Psych Observer - Exposing Bad Psychiatrists

By GAYLE WHITE |The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Thursday, December 18, 2008

In a stern letter to Emory University this week, U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley questions whether renowned psychiatrist Dr. Charles Nemeroff has honestly portrayed some of his activities funded by pharmaceutical companies.

Grassley warns school officials of the potential penalties for making false statements or obstructing a congressional examination.

Nemeroff, an internationally known expert on depression, has become a central figure in an investigation this year by the Senate Finance Committee into whether drug company money paid to physicians compromises medical research and scholarship. Grassley (R-Iowa) is the ranking minority member of the committee.

Grassley’s letter, obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, questions Emory’s position that some talks by Nemeroff funded by the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline were educational and did not involve promotion of Glaxo products.
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by Lorna Benson, Minnesota Public Radio
December 15, 2008

A Minnesota man undergoing electro-convulsive therapy goes before a judge in St. Paul on Tuesday to try to stop the court-ordered procedure. Ray Sandford says he’s losing his memory after having more than 30 treatments so far. His doctors have argued that the procedure is necessary to treat Sandford’s psychotic episodes. Minnesota, like many other states, does not track the number of forced ECTs.

St. Paul, Minn. — Ray Sandford has been getting electro-convulsive treatment, also known as electroshock and ECT, since the end of May. For Ray, the process works like this. Every week or two he is taken to a hospital, where a medical technician attaches electrodes to his head and delivers electrical current into his brain. The current causes a seizure.

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Petition here: http://www.petitiononline.com/TScreen/petition.html

What would you do if your child was mentally screened at school and diagnosed with mental disorders without your permission? That happened to this mother, Teresa Rhoades

Submitted by DannyHaszard on August 22, 2008 - 12:33pm.

Eli Lilly sells a drug that can cause diabetes and then turn a profit on the drugs that treat the condition that they may have caused in the first place! Zyprexa is the product name for Olanzapine,it is Lilly’s top selling drug.It was approved by the FDA in 1996 ,an ‘atypical’ antipsychotic a newer class of drugs without the motor side effects of the older Thorazine.
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Cartoons about the psychiatrist’s couch were recently the subject of a museum exhibition. Now, the couch itself may be headed for a museum.

A new study finds a significant decline in psychotherapy practiced by U.S. psychiatrists.

The expanded use of pills and insurance policies that favor short office visits are among the reasons, said lead author Dr. Ramin Mojtabai of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

“The ‘couch,’ or, more generally, long-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy, was for so long a hallmark of the practice of psychiatry. It no longer is,” he said.

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By Bruce E. Levine, AlterNet
Posted on July 23, 2008, Printed on July 24, 2008

American psychiatry has been rocked by Congress. Congressional investigators first exposed the financial relationships between high-profile psychiatrists and drug companies. “But now the profession itself is under attack in Congress,” reported the New York Times on July 12, 2008.

Specifically under attack is psychiatry’s premier professional organization, the American Psychiatric Association. The New York Times stated, “In 2006, the latest year for which numbers are available, the drug industry accounted for about 30 percent of the association’s $62.5 million in financing. About half of that money went to drug advertisements in psychiatric journals and exhibits at the annual meeting, and the other half to sponsor fellowships, conferences and industry symposiums at the annual meeting.”

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By Terry Date
Staff writer

Seventeen state representatives wrote New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte in May, asking her to seek financial compensation from pharmaceutical companies that have improperly marketed or not fully disclosed side effects of antipsychotic drugs.

The petitioners didn’t know it at the time, but the attorney general’s office had been investigating one of those companies, Bristol-Myers Squibb, since 2004.

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AstraZeneca’s CEO to be Deposed in London on Friday, June 20, 2008 NEW YORK, June 19

NEW YORK, June 19 /PRNewswire/ — Weitz & Luxenberg, PC, one of the
leading plaintiffs’ litigation law firms in America, filed a lawsuit today
against pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca on behalf of a New York City Fire
Department Emergency Medical Technician whose diabetes was allegedly caused by
AstraZeneca’s drug Seroquel. The plaintiff, EMT Ernest Armstead, was one of
the many brave responders on the morning of September 11, 2001. He was
severely injured when the World Trade Center’s North Tower collapsed as he was
helping victims at the foot of the buildings.

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today exercised its new authority under the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007 (FDAAA) to require manufacturers of “conventional” antipsychotic drugs to make safety-related changes to prescribing information, or labeling, to warn about an increased risk of death associated with the off-label use of these drugs to treat behavioral problems in older people with dementia.

In 2005, the FDA announced similar labeling changes for “atypical” antipsychotic drugs. At that time, Boxed Warnings, the FDA’s strongest, were added. The Boxed Warning will now be added to an older class of drugs known as “conventional” antipsychotics. The warning for both classes of drugs will say that clinical studies indicate that antipsychotic drugs of both types are associated with an increased risk of death when used in elderly patients treated for dementia-related psychosis.

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For almost every behavioural issue, these days there’s a medicine to treat it

Roger Dobson reports
Tuesday, 3 June 2008

Spending too much time on the internet? Worried about a low sex drive, shyness or lack of social skills? Or do you lose your temper too easily, blush too readily or spend too much time and money shopping?

Time was when such behaviours might have been regarded as individual differences, or put down to lack of self control and restraint. But not any more. Increasing numbers of behavioural conditions are being treated with drug therapy. Bereavement issues, blushing, low sex drive, high sex drive, sex addiction, lack of orgasm, gambling, fear of public speaking, stealing, domestic violence and phobias are all being targeted with drugs that are either in clinical trials or already available.

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