Nine Million Time-Bombs

In a television interview Jeff Griffin, the Executive Director for the Western U.S. of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, talks about some of the problems that our society faces in connection with the expanding power of the psychiatric industry.

This interview shares the common problem of nearly all critics of psychiatry: the extreme persuasion and bitterness. They lash out the abuses of psychiatry, and call it all kinds of bad names. It is perhaps not surprising. Anyone who spent some time uncovering psychiatry's dark secrets would probably become bitter in the process; but while their words may be correct, their very tone of voice and style of speech stand in the way of accepting their arguments. The listener can't help thinking that maybe all this is just another political game.

Nevertheless, Mr. Griffin, who has been fighting psychiatry for many years, mentions some extremely important points in this interview. One of them is the 9 million children who currently take one or more psychotropic medication.

He calls them "9 million time-bombs" and explains that in nearly every single case of school shooting or other mass-murders made by children one or another psychiatric drug was involved. The interview was apparently filmed before the Virginia Tech; I happened to watch the news on the day when it happened, and the reporters mentioned several times that the guy had been taking psychiatric drugs, although this information was not mentioned again in the subsequent media coverage.

We have never before given so much drugs to children as during the last decade; the drugs that are capable of causing restlessness and homicidal ideas, particularly in the withdrawal period. We have yet to find out what these kids will be like when they grow up. With the economic crisis that the US and its health-care system is facing, many of the people taking one or more psychotropic drugs will be forced to go into withdrawal. Jeff Griffin is right to be concerned.

Financial Side of Children's Bipolar Disorder

In a New York Times article it is reported that several world-famous Harvard psychiatrists have failed to disclose the bigger part of their income received from pharmaceutical companies for the last 7 years.

The research activity of these psychiatrists during this time has influenced the public and professional opinion on the problem of bipolar disorder in children and adolescents, as well as the patterns of drug prescription to the younger patients. Largely as a result of their studies it is now an accepted norm to prescribe atypical antipsychotic medications to children, for the treatment of bipolar disorder. It turns out that those studies were de facto funded by the pharmaceutical companies that produce the drugs in question.

The concept of pediatric bipolar disorder is controversial in itself, because a lot of symptoms that allow for this diagnosis (mood swings, rebellious behavior, sadness, appetite loss, problems in communication with peers, et cetera) may just as well be regarded as normal stages of child or teenager's development.

The credibility of the Harvard psychiatrists's research is questioned, but it is too late: the idea that children can be diagnosed with bipolar disorder and given antipsychotics has spread around the world. It will take years, and many thousands of children, to revert this trend.