Sarafem, change the color of the pill from green to pink and marketed it for PMDD which is newly introduced into this book.  

(25:53, Andy Vickery, trial lawyer, Vickery Waldner & Mallia LLP) What it tells us is if you can come up with a label, the diagnostic label for a drug then you can sell it like hot cakes. (26:05, Shane Ellison, former drug research, Chemist, Eli Lilly) It’s a business model and it’s a billion-dollar business model and it works and it’s going to keep continuing. (26:11) Today anyone may be unknowingly be taken psychiatric drugs, rename, repackaged and prescribe for non-psychiatric purposes. “Zyban,” prescribed as a cure for smoking. It’s actually the anti-depressant “Wellbutrin.” “Cymbalta,” a psychiatric drug for depression and anxiety is now being marketed as “Yentreve” for urinary incontinence. Psychiatric researchers are testing psychiatric drugs on such wildly varying condition as obesity, alcoholism, gambling, hot flashes, herpes, nausea, itching, shivering and excessive hair pulling. It is a pill for every ill and practically no one is being told how dangerous psychiatric drugs are.   

(27:30, Shane Ellison, former drug research, Chemist, Eli Lilly) As a chemist, I am making these drugs, they are proving deadly in our labs, and they are proving deadly in other labs, dangerous and effective, causing the exact same thing they are supposed to treat, how are they selling them? (27:15, Wynford Thomas, former mental health social worker) For anyone who’s giving a label of a psychotic illness, drugs seem to be the automatic choice of treatments as not fall as state.   

(27:26, Ben Hansen, investigative researcher) That’s all psychiatry does is dominated by psycho-pharmacologist who do nothing but manage symptoms by dispensing pills, that’s it, and they don’t work but the fact they don’t work, works to the advantage of the drug companies and the psychiatrists which means that you are not cured which means that you’re a patient for life, you are customer, you are client for life and the worse your health gets the more drugs you need, it’s a great deal for them. (27:54, Mike Adams, Consumer health advocate) We shall all be up in our arms about the way we’re being treated by psychiatry today.  It’s a very dangerous industry and has gone so far overboard in inventing factitious diseases and drugging our children and our population and I considered to be engaged in crimes against humanity.   

(28:12) With over 80 billion dollars a year in psychiatric drug money at stake it is impossible to escape the saturation of psychiatric disease mongering in today’s society. (28:24) But behind the marketing looks a secret psychiatry’s customers would be shocked to learn:  how are these drugs tested?  And, are they safe? (28:44 Psychiatrist, New York) No one knows beside Lily how these Psychiatric medications act? (28:50, Psychiatrist, Pennsylvania) We don’t know if I gave you a medication if it’s going to work or not.  

(28:53, Psychiatrist, North Carolina) Not a great deal of scientific support for using them. (28:57, Psychiatrist, New York) I myself tried to pick a drug that side effects might be useful. (29:00, Psychiatrist, Sri Lanka) You have to choose what is the best option.   

(29:02, Psychiatrist, Germany) We do not have sure measures. (29:05, Psychiatrist, District of Columbia) There are no rules, everything is an art really. (29:06, Psychiatrist, Holland) Often it’s trial and error, it’s kind of trial and error.   

(29:14, Psychiatrist, New York) A blind man’s bluff or something like that. (29:16, Psychiatrist, Pennsylvania) You never know if it’s a right drug. (29:22, Psychiatrist, District of Columbia) There’s always going to be huge surprised. That’s what makes it so difficult.  The best psychiatrist in the world would mess up all the time.    

Making a killing:  the experiment 

(29:34, Mike Adams, Consumer health advocate) The American public is being treated as a mass medical experiment. We are all being treated like guinea pigs by the pharmaceutical companies, the psychiatric industry and the FDA. They’re basically testing drugs on large parts of the population without really knowing what the results going to be. (29:54, Dr. Pamela Popper, clinic founder & director) It’s a very dire situation that we are facing we are talking about people’s health and many situations, people’s lives, these are very serious issues.   

(30:04) As dangerous chemical compounds, psychiatric drugs are tightly regulated by governments throughout the world and for any new psychiatric drug to be approved for use, it must undergo tests intended to protect the public. (30:17, Gina Ross, former Psychiatric, clinical supervisor) When a pharmaceutical company developed a new drug that they want to send it to the market, what they do is they have to run it through clinical trials, they have to be able to provide to the FDA safety data to say this is a safe and effective drug.   

(30:29, Arlene Tessitore, former manager, pharmaceutical marketing co.) In clinical trials, psychiatrists are engaged to do the research and we can bring the fact that these psychiatrists are tied to the pharmaceutical companies. (30:42, Timothy Scott, Psychologist) And psychiatrists put their names on and seen as an expert talking mental drugs and writes them as psychiatrists so that’s how it works, it’s a terrible system. The desperate thing about it is it’s all dressed up with the name of science.   

(30:58, Bryan Hubbard, author & publisher) It’s not science at all, it’s pure marketing but they get away with it because it’s called science.   

(31:03, Mike Adams, consumer health advocate) There’s really no test, no x-rays, no chemistry that shows you have this condition. It’s really just the opinion of someone who’s probably taking money from pharmaceutical companies to prescribe drugs to people. (31:17, Dr. Rima Laibow, Psychiatrist) Where is the bio-chemistry? Where’s the research? Where’s the substantiation and the answer is vaporizes like mist in the morning, it’s not there. (31:29) But the lack of scientific testing doesn’t stop Psychiatrists from carrying out clinical trials on dangerous drugs.  Clinical trials are supposed to consist of 4 phrases of precise scientific drug testing. The first 3 of which must be submitted to government for regulatory approval. In phase I, the drug is checked for toxicity. In phase II, tests are done to see how the drug reacts in the human body. If it clears this hurdle then a phase III trial is carried out. But with no lab tests verifying or measuring any mental disorders and with big money at stake, Psychiatric drug research is highly subjective and rife with manipulation.   

(32:17, Dr. Howard Brody, Bioethicist, University of Texas) There are many places where you can tweak the study just a little bit with the study design or the way you gather the data or where the data reported and there’s so many different ways you can bias the study.   

(32:31) I’ve seen what they did to the data in this trial, it’s no question that they manipulated the data. For example, let’s say they have 100 people to start with, 40% drop out, 30% have a positive response, 30% has no response, they then say there’s a 50% response rate when in fact most of us would say it’s a 30% response rate because only 30 out of the original 100 really responded. (32:57, John Sommers-Flanagan, professor of counselor education, University of Montana) So that you can see that it’s a little bit of manipulations of the research data. (33:00, Shane Ellison, former drug research, Chemist, Eli Lilly) When they design drug that is they only want to look at the one thing they want to see and they don’t report all the other things are happened.   

Case in point: the anti-depressant “Cymbalta”  

(33:12, Sach Oliver, trial attorney, Bailey & Oliver) Lily, I believe, in Feb 2004 did a clinical trial study. The people in this clinical trial did not have symptom of depression and in that clinical trial, there were 11 attempted suicide and 4 suicides completed one of which was Tracy Johnson. 19-year-college girl, she did not have any symptom of depression and yet this drug pushed her to commit suicide by hanging herself. (33:42, Evelyn Pringle, investigative, journalist) That shoots the theory down that they say you know people get suicidal because of the underlying illness that people killed themselves. That, these weren’t suicidal people to begin with. These weren’t depressed at all, these were healthy people. (33:56) A slew of media coverage followed, but psychiatrists on the FDA drug evaluation panel chose to ignore the death and went on to approve “Cymbalta” the following August.   

(34:09, Dr. Howard Brody, Bioethicist, University of Texas) One of the reasons why we have underestimated the potential of some Psychiatric antidepressant drugs to actually to trigger suicidal behavior in people is because the people who design the research study didn’t include in the research questionnaire is suicidal behavior and then you can report that you have zero incidents of this type of behavior among our subjects. (34:32, Dr. Rima Laibow, Psychiatrist) And the responses trumpeted as if there’s something magical about it when in fact, what’s happened is a whole statistical tap dance routine that violates good science. However, on the basis of that kind of phony trial, the drug can be marketed. (34:51, Lauren DeWitt, R.PH., registered pharmacist) Keep in mind that when a drug is tested in the clinical trials, it’s only a very short period of time.  In the final phase of testing can be anywhere from 5 to 6 weeks.  

(35:03, Timothy Scott, Psychologist) The longest of those days was 8 weeks, the shortest was 4 weeks so these are not long-term studies and the most people assume they are long term, 1 year, 2 years, 3 years studies. They are not, they are very very short studies. (35:19, Andy Vickery, trial lawyer, Vickery Waloner & Mallia LLP) I find it pretty outrageous that we can base a multi billion dollars industry on a field six or eight week clinical trials where any depressive medications beat a sugar pill by a few percentage points. (35:35) It is on the basis of bias research such as these that psychiatric were potentially fatal side effects are routinely approved by FDA panels for a lifetime of use, and how can this happen? Because drugs are big money and FDA panels are dominated by those who benefit by approving them.   

(36:00) FDA panel evaluate these drugs are largely psychiatrists.   

(36:04, Timothy Scott, Psychologist) All of the sudden you discovered there are 20 different pharmaceutical companies paying them either grants or some other way they are getting paid by the pharmaceutical industry. (36:12, Ana Koenig, former drug sales rep.) If you have a psychiatrist who works at the FDA, he can also being paid by industry.  He might sit on industry panels or discussions or get paid to be a speaker.  What I found in working with physicians with the FDA was that they could have dual positions. They could sit on an industry board. They could be influenced by industry.   

(36:41, Shane Ellison, former drug research, Chemist, Eli Lilly) If you got 10 FDA scientists or 10 committee members, it’s just a matter of 6 saying yes to drugs are safe, 4 saying no and in almost every single case, those 6 saying the drugs are safe and effective always have pharmaceutical ties. They are getting paid, are getting funded, somehow or another. (37:02) Have you been diagnosed with depression and struggle with sadness, trouble sleeping, anxiety or low energy, ask your doctor about Effexor XR. (37:09) With phase III approval of forgone conclusion, the marketing blitz begins, but while psychiatrists have already begun promoting and prescribing these drugs throughout the world. There’s one more phase yet to be carried out, phase IV.   

(37:20, Gwen Olsen, former drug sales rep.) What phase IV clinical trials are when they actually gotten the drug approved and they get it into the general populations and we finally find out what it does when it hits ethnic populations, women, children, then we see who dies? Who has seizure? Who has deformed children? Who has epilepsy? Who has diseases downstream? Whose heart stopped? The public is the clinical trial.  That’s what we find out, the problems with these drugs. (37:54, Dr. Moira Dolan, physician) This is an experiment stage and is so much so that one consumer protection group has advised patients that they refuse a prescription for any drug that hasn’t already been on the market for seven years. (38:09, Timothy Scott, Psychologist) So if you are taking a drug that’s only been out for a year, 2 or 3, you are a guinea pig. (38:11) And the experimentation doesn’t end here, additional psychiatric drug trials take advantage of the invented disorders in Psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual to rake in even more profits by targeting the most innocent of all. (38:30, Andy Vickery, trial lawyer, Vickery, waldner & Mallia LLP) If they test their drugs on children, then they get a six months extension on their exclusive period or pattern period.   

(40:21, Kathleen, daughter committed suicide while on Zoloft) These psychiatrists were never, she didn’t say one word to me about what was going to be the effects of the drugs. (40:27, Paula, sister committed suicide while on Paxil) No side effects listed. There is no let’s sit down and talk about this. (40:32, Mary, daughter committed suicide while on 4 psychiatric drugs) At that point of time, he said, well, doesn’t have that type of reactions in children you know, that is very safe. (40:39) If he had told me then what I now know about it, I never would have taken them.   

(40:44, Jeffrey, daughter committed suicide while on Paxil) She said that must’ve been on Paxil that’s the only way she could kill herself and I said what is it, how do people know this. I didn’t know people would know something like this and we went on the internet and all the sudden, we find out this. It’s not uncommon.  It’s not uncommon for people to become psychotic on these drugs. (41:13, Ana Koenig, former drug sales rep.) We don’t really know what they are doing that’s what scares me.  It’s all made up theory. There are no facts about what these drugs really do, and if someone said we don’t know what this is going to do to you, good or bad, would you take that medication? (41:27, Sach Oliver) Now, that’s not the practice of medicine. That’s the practice of marketing and this practice of marketing is taking lives and the poor patient doesn’t even know it.   

(41:40) But in the testing and marketing of psychiatric drugs, money drums safety. The top ten most prescribed psychiatric drugs gross over 26.5 billion dollars annually, more than double the amount of new money put into circulation every year by the United States. But to make this kind of money psychiatrists first have to convince the most crucial market segment of all … those with the power of prescriptions. (42:19, Dr. James Chappell, clinician) The psychiatrists specifically they are just kind of working a sales agent for the pharmaceutical company. (44:21) These financial arrangements with so called key opinion leaders are very lucrative. A top academic psychiatrist can personally rake in over a half million dollars per year from pharmaceutical companies.   

(47:06) Ghost writing is so common that even the psychiatrist running the FDA department evaluating psychiatric drug safety has attached his name to Ghost written articles. (47:30) These journals are often sent free to psychiatrists and doctors under the guides of legitimate medical research and why they are free because pharmaceutical drug ads refuse revenues for their publishers. (47:39, John Sommers-Flanagan, professor of counselor ed., university of Montana) So if you go through a medical journal, you see page after page of advertising for bipolar disorder and treatment of using medications or advertising for depression and the treatment of using medications, schizophrenia, so it’s really everywhere. (54:10, Dr. Tim O Shea) Every five minutes there was a new drug ad and this is not by accident. This is cold candy science design. 

Case in point: Children and adults with Attention Deficit Disorder CHADD.   

(58:40, Allen Jones, investigator – office of inspector general, Pennsylvania) You can take a survey and may be sixteen questions and if you are normal human being who lived through ranges of emotions and normal life experiences. If you know the acceleration of the birth of a child at least in that field and the devastation of a divorce, the loss of dreams and answers honestly to those questions, you would diagnose yourself as bipolar and the instructions they come back long with the diagnoses for the warning you probably bipolar say print this out and take it to your doctor. (1:00:31) All told 50% of these everyday people were assigned a psychiatric diagnosis and instructed to get treatment. By this measure, half of the US population some 150,000,000 Americans could be classified as mentally ill. (1:00:47, Arlene Tessitore, former manager, pharmaceutical marketing Co.)  Now you have a direct line of consumers just walking in with a little pre-survey that says they potentially can have bipolar, ADHD, stress, anxiety, any of those categories and they just need to take this assessment to just say OK that basically that is what you have, and here’s your drug. (1:01:09) And psychiatrists are now clamoring to make such assessment tools mandatory. Take teen screen under the guides of a suicide prevention program, mental health tests are administered in the schools to diagnose and drug children. Children such as Chelsa Rhoades who left for school one morning an average teenager and returned home with a psychiatric diagnosis.   

(1:01:35, John Whitehead, attorney for the Rhoades family) The girl in school one day and all of a sudden, she told her and taken her to a room and give her a 10-minute teen screen test and surely after taking the test, she’s pulled aside in the hall. She has told she has 2 mental problems, one Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Social Anxiety Disorder. Her parents were stunted, they didn’t know the teen screen, was going to screen her child. They have not asked for permission. (1:02:04, Teresa Rhoades, mother) People in school had told her that she was mentally ill with these 2 conditions based on the computer test that took her 10 minutes to answer. One question was worded if Chelsa went out a lot. She answered no. We asked why she answered that way. She said because Mom, you and Dad don’t allow us to go out on school nights. I had to be home to do my homework and take care of our household chores. The other question was do you ever feel nervous or anxious when you are in front of your friends or peers. Chelsa answered yes. She explained to us because when she has to stand up in front of a group of people and give a book report in one of her classes she’s very nervous. I am 40 years old and I am nervous in front of everyone of you today but that doesn’t make me mentally ill. (1:03:01, Allen Jones) I believe, I absolutely believe that the survey for teen screen was intentionally structured to flag as many children as possible as having a possible mental health problem. 

(1:03:06) And who created teen screen and wrote survey? Dr. David Shaffer - a psychiatrist with extensive ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Shaffer’s questionnaire is anything but scientific. In a study he himself conducted, Shaffer admitted 84% of students were falsely flagged as suicidal but what was not admitted is how traumatic the consequences can be. (1:03:36) Aliah Lisa was only 11 years old when she took a screening test at her middle school in Texas. (1:03:43, Aliah, screened as suicidal) I was 7th grade, they have all the girls going to the cafeteria coz they said they a lot of girls on depression so they were working on some depression screen.      

(1:03:54, Anaka, mother of Aliah) The next thing I know the middle school tells my husband they have taken Aliah because she is suicidal. (1:04:34) My daughter was on 22 different types of medications that this one psychiatrist gave her. (1:06:10) I would tell every parents I see, don’t do the teen screen because it will mess up your family. (1:06:17) Psychiatric screening programs such as these are fast on the rise. Teen screen alone is currently screening hundreds of thousands of school children in over 500 American schools in 43 states. (1:06:34, Dr. Julian Whitaker, physician) It’s nothing to do with helping kids. It has nothing to do with mental health.  It has nothing to do with medicine. It has everything to do with the pushing of drugs.   

(1:06:41, Allen Jones, investigator – office of inspector general, Pennsylvania) The program is in fact I believe is cold-hearted and coldblooded, the intent is to recruit more children into the very subject the diagnoses of mental illness and to treat those kids with medications. (1:07:05) But the psychiatric drug push doesn’t end in the classroom. Legislation has been put in place to screen all citizens for mental illness including geriatric patients, war veterans and pregnant mothers, all to be paid for by you. (1:07:33, Mary Starrett) It’s an industry that can’t allow the human condition to be un-medicated and I think this is where the problem begins. (1:07:38, G. Edward Griffin, researcher & author) Everybody considers themselves to be sick in some way or more than one way and the only control that the only hope for that happiness is to be on pills for the rest of their lives, that’s the goal.   

(1:07:58, Kelly O’Meara) It’s nothing to do with helping our kids or you know their mental health, It’s all about money. (1:08:09) Today drug companies spend over 5.3 billion dollars a year marketing prescription drugs, almost 9 times more than a decade earlier. 

The result, worldwide sales of psychiatric drugs have soared to 80 billion dollars a year and all while psychiatrist willfully ignore the vast human tragedy they are creating.   

(1:10:21, Dr. Norman Shealy, PhD, neurosurgeon) Anti-depressant drugs not only don’t make you happy they have all kinds of negative effects on the system as a whole. (1:10:27, Mike Adams, consumer health advocate) These drugs are absorbed and distributed throughout your entire body so they have side effects through all of your tissues and organs including your liver, your kidneys and nervous system. (1:10:37, Genita Petralli, Nutritional biochemist) They destroyed the brain, the neuro net they literally kill brain cells and cause all kinds of brain disorders. That’s why they are not side effects, they are direct effects.       

(1:11:04, Psychiatrist, District of Columbia) I think I tell them the main side effects I don’t tell them every side effects coz there are so many possible ones. (1:11:10, Psychiatrist, Maryland) People get side effects for every medication you try. (1:11:39, Psychiatrist, District of Columbia) I never had anybody die or anything but I had people faints and stuff, it’s really sort of unpredictable. (1:11:47) And why can’t psychiatrist predict what adverse reactions you will get because not one of them knows how their drugs work. (1:12:13) But far from being safe, psychiatric drugs are increasingly being exposed as chemical toxins with the power to kill.  

(1:12:15, Dr. Matt Irwin, Physician) Some of the side effects that have become a concern lately are suicide, increased risk of suicide, increased risk of homicide. (1:12:22, Gina Ross, former psychiatric clinical supervisor) These aren’t people that were horribly depressed when they were given a drug. These are the people who are given a drug for Social Anxiety or difficult sleeping or mild depression and then become suicidal and so when they become suicidal they kill themselves what the doctor does is go back and say Oh well, it’s because they were depressed. (1:12:43, Kay Carlson, former drug sale rep.) The label itself the disorder is what is blamed for the side effects when in reality is the drug that is causing the side effect it is the drug that is the problem. (1:12:56) Drugs such as the antidepressants prescribed to Woody 

Witczak who took it not for any mental complaint but to help him sleep  

(1:13:57) Psychiatrists claim their drugs save lives but according to their own studies, psychiatric drugs double the risk of suicide with one increasing the risk by a factor of almost 7. (1:14:29, Dr. Lance Durrett, clinic founder) There is a real chance for them to get a homicidal tendency or even suicide.  You take the drug, there is a chance you might want to kill yourself. (1:14:36, Dr. Jame O Donnell) I could repeat probably a dozen other examples of significant self-inflicted harm or significant violent others in patients who never had that experience in their adult life. (1:15:39, Andy Vickery) Can Paxil cause people to commit homicide and or suicide, and the answer is yes. (1:15:51) Long term use of psychiatric has also proven to create a life time of damage and unwelcome fact ignored by psychiatrists.   

(1:15:59, Dr. Tim McCullough) In the long run, the side effect may actually be worse than their original conditions. (1:16:17, Dr. Mary Ann Block, Physician) They can be affected by these drugs in any part of your body, your brain, your heart, your kidneys.  (Dr. Ludwig Lowenstein, Clinical Psychologist) That’s why people die early very often because they prescribe things with long term effects.   

(1:16:35) And more damage is created by polypharmacy where psychiatrists make a fab living prescribing multiple psychiatric drugs one to offset the effects of another. (1:16:56, Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, physician) What’s happening is each of those new drugs that’s added the scenario brings on another symptom for which there is another drug which there’s another symptom for which there is another drug.   

(1:17:05, Ian Hartley) It’s a snow ball into a vicious circle of one drug causing the name for another drug. (1:17:12, Barbara Findeisen, clinical psychologist) Sometimes people come and they are on such a cocktail of so many different drugs for so many different things. (1:17:31, Dr. James Chappell, clinician) One will lead to the next and they are all toxic this is how the game is played.  

And psychiatrists spread their lucrative game of psychiatric drugging further and further into society.  Children have become the latest and most tragic of casualties.   

(1:17:53, Evelyn Pringle, investigative journalist) Rebecca Riley, 2.5 years old, they diagnosed her with bipolar disorder and ADHD, they had her on anti-psychotic, they had her on a hard drug they say for ADHD, and they had her on neuro seizure and one other one for side effects.  Four drugs at 2.5 years old. (1:19:42) And the death courts keep rising. Psychiatric drugs now kill an estimated 42,000 people every year. (1:19:58, Dr. Pamela Popper, clinic founder & director) The profit always come before patient’s safety and they have taken very short sighted view. It’s all about how they can make money today, not what price are we going to pay tomorrow. (1:20:13) And the money is big. Psychiatry is today over a $330 billion dollars industry without a single cure and there’s more and more breakthroughs are promised by psychiatrists they are running a total of sick, injured and dead victims continue to escalate unprotected.  It is the public you must defend for themselves. 

(1:24:05, Ben Hansen, investigative researcher) Psychiatry is pseudo science, is false science. It cannot withstand rigorous review. If people would just look at the evidence. (1:24:18, Gina Ross) If they helped anyone, it’s not worth the risk to the people that are harmed by them. (1:24:21, Jim Harper, founder, drug rehab program) They are betraying every customer they have. (1:24:24, Dr. Anne Coxon, neurologist) They don’t know what they are doing and we need to educate the public to use their feet and walk away.  

(1:25:55) No psychiatric “disorder” is an actual disease. (1:26:03, Dr. Colin Ross, psychiatrist) It’s true there is no biological findings that really support any of these psychiatric diagnoses. (1:26:22, Dr. Julian Whitaker, physician) There is no blood test, there is no lab test, there is no x-ray, this are just clusters of behavior that a group of psychiatrists have voted that is a disease. (1:26:57, Dr. Ron Leifer, Psychiatrist) There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance and any psychiatrist that you talk to if you ask them this question, they’ll all admitted in private but they won’t admit in public, it’s a scandal.         

(1:27:07, Dr. Gary Kohls, physician) So this is all subjective, nothing objective about Psychiatry. (1:27:13) Psychiatric drugs do not resolve mental problems. There is no scientific proof that psychiatric drugs resolve any mental problems. (1:27:20, Dr. Mary Ann Block, physician) Since there is no measurement for these psychiatric diagnoses because they’re really just subjective, for the same reason, it really can’t be a measurement for the effects of the drug. (1:27:32, Dr. Colin Ross, Psychiatrist) In terms of medication, the evidence that’s claimed is medications are highly effective and not very toxic but actually in fact the data in psychiatry are very clear that it’s not true, what is true is that the medications are barely effective more than placebo. (1:27:50, Shane Ellison, former drug research, chemist, Eli Lilly) You are selling drugs to people under false promises under a disease that’s been invented so do you measure efficacy among a disease that doesn’t even exist. (1:28:03) Psychiatric drugs mask symptoms and come with severe short and long-term side effects  

(1:28:12, Dr. Pamela Popper, clinic founder & director) Whatever problem you are being treated for whether it’s depression, real or otherwise, or cardiovascular disease, medicating the way the symptoms is not solving the problem. (1:28:22, Dr. Jonathan Wright, Physician) The medication gives the appearances of having helped because in the short term, it usually doesn’t show the bad effects that are going to happen in the long term so it’s very deceptive.   

(1:28:36, Dr. Gary Kohls, physician) The longer the patient’s on medication the worse the prognosis is. (1:28:39, Dr. Grace Jackson, psychiatrist) None of these medications hit precise targets you begin accumulating all kind of collateral damage, in other words, other organs in the body are actually harmed. (1:29:09, Dr. Thomas Dorman, physician) Is it true that we are now seeing a lot of death from psychiatric drugs? Absolutely yes. (1:29:11) Psychiatric drugs can cause dependency and addiction.   

(1:29:25, Dr. Fred A. Baughman, Jr. Pediatric neurologist) The vast majority of psychiatric drugs create psychological and physical dependence. (1:29:28, Dr. Mary Ann Block, physician) Most patients that I’ve seen that were on these drugs have difficult getting off at them.  It’s rare for somebody to just be able to stop them without a problem. (1:29:38) Most mental problems are caused by an underlying physical illness.  Many physical conditions can cause mental problems or what poses psychiatric symptoms but the psychiatrist in the records I reviewed, psychiatrist does not do an in-depth study of what could be causing the problem. (1:29:59, Dr. Mary Ann Block, physician) And if the doctor isn’t taking the time to find the cause of those symptoms and unfortunately those symptoms may continue and there may be a serious underlying medical disorder that’s been overlooked. (1:30:13, Dr. Jerome Kassirer) The question is it better to treat depression with a drug or is it better to treat depression by trying to figure out what cause of depression and working out with the patients. (1:30:27, Dr. Pamela Popper) Dehydration can make you exhibit symptoms of depression, sleeplessness can make you exhibit symptoms of depression, eating a terrible diet, hyperglycemia, all of these things are biological reasons of having symptoms of depression.   

(1:30:40, Dr. Charles Ray Jones, physician) What I have in my practice is children who are misdiagnosed is having ADHD who really have life disease. (1:30:50, Lauren DeWitt) 70% of all classified as mental illness actually have a physical cause of physical problem causing it. (1:30:59) No matter how severe the emotional or psychological disorder distress, there are many effective options that do not involve psychiatric drugs. (1:31:10, Dr. Grace Jackson, psychiatrist) Once you prove that there is no problem in the body that there is no malfunction in the brain then you have to begin to investigate these other levels of the self and I think that’s what psychiatry has completely stopped doing. (1:31:21, Dr. Ludwig Lowenstein) Now very few conditions that cannot be treated by other methods and the use drugs. Any forces that impinge medicine that makes us think drug approach is the only approach is undermining good patient care.  And because most non-drug options are rarely told to patients, true informed consent is almost never given. (1:31:49. Frank Bailey, attorney) When you get into informed consent, it’s almost a responsibility of the patient to make an enquiry about the hazards of the drug and not rely on what the psychiatrist or physician tells them.  

School Shootings and Prescription Drugs

The list of school shooters under the influence of psychiatric drugs at the time of their rampage is a long one. Among them are: 

Date: Nov. 20, 2014

School: Florida State University (Tallahassee, FL)

Perpetrator: Myron May, 31

Victims: Three (wounded)

Medications: Wellbutrin (antidepressant), Vyvanse (ADHD), Hydroxyzine (antianxiety), Seroquel (antipsychotic)

A Florida State University alum, Mr. May opened fire in the school’s library, wounding three before he was shot and killed by law enforcement. In the wake of the shooting, media outlets found a half-filled prescription for Hydroxyzine in his apartment. According to May’s friends, he had seen a psychologist who prescribed Wellbutrin and Vyvanse.

May had previously checked himself into Mesilla Valley Hospital (mental health center) around September of 2014. Not long after he checked in, May’s friends discovered the antipsychotic, Seroquel, among his prescriptions.

Date: June 5, 2014

School: Seattle Pacific University (Seattle, WA)

Perpetrator: Aaron Ybarra, 26

Victims: Three (one dead, two wounded)

Medication: Prozac (antidepressant), Risperdal (antipsychotic)

Mr. Ybarra fired a shotgun at Seattle Pacific University, killing one person and wounding two others. Ybarra’s plan was to kill as many people as possible before killing himself.

In 2012, Mr. Ybarra reported that he had been prescribed Prozac and Risperdal. A report from his counselor the following year said that he was still taking Prozac and planned to continue to meet with his psychiatrist and therapist as needed. His attorney confirmed that Mr. Ybarra had a long history of mental health issues and he was taking prescribed drugs at the time of the shooting.

Date: Oct. 21, 2013

School: Sparks Middle School (Sparks, NV)

Perpetrator: Jose Reyes, 12

Victims: Three (one dead and two wounded)

Medication: Prozac (antidepressant)

Jose Reyes, 12, opened fire at Sparks Middle School, killing a teacher and wounding two students before committing suicide. Investigators said Reyes had been seeing a psychiatrist and was prescribed a generic version of Prozac (fluoxetine), which was in his system at the time of death.

Date: Feb. 14, 2008

School: Northern Illinois University (DeKalb, IL)

Perpetrator: Steven Kazmierczak, 27

Victims: 26 (five dead, 21 wounded)

Medication: Prozac (antidepressant), Xanax (antianxiety) and Ambien (sedative)

Steven Kazmierczak entered an auditorium at Northern Illinois University, shot and killed five people and wounded 21 others before turning a gun on himself. According to his girlfriend, he had recently been taking prescribed drugs Prozac, Xanax and Ambien. She reported that he had stopped taking Prozac three weeks before the shooting. Toxicology results showed that he still had trace amount of Xanax in his system. He was seeing a psychiatrist.

Date: Oct. 10, 2007

School: Success Tech Academy (Cleveland, OH)

Perpetrator: Asa Coon, 14

Victims: Four (wounded)

Medication: Trazodone (antidepressant and sedative)

Asa Coon stormed through Success Tech Academy with a gun in each hand, shooting and wounding four people before he killed himself. Coon had been prescribed the antidepressant Trazodone.

Date: April 16, 2007

School: Virginia Tech University (Blacksburg, VA)

Perpetrator: Seung-Hui Cho, 23

Victims: 49 (32 dead, 17 wounded)

Medication: Prozac (antidepressant and sedative)

Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed two people on at the West Ambler Johnston Hall dormitory before proceeding to Norris Hall, where he shot and killed 30 people. Seventeen others were wounded in the rampage. In his younger years, Cho was diagnosed with major depressive disorder, severe anxiety and selective mutism. He was prescribed Prozac, and although it is unclear how long he took the medication, or if he took the medication at all, antidepressants and school shootings or other violent events have a long documented history.

Date: August 30, 2006

School: Orange High School (Hillsborough, NC)

Perpetrator: Alvaro Rafael Castillo, 19

Victims: Three (one dead at home, two wounded at school)

Medication: Unknown (antidepressant and antipsychotic)

Alvaro Rafael Castillo, 19, shot and killed his father before driving to Orange High School. He pulled a gun and shot two students who sustained injuries. The shooting ended when school personnel tackled him. When Castillo was interviewed after the shooting he was on two medications for depression and one antipsychotic.

Date: March 21, 2005

School: Red Lake Senior High School (Red Lake, MN)

Perpetrator: Jeff Weise, 16

Victims: 16 (two dead at home, seven dead and seven wounded at school)

Medication: Prozac (antidepressant)

Jeff Weise, 16, shot and killed his grandfather and his grandfather’s girlfriend, then went to Red Lake Senior High 

School on the Red Lake Indian Reservation and shot dead five students, a security guard and a teacher. Seven others were wounded. The attack ended with Weise killing himself.

Weise reportedly began taking Prozac after a suicide attempt.

Date: Feb. 2, 2001

School: North Hopewell-Winterstown Elementary School (Red Lion, PA)

Perpetrator: William Michael Stankewicz, 56

Victims: 14 (wounded)

Medication: Unknown (antidepressant and antianxiety)

William Michael Stankewicz, 56, entered North Hopewell-Winterstown Elementary School with a machete, attacked 11 children and three adults. Stankewicz was taking four different drugs for depression and anxiety weeks before the attacks.

Date: March 22, 2001

School: Granite Hills High School (El Cajon, CA)

Perpetrator: Jason Hoffman, 18

Victims: Five (wounded)

Medication: Celexa (antidepressant) and Effexor (antidepressant)

Jason Hoffman opened fire on his classmates at Granite Hills High School, wounding three students and two teachers. He had been seeing a psychiatrist before the shooting and was on the antidepressants Celexa and Effexor.

Date: May 20, 1999

School: Heritage High School (Conyers, GA)

Perpetrator: T.J. Solomon, 15

Victims: Six (wounded)

Medication: Ritalin (ADHD)

Anthony Thomas “T.J.” Solomon was being treated with the stimulant Ritalin when he opened fire on and wounded six of his classmates at Heritage High School. He had been taking the medication since the fourth grade.

Date: April 20, 1999

School: Columbine High School (Columbine, CO)

Perpetrator: Dylan Klebold, 18, and Eric Harris, 18

Victims: 39 (13 dead, 26 wounded)

Medication: Luvox (antidepressant)

Eric Harris and his accomplice, Dylan Klebold, killed 12 students and a teacher. Twenty-six others were wounded. Harris and Klebold committed suicide after the attack. Harris was on the antidepressant Luvox and was seeing a psychiatrist prior to the shooting. Klebold’s medical records remain sealed. Both had been in anger-management classes and had undergone counseling.

Date: May 21, 1998

School: Springfield, OR

Perpetrator: Kip Kinkel, 15

Victims: 29 (two dead at home, two dead and 25 others wounded at school)

Medication: Prozac (antidepressant)

On May 20, 1998, Kinkel murdered his parents. The next day, he went to Thurston High School where he opened fire on students in the cafeteria, killing two people and wounding 25 others. Kinkel had been taking the antidepressant Prozac and was attending “anger control classes.” He had previously been under the care of a psychologist.

Date: Oct. 12, 1995

School: Blackville-Hilda High School (Blackville, SC)

Perpetrator: Toby R. Sincino, 15

Victims: Two (one dead, one wounded)

Medication: Zoloft (antidepressant)

Toby Sincino entered Blackville-Hilda High School’s rear entrance and shot two teachers, killing one. Mr. Sincino killed himself moments later. His aunt said he had been undergoing counseling with the Department of Mental Health and was taking Zoloft for emotional problems.

Date: Dec. 16, 1993

School: Chelsea High School (Chelsea, MI)

Perpetrator: Stephen Leith, 39

Victims: Three (one dead, two wounded)

Medication: Prozac (antidepressant)

Chemistry teacher Stephen Leith was facing a disciplinary matter at Chelsea High School when he shot Superintendent Joseph Piasecki to death, then turned his gun and shot Principal Ron Mead and journalism teacher Phil Jones. Mead and Jones survived. Leith was reportedly taking Prozac and had been seeing a psychiatrist.

Date: May 20, 1988

School: Hubbard Woods School (Winnetka, IL)

Perpetrator: Laurie Wasserman Dann, 30

Victims: Seven (one dead, six wounded)

Medication: Anafranil (antidepressant)

Ms. Wasserman Dann walked into a second grade classroom at Hubbard Woods School carrying three guns and began shooting, killing an eight-year-old boy and wounding five others. She fled the scene and entered a nearby house where she shot and wounded a 20-year-old man before killing herself. Dann had been seeing a psychiatrist and subsequent blood tests revealed that at the time of the killings, she was taking the antidepressant Anafranil. This case is one of first of many where antidepressants and school shootings would become intertwined.

International Mass School Shootings and Other School Violence Incidents

Date: May 1, 2017

School: University of Texas (Austin, TX)

Perpetrator: Kendrex J. White, 21

Victims: Four (one dead, three wounded)

Medication: Zoloft (antidepressant)

Mr. White stabbed four people with what was described as a machete-like hunting knife at the University of Texas. The attack occurred within a one-block area. White “calmly walked around the plaza,” according to the chief of police.

After he was apprehended by law enforcement, White told police he did not remember the incident. According to the police department, White had recently been involuntarily committed in another city. County records showed that he had recently been arrested and charged with a DWI (Driving While Intoxicated). White told the officer responding to the DWI that he had taken two “happy pills,” listed as the antidepressant Zoloft.

Navy Yard Shooting, Washington, D.C.

On September 16, 2013, Aaron Alexis fatally shot 12 people and wounded three others in a mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard. Mr. Alexis was prescribed trazodone, a medication used to treat depression and insomnia that has a mechanism of action similar to SSRI antidepressants like Prozac and Paxil. Trazodone can cause mania and violent behavior.

Movie Theater Shooting, Aurora, Colorado

One of the most horrifying mass shootings in American history was the attack that took place at Century movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. On July 20, 2012, 25-year-old James Holmes opened fire in the theater, killing 12 and wounding 70.

Holmes had been prescribed the antidepressant Zoloft (sertraline). David Healy, a psychiatrist and international authority on antidepressants, was hired as an expert witness in the SSRI shooting case. In his opinion, the killings would not have happened had it not been for the medication James Holmes had been prescribed.

Northern Illinois University Campus Shooting, Dekalb, Illinois

On February 14, 2008, Steven Kazmierczak opened fire with three pistols and a shotgun on the campus of Northern Illinois University, killing 5 students and wounding 17 others before killing himself. He had been taking three psychiatric drugs, the antidepressant Prozac, Xanax, a drug used to treat anxiety, and Ambien, a sleep aid. All three drugs have been linked to acts of violence and homicide. Kazmierczak’s girlfriend of two years said she had never seen him behave violently.

Date: Sept. 23, 2008

School: Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences (Kauhajoki, Finland)

Perpetrator: Matti Saari, 22

Victims: 10 victims (10 dead, one wounded)

Medication: Xanax (antianxiety), unnamed SSRI (antidepressant)

Culinary student Matti Saari shot and killed nine students and a teacher and wounded another student in an attack at Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences. The incident ended with Saari killing himself. Saari was taking an SSRI and Xanax. He was also seeing a psychologist.

Date: Nov. 7, 2007

School: Jokela High School (Jokela, Finland)

Perpetrator: Pekka-Eric Auvinen, 18

Victims: Nine (eight dead and one wounded)

Medication: Unknown (antidepressant)

Finnish gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen was taking antidepressants before he killed eight people and wounded a dozen more at Jokela High School in southern Finland. The attack ended in suicide.

Date: June 8, 2001

School: Ikeda, Japan

Perpetrator: Mamoru Takuma, 37

Victims: 23 (eight dead, 15 wounded)

Medication: Unknown (antidepressant)

Mamoru Takuma entered an elementary school with a knife and stabbed eight young students to death. At least 15 other pupils and teachers were wounded. He then turned the knife on himself but suffered only superficial wounds. He told investigators that before the attack he had taken over 10 times his normal dose of antidepressants. Police said he had been under the care of a psychiatrist.

Mass Shootings in America

There seems to be an epidemic of mass shootings in America. Mass shootings are, of course, not confined to schools and multiple examples in the list of mass shootings provide evidence of an apparent link to medication.

It is often said that untreated or inadequately treated mental illness is the cause of mass shootings or other cases of extreme violence. Given the perpetrators in a majority of these cases were being treated, that argument rings hollow.

The Public’s Right to Know About Medication-Induced Violence

Parents and the public have a right to know what psychiatric drugs do in the brain, the side effects of taking and withdrawing from these medications, and the medical basis—or lack thereof—behind the skyrocketing number of children being prescribed these drugs. This is basic medical ethics and the foundation of informed consent. Failure to warn the public of the dangers of medication-induced violence, and to ensure patients taking the drugs are closely monitored for signs of adverse drug reactions can have disastrous consequences. People have the right to know.

The Drugging of Children

 click here

In the U.S. today 6.7 million children are being prescribed powerful psychotropic (mind-altering) drugs.  An astounding 530,169 of these children are 0-5 years old—that’s more than the entire population of Sacramento, California. The psychotropic drugs prescribed children carry 409 international drug regulatory agency warnings for causing severe side effects.   Though incomprehensible to anyone who has ever heard of Electroshock  (renamed Electroconvulsive Therapy or ECT), Freedom of Information Act requests have revealed that 19 states are currently electroshocking children with 7 states shocking children aged 0-5.

The goal of Fight For Kids is to inform and educate parents, caregivers and all concerned with the well-being of children, about the documented risks of psychotropic drugs & harmful mental health treatments being administered so they are able to protect children from harm & help advocate for social change.

PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS FOR KIDS

A Big (and Dangerous) Pharma Marketing Push 

(https://www.theepochtimes.com/psychiatric-drugs-for-kids-a-big-and-dangerous-pharma-marketing-push_2533799.html) html)

How did the once modest medical specialty of child psychiatry become the aggressive “pediatric psychopharmacology” we see today? Millions of children who were once just considered too active are now diagnosed with ADHD, conduct disorders, oppositional defiant disorder, mixed manias, obsessive-compulsive disorders, pervasive development disorders, irritability, aggression and personality disorders and given drugs. Children who were once considered shy or moody are now diagnosed with depression, bipolar disorder, mood disorders, social phobia, anxiety, borderline disorders, assorted “spectrum” disorders and even schizophrenia.

How extreme has the diagnosis of psychiatric illness in children become? In his book Psychiatryland, psychiatrist Phillip Sinaikin recounts reading a scientific article in which it was debated whether a three-year-old girl who ran out in traffic had oppositional-defiant disorder or bipolar disorder. Instead of just being defiant, she might have bipolar disorder which is marked by “grandiose delusions” that she was special and cars could not harm her said the article.

Everyone but the children wins at the pediatric psychopharmacology game that puts children on expensive psychiatric drugs–Pharma, Wall Street, doctors, insurers, pharmacy benefits managers and Pharma’s PR and ghostwriting firms. Researchers, medical centers, clinical research organizations and medical journals also profit through Pharma funding. The only losers at the pediatric psychopharmacology game are kids themselves given a probable life sentence of expensive and dangerous drugs. They are denied the chance to grow up normally and outgrow what are likely minor problems or traits.

Like elderly in nursing homes, children do not make their own medication decisions which makes them desirable targets for drug marketers.

Few children who are started on psychiatric drugs at a young age graduate to a point where their doctors, parents and teachers pronounce them fine and they are drug-free. Instead they are often given additional psychiatric drugs, which become cocktails, when more “symptoms” occur. The symptoms are usually attributed to the alleged psychiatric illness not drug side effects and consider “proof” of the illness. Needless to say, it often will never be known if the child ever needed psychiatric drugs to begin with.

Nor is Pharma content with life-long customers started as children. It also operates “prescribe early” campaigns so that parents put their children on drugs even sooner than they might.

One “prescribe early” campaign for the atypical antipsychotic Risperdal, given to children, uses a macabre abandoned wallet, teddy bear and keys lying on a barren street to imply that a child died because she wasn’t given psychiatric drugs soon enough. The ads “reposition a drug that was being used too late to achieve its maximum benefits,” said its advertising agency, Torre Lazur McCann. Benefits for whom we might ask.

Drug marketers are also not above using childhood icons. Brand managers for Seroquel, an antipsychotic that competes with Risperdal, considered creating Winnie-the-Pooh characters like Tigger (bipolar) and Eeyore (depressed) to sell Seroquel, according to published reports, at an AstraZeneca sales meeting. Parents say they have seen toys emblazoned with Seroquel logos.The father of “pediatric psychopharmacology” is considered Harvard child psychiatrist Joseph Biederman credited with ballooning the diagnosis of “bipolar disorder” in children by as much as 40 fold. In 2008, Biederman was investigated by Congress for allegedly accepting Pharma money he didn’t disclose and he agreed to suspend his industry-related activities.

Biederman headed the Johnson & Johnson Center for the Study of Pediatric Psychopathology at Massachusetts General Hospital whose stated goal was to “move forward the commercial goals of J. & J.” The center netted a cool $700,000 in one year of operation, according to reports. 

Biederman remains at Harvard where he is Chief, Clinical and Research Programs in Pediatric Psychopharmacology and Adult ADHD.

Martha Rosenberg is author of the award-cited food exposé “Born With a Junk Food Deficiency,” distributed by Random House. A nationally known muckraker, she has lectured at the university and medical school level and appeared on radio and television.

Drug Overdoses

Coroner: Washington State DB Bryce Beekman died of acute drug intoxication(click here)

Washington State defensive back Bryce Beekman was found dead on March 23. He was 22. The cause of death for Washington State defensive back Bryce Beekman has been revealed. 

The Whitman County coroner’s office announced Friday that Beekman died from an accidental drug overdose. Specifically, the cause of death was “acute intoxication due to the combined effects of fentanyl and promethazine.” The death, which occurred on March 23 at Beekman’s off-campus apartment in Pullman, was ruled accidental. 

According to the CDC, fentanyl is a synthetic opioid pain reliever that is approved “for treating severe pain, typically advanced cancer pain.” It is “50 to 100 times more potent” than morphine and is a major cause of drug overdoses. Promethazine is an antihistamine used to treat allergies and motion sickness. It can also often be found in over-the-counter cough syrups that also contain codeine. 

The family said it has been left with “many outstanding questions” following the coroner’s report. “We are working closely with the Pullman Police to get our questions answered and ultimately help prevent this from happening again to anyone else’s son or daughter,” the family said.  

One Nation, Overdosed: Documentary On The Deadliest Drug Crisis In American History (Full) | MSNBC