Tag Archives: antipsychotics

America’s exportation of mental disorders and drugs “Making the rest of the world crazy”

Americans are a generous people. We donate riches to needy countries. We send our troops abroad. We have exported some of history’s most influential cultural, scientific, and social inventions: democracy, fast food, and Britney Spears. Whether that generosity is helpful to other nations is another question. And so it goes with mental health. According to Ethan Watters in “Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche,’’ the American way of perceiving and treating mental illness has quickly and ruthlessly become the worldwide way.

Drugmaker that got kickbacks for giving antipsychotics to nursing home patients deserves “a special place in hell”

There really should be a special place in hell for pharmaceutical manufacturers who make money by exploiting the weakest and most vulnerable of patients: old people with dementia…. Johnson & Johnson paid kickbacks to the nation’s largest nursing home pharmacy to increase the number of elderly patients taking the antipsychotic Risperdal and several other medications, according to a complaint filed Friday by the office of the United States attorney in Boston.

Feds say Johnson & Johnson paid millions in kickbacks to increase drug sales including the antipsychotic Risperdal

Federal prosecutors alleged that Johnson & Johnson paid one of the nation’s largest pharmacies serving nursing homes “tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks” to increase sales of drugs including blockbuster antipsychotic Risperdal.

Antipsychotic drug deaths in California tie into nationwide abuse: FDA estimates antipsychotics kill 15,000 per year

When residents at the Kern Valley Nursing Home complained or annoyed nursing director Gwen Hughes, prosecutors say she chemically restrained them with powerful anti-psychotic drugs. Her methods were so severe, three residents died. A Food and Drug Administration official estimates that unnecessary anti-psychotics kill 15,000 nursing home patients each year.

Rate of 2 to 5-year-old’s being given psychiatry’s most powerful/brain damaging drugs – antipsychotics – doubles.

“It is a worrisome trend, partly because very little is known about the short-term, let alone the long-term, safety of these drugs in this age group,” said study author Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University in New York City.