Clozapine... agranulocytosis, cardiovascular, anticholinergic, and tardivedyskinesia) ... Use with caution in patients atrisk of seizures, including those with a history ...
www.metagenics.com/ADAM/41/030750.html
Medication Withdrawl and why you should never just stop your medication.
Neuroleptic use, parkinsonian symptoms, tardive dyskinesia, and associated factors in child and adolescent psychiatric patients. Richardson MA, et al.
Am J Psychiatry 1991 Oct;148(10):1322-8.
This study evaluated the rate of occurrence of drug-induced parkinsonism and tardive dyskinesia in a cohort of 104 children and adolescents treated with antipsychotic drugs in a psychiatric hospital. Of the 104 children, 61 were found to have risk factors for the development of parkinsonism and 41 had risk factors for the development of tardive dyskinesia. Of the children with risk factors, 34% developed parkinsonism and 12% tardive dyskinesia. These data indicate a high rate of severe and disabling complications in neuroleptic-treated children and adolescents, indicating that these drugs should be given only when absolutely necessary and for the shortest period of time. http://www.garynull.com/Documents/Iatrogenic/latrogenic_psychiatry_children.htm
over Barack Obama's use of marijuana and cocaine as a teenager, a truly ... Letters Editor. The Globe and Mail. letters@globeandmail.ca. Dear Editor ...
London, Sunday 03.02.08 Danger drugs designed for schizophrenics used to calm children
Mischief making: But some GPs prescribe powerful tranquilisers (posed by model)
Thousands of children with behavioural problems are being prescribed anti-psychotic drugs with dangerous side effects, doctors warn.
The powerful tranquillisers, designed to treat psychosis and schizophrenia in adults, are being used to calm children who are simply hyperactive.
Around 8,000 youngsters are taking anti- psychotics such as Risperdal and Zyprexa despite the fact that these have been linked to a host of health problems from diabetes to brain damage, BBC1's Panorama reports.
Although some are prescribed for schizophrenia and related conditions, many are given to children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and other behavioural problems.
Dr Tim Kendall, of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said he knew of children as young as ten being given the schizophrenia drugs for unruly behaviour, sometimes for as long as five years.
He said that the drugs should be considered as a last resort in the treatment of hyperactivity.
And he added: "A generous understanding would be to say that doctors have reached a point where they don't know what else to offer and they haven't got the right supports to help parents in difficult circumstances.
"I think perhaps there is no real excuse for prescribing drugs which are associated with such severe side-effects."
The consultant psychiatrist, who is heading a team drawing up Government guidelines on the treatment of ADHD, said: "Everyone agrees that if there are alternatives we should be exploring these alternatives and looking at what psychological treatments can work and what helps the parents and the teachers."
The warnings come amid growing concern that ADHD is being diagnosed in children suffering from nothing more than natural boisterousness.
In March this year Dr Robert Spitzer, the U.S. psychiatrist who first identified the ADHD, admitted that up to a third of cases could have been misdiagnosed.
Tonight's Panorama also reveals disturbing evidence that other drugs, much more commonly used to treat ADHD, do not work in the long term.
A study in the U.S. suggests that while medication such as Ritalin and Concerta is effective initially, the effects wear off after three years of treatment.
The drugs, taken by around 55,000 British children at the cost to the NHS of £28million a year, stunt growth, the researchers discovered.
Many children take the controversial drugs for years at a time though they have also been linked to heart problems, dizziness and insomnia, and blamed for a string of deaths in the UK and abroad.
Researcher Professor William Pelham, of the University at Buffalo in New York state tracked the health and treatment of 600 children with ADHD for six years.
He warned: "They had a substantial decrease in their rate of growth, so they weren't growing as much as other kids in terms of their height and weight.
"In the short-run [medication] will help the child behave better, in the long-run, it won't. And that information should be made very clear to parents."
The makers of Concerta and Risperdal, Buckinghamshirebased Janssen-Cilag, said the drugs were "very valuable treatments".
Eli Lilly, the U.S.-based maker of Zyprexa, said it had never promoted the anti-psychotic for the treatment of ADHD and did not intend to do so.
The makers of Ritalin, Swissbased Novartis, were unable to comment last night. The Panorama programme will be shown on BBC1 at 8.30pm tonight.
Joshua Lourie was diagnosed at age 7 for ADHD, but his family believes the real problem was diabetes.
Janette at first refused to put her son on Ritalin, but that wasn't then end of the issue.
Sandra Fisman says 'There is a fashion around the diagnosis of ADHD. Sarah Stevens,
Sarah Stevens, W-FIVE
Updated: Sat. Mar. 17 2007 6:58 PM ET
When Joshua Lourie was seven, he started acting out in class. His school sent him for a psychological assessment and he was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Not unusual, as estimates say that between 3 to 7 per cent of Canada's more than seven million children are diagnosed with ADHD.
Joshua's mother Janette says, "The school had suggested that I put him on Ritalin and this is when he was about the age of six, going on seven. They put a lot of pressure on me to take him to the doctor, get him on Ritalin." She refused, but that was not the end of it.
At 10, Joshua ended up being removed from her care and placed into a juvenile facility where he was given psychiatric medicines, not just ADHD medications but antidepressants, not approved by Health Canada for use in children under 18.
For the next 18 months he was bounced around from foster care to group homes, sometimes on as many as three different drugs at a time.
Joshua's grandfather, George Lourie, believes the reason for Joshua's problem behavior was not ADHD, but diabetes. Joshua's blood sugars were out of whack, and then he was prescribed Wellbutrin, a drug with potentially dangerous side-effects for diabetics and children. Joshua collapsed in a group home while he was on the drug.
Psychiatric diagnoses often lead to the prescription of medications, never tested in or approved for use by children. As children's bodies metabolize medication differently than adults, these off-label prescriptions can leave a child feeling, at best, like a zombie or at worst, lead to suicide.
Using data received from IMS Health Canada, an agency that tracks the use of prescription medications, W-FIVE discovered that in 2006, over one million prescriptions for ADHD medications, drugs like Ritalin, Adderall and Concerta, were written for children under the age of 18. And there were over 300,000 prescriptions filled for anti-depressants (SSRIs). Some people are increasingly worried about the sheer volume of these prescriptions.
Marty McKay, a psychologist who has treated and assessed children for over 30 years, believes that "Ninety per cent of children diagnosed as ADHD are misdiagnosed and drugged for no appropriate reason." She points the finger of misdiagnosis at the school system and the psychiatric industry.
Teachers, she believes, are not qualified to make these diagnoses, but do so regularly. They are in fact being asked to assess children through the use of psychiatric rating scales in which they check off behaviors. Check off too many behaviours and it can lead to a child being diagnosed as ADHD. The next step is to refer a child for psychological assessment, which McKay says, generally just rubber-stamps a teacher's diagnosis.
Ask Joshua Lourie who should take the blame and he will tell you it's the doctors and the psychiatrists who prescribe all that medication.
Dr. Sandra Fisman of the Ontario Psychiatric Association, surprisingly, doesn't disagree with Joshua's point of view. She says, "There is a fashion around the diagnosis of ADHD." In blaming careless diagnosis, Fisman explains, " What we may be looking at is a core group who actually have the disorder and then a halo around that." She believes it is a problem that the "halo", those who do not have the disorder, are diagnosed and in many cases medicated.FULL PAGE VIEW HOW PSYCHIATRY IS MAKING DRUG ADDICTS OUT OF AMERICA'S SCHOOL CHILDREN
CASE REPORTS
Adolescents on Neuroleptic Medication: Is This Population at Risk for Tardive Dyskinesia?
Stephanie A McDermid, HonBSc1, Jane Hood, PhD2, Sandra Bockus, RN3, Enzo D'Alessandro, MD, FRCPC4
Objective: To assess the incidence of tardive dyskinesia (TD) in a sample of adolescents treated with neuroleptic medication and to identify the presence of any risk factors for TD within the affected group.
Method: A retrospective chart review was conducted for 40 cases. The Abnormal Involuntary Movement Scale (AIMS) was used to measure side effects from medication at 6-month intervals over 2 years. Drug exposure was converted to chlorpromazine (CPZ) equivalents and the presence of risk factors for TD, such as a diagnosis of affective disorder, medication noncompliance, early age of illness onset, and concomitant antiparkinsonian medication, was also noted.
Results: Of the 40 cases reviewed, 2 patients (5%) met diagnostic criteria for TD, and another 5 patients (12.5%) showed symptoms of TD.
Conclusions: TD is a serious risk at any age. Medication noncompliance, early age of illness onset, and concomitant use of antiparkinsonian medication may increase susceptibility to TD and should be carefully monitored.
Tardive dyskinesia (TD), a disorder of abnormal involuntary movements, is a rare but serious side effect of prolonged exposure to typical neuroleptic medication. Risk factors associated with TD include a diagnosis of affective disorder (1), an early age of onset of psychosis (1), medication noncompliance (2), and concomitant antiparkinsonian medication (3). The incidence of TD in adult samples is reported to be 5% after 1 year of neuroleptic treatment and increasing by 5% for each year of exposure (4). Relatively few studies have investigated the development of TD in children and adolescents. A prospective, longitudinal study of neuroleptic-related dyskinesias in children with autism estimated a 50% incidence of TD and withdrawal dyskinesias (WD) after 873 days (5). Additionally, Dorevitch and others reported a prevalence rate of 17.6% in their adolescent inpatient psychiatric ward (6). Given the increasing tendency to treat children and adolescents with neuroleptic medication as well as the paucity of research available for this group, it seems important to determine the incidence of TD in this younger population. C:\DocumentsandSettings\Main\Desktop\Aug2.htm
Is it a disease?
And what is the cause of the recent increase of senseless violence in our schools?
Who benefits from labeling kids with ADD? (Let's "follow the money"...)
We'd like you to watch a video by Dr. Fred Baughman. He will give you some very controversial information in this video. But first: Who is Dr. Fred Baughman?
Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD has been an adult & child neurologist, in private practice, for 35 years. Making "disease" diagnoses (real diseases like epilepsy, brain tumor, multiple sclerosis, etc.) or "no disease" diagnoses daily (emotional, psychological, psychiatric), he has discovered and described real, bona fide diseases.
Labels like ADHD, ADD, ODD, LD etc are in no sense true diseases. There are no reliable diagnostic methods. Psychiatrists cannot even agree among themselves about how to diagnose ADD/ ADHD. And your child needs to be put on a medication that is a close cousin to amphetamine because it is labeled with ADHD? Watch the video's by clicking on one of the links to the left.
WARNING: Below is a video that is not for the faint of heart or stomach.
The second video: "Psychiatry In Your Schools" contains footage and expert opinions by doctors and authorities on the cause of violence in our schools, if you have a child in a public school you need to spend the 12 minutes to watch the video. After you have seen the video, please read this incensed article by the Deputy Editorial Features Editor of The Wall Street Journal.
Psychiatry is in your childs School and its NOT in their best interest. Don't believe it? Watch this:
Although black box warnings weren't advised, FDA scrutiny of the safety of ADHD medications has raised alarms. William Barbaresi, M.D., answers questions about the safety of these commonly prescribed medications.
Before giving children neuroleptics, you should know of the serious side effects!! Neuroleptics WARNING!Growing evidence indicates that these drugs produce tardive psychoses that are irreversible and more severe than the patients' prior problems. In children, permanent behavioral or mental disorders frequently develop as a result of the drugs.
Shocking as it may seem, this brief review can only scratch the surface of neurological disorders associated with these drugs,
TD and its various related conditions are also known as "hyperkineticextrapyramidal syndromes" or EPS. The term EPS should be avoided, as it does not really "name" the disorder. Related conditions, which may also be caused by use of a DRA, include drug-induced parkinsonism; immediate reactions to DRAs, such as acute dystonia and acute akathisia; more delayed syndromes, including tardive dystonia and tardive akathisia; and either acute or tardive withdrawal "emergent syndromes" in which symptoms appear when treatment with the drug is stopped; and neuroleptic malignant syndrome.
Health News Archive 265 - ADHD <<back to structure/function indexFDA Panel Urges Hallucination and Death Warning for Children's ADHD Drugs
A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee recommended in March 2006 that the FDA require drug makers to add information about a possible risk of hallucinations in children to the labels of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder drugs.
The committee also urged the FDA to develop a consumer-friendly medication guide explaining to parents that they should talk to their child's doctor about stopping the medication should hallucinations occur. The panel said the "MedGuide" also should note that ADHD drugs may increase the risk of aggressive behavior, although that can be a component of the disorder itself. And the guide should note that the drugs might increase the risk of heart attack, stroke or sudden death in patients who have undiagnosed heart problems.
Current labeling for the ADHD drugs does not mention the possibility of hallucinations in patients who had no history of them and had taken the usual dose.
The most popular ADHD drugs include Adderall, Focalin, Concerta, Metadate, Methylin, Ritalin and Dexedrine.
The recommendations of this committee are non-binding on the FDA. Should the FDA approve any of these recommendations, it may take years before implementation of a warning on the labels or in the literature package for Doctors.Psychdata - Dedicated to exposing the fraud of psychiatry: June 2007
Medications often used to treat dementia-linked behavioral problems
