Tag Archives: bipolar

Campaign to “Stop the Stigma” of Mental Illness—Is a Pharmaceutical Marketing Campaign

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights, (CCHR) has launched a new video to expose the hypocracy of the pharmaceutically driven campaign to “Stop the Stigma” of mental illness. With its seemingly altruistic sounding agenda to eliminate “stigma” the fact is the real “stigmatization” is coming from those behind this campaign—pharma, psychiatry and pharma-funded front groups such as NAMI and CHADD to name but a few.

Pharma makes hundreds of billions of dollars with government-subsidized Medicaid: buying their overprescribed psychiatric drugs

WHILE YOUR three-part series exposed a broken disability system and the difficult choices being made by today’s underclass, it did not mention the biggest welfare recipient of them all — the pharmaceutical corporations. They make hundreds of billions of dollars with government-subsidized Medicaid insurance buying their overprescribed psychiatric medications — drugs that are systematically promoted through sophisticated, but scientifically disputable, public relations campaigns.

Corporations work with the field of biological psychiatry to create huge markets for their medications for ADHD and bipolar and depressive disorders. While these medications are hyped as being a cure for mental disorders, their dangerous side effects and long-term consequences are underreported. Sometimes they can even create or perpetuate the very mental disorders that they are supposed to cure.

1 million misdiagnosed ADHD children for $80B drug industry

Two new studies published suggest something wrong with the way ADHD is diagnosed in young children in the US, confirming the need for the public to utilize Citizens Commission on Human Rights International resources for injury prevention. One or the new studies found nearly 1 million children potentially misdiagnosed just because of being youngest in their kindergarten year, with the class youngest twice likely to be medicated with stimulant medication. The other study confirmed that whether children were born just before or just after the kindergarten cutoff date significantly affected chances of being diagnosed ADHD. 20 million children are taking psychiatric drugs according to the mental health watchdog, Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHRI).

Antipschotic Drugs—Side Effects May Include Lawsuits

FOR decades, antipsychotic drugs were a niche product. Today, they’re the top-selling class of pharmaceuticals in America, generating annual revenue of about $14.6 billion and surpassing sales of even blockbusters like heart-protective statins. Lawyers suing AstraZeneca say documents they have unearthed show that the company tried to hide the risks of diabetes and weight gain associated with the new drugs. Positive studies were hyped, the documents show; negative ones were filed away. According to company e-mails unsealed in civil lawsuits, AstraZeneca “buried” — a manager’s term — a 1997 study showing that users of Seroquel, then a new antipsychotic, gained 11 pounds a year, while the company publicized a study that asserted they lost weight. Company e-mail messages also refer to doing a “great smoke-and-mirrors job” on an unfavorable study.

People & Power—Drug Money

One of the best TV exposés on Big Pharma we’ve seen, “People & Power —Drug Money” produced by Aljazeera. This piece pulls no punches exposing the rampant fraud, fatal drug side effects, off label marketing, criminal practices and “absolutely jaw dropping” payouts Pharma makes to psychiatrists/doctors. Sharon Ormsky, FBI Financial Crimes Unit states, “Pharmaceutical fraud is one of our top three threats — everybody is touched by these frauds in the extent that when you look at the billions of dollars that go into healthcare for the United States, a good percent, 3-10% of that is believed to be siphoned off into fraud—that’s money that could be going to very needy patients.”