Antipsychotic drugs kill an estimated 15,000 elderly per year—Advocacy Group Calls for More Nurses, Less Drugs

The Center for Medicare Advocacy issued a statement last week saying that huge savings in nursing facility costs, and advances in resident care, could be achieved if facilities eliminated the inappropriate use of antipsychotic drugs and provided sufficient staff to meet resident needs.

“Hundreds of thousands of residents receive antipsychotic drugs each day in nursing homes across the country, even though these drugs are inappropriate and life-threatening for the vast majority of residents to whom they are given.” said Toby S. Edelman, Senior Policy Attorney with the Center’s Washington, DC office.

Psychiatry’s new blood test for diagnosing kids”mentally ill”— is bogus

A study about a new “blood test” that can supposedly be used to determine teens have “Major Depressive Disorder” is being heralded by the press as a breakthrough in legitimizing psychiatric disorders as medical conditions. We’re going to cut to the chase—it’s not even close to a breakthrough. It’s the same old tactic psycho/pharma has used for decades; since they can’t prove mental disorders are medical conditions by any scientific/medical standards, they’ll just prove it in the press, which apparently requires no scientific evidence to come up with headlines such as this one “Scientists develop first blood test to diagnose depression.”

We’re going to make this simple: No they haven’t. Not even close.

The Rotenberg Center, which administrated over 30 Electroshocks to teen in 7 hours—is being sued

Following a year in the cross-hairs of state officials critical of its controversial electric-shock methods, the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton is on the defensive again, this time fighting off a civil lawsuit in Norfolk Superior Court that has quickly attracted national and international media coverage. Andre McCollins, now 26, and his mother, Cheryl McCollins of Brooklyn, N.Y., is the plaintiff in the negligence lawsuit against the Rotenberg Center and three of its psychologists. The lawsuit says that in 2002 Andre received 30 electric shocks over a seven-hour period while he was also restrained face-down.

Graphic Video of Teen Being Restrained, Electroshocked Played in Court

Video of a student restrained and shocked for hours at the Judge Rotenberg Center was played in court on Tuesday after a years-long battle by the center to keep it from the public eye.
The video, which shows former resident Andre McCollins screaming, writhing in pain, and begging for help, was played at the start of McCollins’ trial against the Canton-based Judge Rotenberg Center.

“I never signed up for him to be tortured, terrorized and abused,” Cheryl McCollins told the jury. “I had no idea, no idea, that they tortured the children in the school.”

The Rotenberg Center convinced a judge eight years ago to seal the video, and the battle continued up until Tuesday morning when their attorneys asked Superior Court Judge Barbara Dortch-Okara to bar FOX Undercover’s camera from recording the video as it was played.

Dortch-Okara denied the center’s request, clearing the way to give the public the first look at how these controversial electric shocks are used. The video was taken by one of the center’s classroom cameras.

McCollins, then 18 years old, was shocked 31 times that day in 2002. Lawyers for the center and its clinicians say it was part of the treatment he needed to quell his aggressive behavior.

The end of antidepressants? Studies show they’re no more effective than placebo yet carry serious health risks

Watchers of a February broadcast of “60 Minutes” may have been stunned to learn that studies have been conducted that seem to prove that antidepressants, on the whole, are no more effective than placebo.

This revelation about antidepressants – among the top-selling and top-prescribed drugs in the United States – may have been new news to some, but the studies conducted by Irving Kirsch, PhD, and colleagues, have been raising eyebrows and garnering attention since 1998. Which begs the question, have Kirsch’s studies had any impact on the sales of antidepressants and/or on the prescribing patterns of doctors?

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