The U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois filed a federal fraud lawsuit today against a Chicago psychiatrist profiled by ProPublica and the Chicago Tribune in 2009 for his alleged excessive prescribing of antipsychotic drugs to nursing home patients.
Every decade or two, the American Psychiatric Association reworks its Diagnostic Statistical Manual, or DSM, to try to have diagnostic categories reflect the current state of theory and practice. Given enormous evidence that we’re currently overdiagnosing things and medicalizing normal behavior, many had hope that the upcoming DMS-5 — the fifth major revision — would show some restraint. We may see it yet — but not if we go down the track described in a post today by neuroscientist, blogger, and DSM watchdog Neuroskeptic:. It seems that the DSM-5 may include a new proposed “mood disorder” called “disruptive mood dysregulation disorder,” or DMDD.
Autism, birth defects, persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn (PPHN) — these are among the many serious health conditions newborn babies face whose mothers take selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and certain other antidepressant drugs during pregnancy. The side effects of SSRIs are so serious for pregnant women, in fact, that two prominent doctors recently came forward with warnings to pregnant women against taking the drugs, which can cause potentially deadly complications for both unborn babies and their mothers.
When you think of drug rehab, cocaine, heroin, and OxyContin come to mind. But some different drugs are sending an exploding number of kids into treatment. Medications for ADD and ADHD are being passed out, sold, and abused and sadly it’s leading to life–threatening addictions.
O’Meara writes that “the devastating adverse effects mind-altering psychiatric drugs may be having on the nation’s military troops are best summed up by Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein, writing “nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.” The psychiatric community, along with its pharmaceutical sidekicks, has turned to modern day chemical concoctions to alter the human mind in the same manners as the fictional character, Dr. Frankenstein, turned to experiments in the laboratory to create life with fantastically horrific results. This has resulted in what many see as “a growing number of equally hideous results culminating in senseless deaths, tormented lives and grief-stricken families.”
SHARE YOUR STORY/COMMENT: