CABF

[Timoclea]

I've been referring parents with mentally ill children to the CABF site for recommendations to RTC's if their child is immediately dangerous and has been through half a dozen or so short term hospitalizations already without being stabilized.

I have to add a warning.  WWASPS has found the site and has begun posing as parents, or sending their program drones over, one or the other, and the rules of the site don't let me rebut the referral there because of the "no flaming" rule, and they are worried about liability.

And I cannot guarantee that other unscrupulous behavior modification facilities will not also find the site and pose as parents to post ads to suck in the unwary.

Therefore my warning is that because there are some good mental health facilities that treat seriously mentally ill children who can't be stabilized with short term hospitalizations, and treat them based on a medical model, not a behavior modification model, I still recommend parents of immediately dangerous mentally ill children check out the site.

BUT I *strongly*, you can't imagine how strongly, caution parents to check Fornits, ISAC, and the teen emancipation site for any RTC they are considering and avoid any RTC that has a number of parents and/or former students/patients claiming that the place is abusive.

There is so much "fire" in this industry, that I don't think it's safe to trust a facility with any "smoke" with your seriously mentally ill child.

I also *strongly* recommend that parents make up a fictitious non-mentally ill juvenile delinquent child and have a friend who is convincing call and pretend to be a parent of the JD looking for a facility.  This is to protect you and your child from the fraud that is rampant in the industry.  There are multiple reports of facilities flat lying to parents of mentally ill children and saying they don't take juvenile delinquents when they definitely do.

National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) has issued a warning that facilities that take both mentally ill children and juvenile delinquents do the mentally ill children more harm than good.

If the facility sounds interested in taking the fictional juvenile delinquent, placing your mentally ill child in that facility is probably not going to be a decision you'll be happy with in the long run.

I still recommend that parents of children with serious mental illnesses who need a placement check the CABF message board on RTCs for suggestions, but I also must unfortunately caution you that you need to check their recommendations out very carefully in case the recommendation is an advertisement instead of a genuine recommendation.

Also, sometimes parents praising a facility don't really know whether the facility is good or bad because they haven't gotten their child back yet.  If you get your child back and your child is further traumatized and was just faking good to avoid punishment and telling you things were alright to avoid punishment, and your child suicides, it was obviously *not* a good placement.

If it's a behavior mod. facility and the child is still in the facility, take glowing recommendations with a large grain of salt.

Buyer Beware.

Timoclea

We need cops.

We can't live without 'em.

But they need to start working for us....

That's no longer an option.

They've pushed it.

They've gone to far.

They've just gone to far.
http://www.freedomtoexhale.com/rb.htm' target='_new'>Tom Crosslin

[Deborah]

CABF appears to be a parent led, but drug company funded organization designed to increase profits.

The realization that "these are biological illnesses that require biological treatment and that you don't have to let these kids suffer" is relatively recent, said Martha Hellander, a lawyer and the founding executive director of the 6-year-old Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation (CABF), an influential advocacy group based in Illinois. Hellander said the nonprofit foundation, which has 25,000 members, receives funding from several drug companies.
Medications are a cornerstone of treatment, Hellander said, even for very young children. But psychiatrists say insurance reimbursement is skewed in favor of medication - and little else. A psychiatrist can make two or three times as much from an hour of medication checks than from an hour of therapy.
http://tinyurl.com/2sbvc8


Hellander said the nonprofit foundation, which has 25,000 members, receives funding from several drug companies.
Medications are a cornerstone of treatment, Hellander said, even for very young children. She said the youngest patient she's heard of is an 18-month-old girl who was diagnosed as bipolar largely because she screamed incessantly and had a bipolar mother. Hellander said the baby was medicated with lithium.
Most children take at least three drugs simultaneously to control their moods and alleviate depression. Some try dozens of combinations and doses.
DeWeese said her daughter, who has tried more than half a dozen drugs, some of which made her act like "a raging maniac," currently takes Abilify, an antipsychotic primarily used to treat schizophrenia in adults.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ar ... b14_4.html

The matter was taken out of the realm of statistics by the impassioned pleas of parents, nearly all with tragic stories of what had happened to their sons and daughters on antidepressants. Some of these kids had been prescribed the drugs for other conditions such as OCD, ruling out depression as the cause of their suicidal behavior. A clear pattern from the parents' testimony emerged ? namely that these meds had been prescribed by primary care physicians who failed to advise parents on any possible adverse effects and who did not provide adequate follow-up care. Moreover, these kids had started acting suicidal very soon after taking their initial dose.
But other witnesses made compelling arguments that depression left untreated posed a huge suicide risk in young people. What do do? Enter the Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation (CABF) with a possible solution.
At the February public hearing, board member Rachel Adler reported how in January, the CABF polled its members (parents of bipolar kids). Twenty percent of the survey responders, she told the FDA panel, were convinced that their own children became suicidal due to treatment with an antidepressant. But she also added that other parents had reported positive benefits. Accordingly, the CABF urged that the FDA not ban antidepressants for kids, but require manufacturers to add a black box warning to their labeling, similar to the warning on the labeling for Accutane. ?Such a warning would alert clinicians and parents of the need to watch carefully for the emergence of these behaviors and take protective action immediately if the behaviors emerge,? Ms Adler concluded.
By the time the gavel came down on the September meeting, a stronger warning was a foregone conclusion. It was only a matter of execution and degree. John Walkup MD, a child and adolescent psychiatrist from Johns Hopkins, adroitly framed the issue by urging the panel that any warning should clarify rather than magnify. ?Magnification of the warning may actually do more harm than good to the kids who actually need to come to care,? he cautioned.
But Mark Miller, whose 13-year-old son committed suicide while on Zoloft, countered, ?I would rather be scared to death by a label on a medication than be changed forever by the death in our family seven years ago.?
http://www.namiscc.org/News/2004/Newsle ... ol6-26.htm

[Timoclea]

Uh...sure, right.  Because nothing ever goes biologically wrong with the brain in ways that systematically affect thought and behavior, and there are absolutely no genetic illnesses that primarily affect the brain, even though there are genetic predisprositions for illness that affect just about every other major organ or system in the human body.

But not the brain, no sirree.

And anybody who thinks otherwise is just out to increase drug company profits or a dupe of same.

The idea that anything ever goes biologically wrong with the brain that is better fixed by drugs than by "alternatives" is all a conspiracy.

Yep.  Sure.  Fine.  Whatever.

Timoclea

I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is none the less true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting.
--Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, educator, mathemetician, and social critic

[BuzzKill]

This is an argument that can go roun an roun forever.

Personally, as I have said, I have seen both wonderful results from medications for mental disorders; and very sad side effects.

Personally, I feel the most important factor is having a Doctor who will listen to their patients and the patient's family and who understands how to use the many varied medications for the best yet safest results.

For example, A doctor who is unconcerned with 100 pounds of weight gain in 6 months time, and excuses it as acceptable if you want to avoid mood swings may not be a doctor worth listening to.

A doctor who considers turning a teen prone to rage, into a teen to depressed and lethargic to move, a treatment success, is not one I'd recommend staying with.

All docs take note: Polycystic Ovarian Disorder is not a fare trade for mood swings. Lay of the dam Depacote for teen age girls.

All this being said - there are far better medications now than there were even a few years back. Not perfect, but far better - and some patients need them most desperately.

Nutrition can certainly be very important - and in some cases might be enough - but most mental patients really do need to take there meds.

What we most need are parity of care laws and far greater patient access to qualified doctors. Insurance companies should not be permitted to insist only this clinic, or that doc, be available to the patient. This promotes quackery.

Like the Mom from Ky who must use Caritas or Ten Brook - neither one being one likely to provide informed and quality care, as far as I'm concerned. I have only even seen either one do harm. However, there is good care available in town and the Mom ought to be able to go where it is, no matter where it is. This is what needs changing.

[Timoclea]

Buzz--my doctor has actually prescribed, among the meds, supplements of omega-3 fish oil (or consumption of a lot of fish) and is on board with me about the Ginko Biloba supplement.

Diet and sleep are important.

But when you get right down to it, food is a drug.

It's just not sometimes *enough* of a drug.

And I agree with you---*competent* psychiatrists take  side effects that are severe health and wellbeing problems---like weight gain or ovarian problems---very seriously.  *Competent* psychiatrists watch patients very closely for the beginnings of emergence of side effects.  Most patients who experience bad side effects on one drug do not experience bad side effects on another drug.  This is why finding the right medication, medication combination, or dosage to stabilize each patient is a time-consuming process as the doctor begins with the most likely safe and effective drug, gets it up to the therapeutic dose, and monitors to see how the patient does.  Then, if the patient has problems or doesn't have adequate relief from symptoms, goes on to the next most likely drug, and so on and so forth until that particular patient is stable and is *NOT* suffering horrible side effects.

Anti-medication people post the side effect profiles as if every patient is going to get them, or as if the side effects come out of nowhere full-force and the patient suffers irreparable harm overnight.

In truth, some side effects are more common than others, and if the doc and the patient and the patient's family are watching, they can virtually always catch the side effect when it's just starting and before permanent damage is done.  Then they switch to another drug and watch it for its side effects.  Since each patient has good and bad reactions to different drugs, the psychiatrist almost always finds a medication or combination the patient can tolerate and be stable on without horrible side effects.

In truth, following the process *competently*, almost no patients are permanently damaged by drug side effects unless the alternatives are too horrible to contemplate.

Yes, it's also true that you have to pay attention and insist to get a competent doc, you have to ask questions about side effects, you have to pay attention and work with the doctor to make sure impending bad side effects are noticed early and you get the hell off *that* drug and onto a different one.

It is true that you have to be willing to drop a specific pdoc like a hot rock if he/she won't listen to you or communicate with you about drug side effect profiles or won't spend enough time with you to notice if something starts to go wrong.

But the rewards of stability are well worth the diligence it takes to get good results through the process.

It is *also* true that there are a minority of patients whose illness is not responsive to any of the medications we have now.  *Some* of those patients get substantial improvements from a short course of shock therapy.  It's *rarely* used, but if you have drug-resistant mental illness, sometimes even knowing the risks, it's worth it to a patient to get the potential for improvement in their disorder.

It is true that some people's illness is so resistant to the drugs we have now that they end up on no drugs because there are none that work for them without horrible side effects.  Those patients are in the minority, but it does happen.

It is true that some people get *some* improvement from drugs but not totally stabilized.  My cousin is on total social security disability with her bipolar disorder, and with the best the doctors and medicines can do, she still sleeps on the couch with the TV on every night to drown out the voices.  And when she feels like she's getting dangerous, she goes and checks herself into the mental hospital, and they call her mother, and when she's stable enough again to go home, they send her home.  That's the nature of the illness--the symptoms come and go.

The current selection of drugs, the current process for finding the right drugs for each patient---it's not perfect and it's not the Holy Grail.  And it's not a cure.

That's why they're always looking for new and better meds with fewer or easier side effects.

That's why people who are mentally ill or have close family who are mentally ill keep a close watch on the genetics research, and on the research to repair brain damage or neural damage.  We never give up hoping that someday they'll find a cure.  It will probably be a combination of some drug or other with gene therapy.  The drug therapy to repair the damage, the gene therapy to keep the disorder from getting triggered again.

We keep hoping they'll identify the triggers so that we can work harder at protecting our children from encountering whatever triggers it and coming down with it in the first place.

We keep hoping they'll keep identifying more of the things that worsen the course of the illness, or ameliorate it, so that we can adjust our lifestyles to have less severe problems.

We pay attention to the whole spectrum of research and data coming in---which is why I take fish oil and Ginko Biloba for my executive function problems, as well as my doc switching me to Lamictal because it helps with those problems, too.

We pay attention to the research that says that marijuana use worsens the course of bipolar disorder.  It's not "reefer madness" hysteria---it's just recently been identifies as *one* of the possible triggers that *may* worsen the course of the disease.  The research is, by my lights, preliminary and I will be watching closely to see what follow-up research shows, but as one possible trigger, we pay close attention.

SSRI's, for *some* patients, for *some* kinds of bipolar disorder, worsen the course of the disease, they think.  They think Ritalin worsens the course of the disease.  It (tentatively) looks like anything that triggers mania has a long term negative effect on the course of the disease.  It (tentatively) looks like mania is not just behavioral, it's a symptom that indicates that the brain is, right then, undergoing actual damage.

We mentally ill folks and relatives of mentally ill folks pay attention to every therapy, surgery, drug, supplement, trigger, risk factor, gene study----everything about the illnesses that come down the pike.

Because every day we desperately hope for better treatments or a cure.

It just hurts when I read (and from what I can tell, it hurts other mentally ill people and family members when they read) people passing around misinformation or misinformed hysteria about the various treatments, the risks and benefits, and the *reputable*, *well-designed* research coming down the pike.

We all work so hard at staying informed about the treatments and their risks and benefits, and nobody knows that the present knowledge about the disease and the present treatments have risks, have drawbacks, and don't help everyone.

If you could read the CABF homeschool list and see what some of these parents have to cope with every single day, and how *desperately* hard they try to get their children an education, and keep them stable, and keep them safe, and keep them from running afoul of the law, and keep them out of the hospital, and keep them out of an RTC----if you could see all that, every day, day in and day out, it would break your heart.

It practically breaks mine, and I and my daughter are so lucky to be good medication responders, high function, with limited side effects.  We're not normal by any means, but we're very, very lucky.

It's very hard not to take misinformation and hysteria personally, because anybody---parent or patient or caretaking relative---that runs across the misinformation or hysteria and buys into it can suffer horrible, horrible needless pain and damage and grief.  I *see* the pain and damage and grief of other parents with sick kids and their heartbreak while doing the very best that can be done with the current state of medicine---I see it every single day.

And every parent or patient or caretaker that buys into misinformation---I can imagine their pain more clearly than anyone who doesn't have to live with this disorder, and the other people who are in the same boat, day in and day out.

It's hard enough for us without paranoid moonbats making it even harder.

It sucks.  It sucks rocks, it sucks out loud, it bites---It sucks to the maximum possible level of suckosity.

Maybe by the time my daughter is grown they'll have a real cure.  Cured people don't have to worry anymore about being damaged by falling for misinformation.  I hope for a real cure and normal lives for us every day.

Timoclea

If you think yourself too wise to involve
yourself in government, you will be governed
by those too foolish to govern.  
--Plato

[Anonymous]

Dear lord Tim, I'm beginning to think it's a good idea that you take drugs.

How have the 'hysterical, misinformed, moonbats MADE IT HARDER FOR YOU??' And, Hysterical?? Is that not the pot calling the kettle black?

In reality, its quiet the opposite. Everyday, people have less and less access to any non traditional information or treatment other than what the APA/Insurance approves.

Insurance doesn't pay for supplements or non traditional treatment, with the possible exception of chiropractic.

'Hysterical moonbats' aren't forcing people to stop taking drugs. But, sure nuf, the hysterical pushers and addicts clearly won't be 'stable' until they've rounded up and druged every woman and child they can get their arrogant, grubby hands on.

I don't know which drug you're referring to when you claim that the side effects are obvious, but it sure wasn't obvious to many parents whose kids died from the effects of taking speed (ritalin).
http://www.ritalindeath.com

Psychiatry went way far right, which caused a way far left reaction. If they'd leave people the fuck alone they'd probably have far less detractors, because people generally really do like to live and let live. Hard to do when everything from a burp to a fart is catorgorized as a mental illness that can land one institutionalized with no rights.

Haven't you said before that you are for 'reform' and 'informed consent'??? That perfect pdoc you describe exists, what? one in a thousand, and even if s/he finds the 'perfect' drug with the least side effects, you and I and s/he have absolutely no clue what the long term effects of taking that drug will be. If I were embarking on that journey, I damn sure would want to know the truth.

I apprecaite your right to drug, or otherwise poison your body, or shock it or burn it, or any other thing you may choose to do. It's safe to let go of that life preserver you so desperately cling to. The storm is only in your mind. Your rights are safe, and we're just sharing information here. Why ARE you so defensive? Do you have stock in big pharm? Given the way things are headed, that might be a good choice for any investor- moonbats included; cause god knows, short of some kind of radical change, the psychiatric state is coming. Equilibrium. Good movie.

[Anonymous]

On 2005-04-15 21:12:00, Anonymous wrote:

"

Dear lord Tim, I'm beginning to think it's a good idea that you take drugs.


br>

'Hysterical moonbats' aren't forcing people to stop taking drugs. But, sure nuf, the hysterical pushers and addicts clearly won't be 'stable' until they've rounded up and druged every woman and child they can get their arrogant, grubby hands on.


[snip]




I don't know which drug you're referring to when you claim that the side effects are obvious, but it sure wasn't obvious to many parents whose kids died from the effects of taking speed (ritalin).

http://www.ritalindeath.com









Psychiatry went way far right, which caused a way far left reaction. If they'd leave people the fuck alone they'd probably have far less detractors, because people generally really do like to live and let live. Hard to do when everything from a burp to a fart is catorgorized as a mental illness that can land one institutionalized with no rights.









Haven't you said before that you are for 'reform' and 'informed consent'??? That perfect pdoc you describe exists, what? one in a thousand, and even if s/he finds the 'perfect' drug with the least side effects, you and I and s/he have absolutely no clue what the long term effects of taking that drug will be. If I were embarking on that journey, I damn sure would want to know the truth.



I apprecaite your right to drug, or otherwise poison your body, or shock it or burn it, or any other thing you may choose to do. It's safe to let go of that life preserver you so desperately cling to. The storm is only in your mind. Your rights are safe, and we're just sharing information here. Why ARE you so defensive? Do you have stock in big pharm? Given the way things are headed, that might be a good choice for any investor- moonbats included; cause god knows, short of some kind of radical change, the psychiatric state is coming. Equilibrium. Good movie.









"

Okay, one point at a time, yes, it *is* a good idea that I take my meds.  They may not make me "normal," but they make me more reasonable and stable and sane than many people walking around without them.  Take that however you want.

Point two:  *I'm* talking about the major mental illnesses, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and major depression and *only* to the extent that they're severe enough that a specific patient is psychotic or suicidal.  You have the brass balls to imply *I'm* not stable while you spew out your "grubby little hands" paranoid fantasy?  Riiiight.  You're not paranoid.  All of us advocating for psychotic and suicidal people to be medicated really *are* out to get you.....Riiiiight.  So which are you, that you should be so worried?  Been having these paranoid delusions long?

Point three: ritalin is not customarily prescribed for bipolar disorder (for damned good reason), nor is it typically prescribed for schizophrenia or major depression.  If you have a mental health problem that is less severe than psychosis or suicidal thoughts/intentions, then I don't really give a good goddam if you decide you'd rather not be treated.  I don't give a good goddam if you convince *others* who aren't psychotic or suicidal not to be treated.  I couldn't care less.

Point four:  My experience is that competent, responsible pdocs vastly, vastly outnumber fruitcake fringe flakes.  If you've gotten a second and third opinion for psychotic symptoms or suicidal thoughts/comments, I would be *amazed* if two of the three, at least, weren't on the same page.  And either of the agreeing two would be "safe" to have as a pdoc for the patient in question.  More likely, all three will be pretty much on the same page for something serious like psychoses or suicidal behavior.  Having a major mental illness myself, and having a daughter with the same thing, I've had occasion over the years to see eight pdocs in action.  Only one of them was an incompetent flake.  Mostly, it helps to be an informed medical consumer, get educated about your diagnosis and other diagnoses frequently confused with it, and the full range of treatment options and prognoses usually associated with same---it means you can ask intelligent questions and know what things that you notice are things your doc really needs to know.  Same as with *any* health condition and any physician, really.

Point four b: You are flat incorrect that there is no long term data for psychiatric drugs.  Some drugs have been around longer than others, some have a long track record in the treatment of another condition so there is good data for what they do in the human body long term.  Some studies track biological changes in the brain and body with certain drugs at a very minute level and give good predictive data about the likely long-term effects.  Lithium has been in use as a treatment for bipolar disorder for longer than most people have been alive.  Its long term effects couldn't be more well-known.  At the right dosage, you could take it all your life from the age of onset until you died of old age and be a bit chubbier but otherwise fine.  It has risks---but the medical community knows damned well what they are and can cope with them.  If the track record of a drug's long term effects are a big concern for a particular patient, then that patient can use the older drugs whose risks and benefits are known up one side and down the other.

*Most* of us look at the ease of use and risks and benefits and side effect profiles and make the risk/benefit call we feel comfortable with.  But if you'd rather have your blood levels checked all the time and go with good ol' Lithium, and you're bipolar, it works just fine for a whole lot of patients.

Just because you don't know or understand the long term data on various drugs doesn't mean there isn't any.

Point five:  "Psychiatric state"?!  Dude, chick, whoever or whichever you are, that is somewhere between an eccentric hot button and a paranoid delusion.  Hint: the psychiatrists aren't out to get you (unless you happen to be a dangerous and violent escaped psychotic).  You can hang the little tinfoil hat back up in your closet and quit looking over your shoulder everywhere you go for the men in white coats.

I was never in a program or harmed *personally* by them.  I'm here because innocent kids can be seriously hurt by it and I think that's an injustice and want it changed.

I've never been stupid enough to buy the lie that not treating psychosis or suicidal feelings was better than treating them.  So I haven't been hurt personally by that, either.

But I speak up about it because there are psychotic and suicidal people who *do* get harmed by either buying the lie that it's okay for them to not get treatment *or* that the treatment for psychosis or suicidal depression can be just chit-chat----or by having family members buy the lie and either not get them treatment or be so unsupportive that they cause treatment to terminate.

Have the mental health equivalent of the sniffles?  Fine.  Don't get it treated for yourself, don't get it treated for your kid---if you're happier that way.  Peachy.

Have the mental health equivalent of bacterial pneumonia?  Then the patients needs direct medical treatment that directly affects his physiology in major ways, and he needs it pronto.

I speak out against the lie because psychotic and suicidal people hurt or kill themselves or other people, or end up in jail for large chunks of their lives, if they don't get treated with psychiatric drugs or, in specific rare cases, ECT.

And I'm not talking about some sappy, maudlin teenager who talks suicide in the throes of the breakup of his first puppy-love, or some other *transient* and rare experience of suicidal feeling in someone who's usually basically okay.

I'm talking about someone who is suicidal or psychotic because of one of the major mental illnesses.

If you thought you'd "zing" me by needling me about being crazy, nice try.  It works, a little, but not nearly as much as with most people.  Yeah, I have a mental illness.  So?  I may not be normal, but at least I'm saner than you.

You are paranoid to the point of loopiness.

No, I don't want to make you get treatment or take meds.  If you want to walk around paranoid and loopy and eccentric as hell, go right ahead.

But you're a perfect case in point about why I think medication is a good thing.  The state of the art meds aren't good enough yet for me to get to be normal---but I at least get to be more normal than you.

Which makes today a good day.

Timoclea

[Deborah]

Tim,
'Alternative' docs acknowledge when there is a
'problem'. They just choose to address it differently. They certainly, nor do I, think people should 'do nothing'. I don't have time or the inclimation to search for the numerous articles and essays I've posted about what people have done instead of drugs for 'majory mental illness', including bipolar and schiz, but they're here and on the internet, if anyone should choose to explore all the information available to them.

Paranoid?  More like skeptical. Time will tell.
I and many others are, concerned about Bushs's agenda with MH screening in public schools. If you think for a minute that they are doing this from the kindness of their hearts and because they 'care' about America's children (and women), you are in absolute denial. If you think for a minute that parents will be properly informed and that parents won't be threatened by CPS for non compliance, you are in denial. That my dear, is not freedom. That is a 'psychiatric state'.

Do you listen to economists and talk of the stock market? You know where the safe investments are right now and the distant future? Medicine/Health Care/Mental Health Care.  That's not an accident.

And, my personal opinion, fwiw, is that you are transfering your resentment toward your parents 'inaction' onto others who don't deserve it. I can take the jabs and name calling, but you really sound extremely desperate to make your point, and to save all the bipolars of the world by the only method you happen to know, fwiw.

Sincerely,
The Loopy Moonbat Deborah

[Deborah]

Are the white coats coming? Or is it big pharma? Or both?

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature ... aliah.html

Medicating Aliah
When state mental health officials fall under the influence of Big Pharma, the burden falls on captive patients. Like this 13-year-old girl.

Rob Waters
May/June 2005 Issue

ALIAH GLEASON IS A BIG, lively girl with a round face, a quick wit, and a sharp tongue. She's 13 and in eighth grade at Dessau Middle School in
Pflugerville, Texas, an Austin suburb, but could pass for several years older. She is the second of four daughters of Calvin and Anaka Gleason, an
African American couple who run a struggling business taking people on casino bus trips.

In the early part of seventh grade, Aliah was a B and C student who "got in trouble for running my mouth." Sometimes her antics went overboard-like the time she barked at a teacher she thought was ugly. "I was calling this teacher a man because she had a mustache," Aliah recalled over breakfast
with her parents at an Austin restaurant.

School officials considered Aliah disruptive, deemed her to have an "oppositional disorder," and placed her in a special education track. Her
parents viewed her as a spirited child who was bright but had a tendency to argue and clown. Then one day, psychologists from the University of Texas (UT) visited the school to conduct a mental health screening for sixth- and
seventh-grade girls, and Aliah's life took a dramatic turn.

A few weeks later, the Gleasons got a "Dear parents" form letter from the head of the screening program. "You will be glad to know your daughter did not report experiencing a significant level of distress," it said. Not long
after, they got a very different phone call from a UT psychologist, who told them Aliah had scored high on a suicide rating and needed further
evaluation. The Gleasons reluctantly agreed to have Aliah see a UT consulting psychiatrist. She concluded Aliah was suicidal but did not
hospitalize her, referring her instead to an emergency clinic for further evaluation. Six weeks later, in January 2004, a child-protection worker went to Aliah's school, interviewed her, then summoned Calvin Gleason to the school and told him to take Aliah to Austin State Hospital, a state mental facility. He refused, and after a heated conversation, she placed Aliah in
emergency custody and had a police officer drive her to the hospital.

The Gleasons would not be allowed to see or even speak to their daughter for the next five months, and Aliah would spend a total of nine months in a
state psychiatric hospital and residential treatment facilities. While in the hospital, she was placed in restraints more than 26 times and
medicated-against her will and without her parents' consent-with at least 12 different psychiatric drugs, many of them simultaneously.

On her second day at the state hospital, Aliah says she was told to take a pill to "help my mood swings." She refused and hid under her bed. She says staff members pulled her out by her legs, then told her if she took her medication, she'd be able to go home sooner. She took it. On another
occasion, she "cheeked" a pill and later tossed it into the garbage. She says that after staff members found it, five of them came to her room, one holding a needle. "I started struggling, and they held my head down and shot me in the butt," she says. "Then they left and I lay in my bed crying."

What, if anything, was wrong with Aliah remains cloudy. Court documents and medical records indicate that she would say she was suicidal or that her father beat her, and then she would recant. (Her attorney attributes such statements to the high dosages of psychotropic drugs she was forcibly put on.) Her clinical diagnosis was just as changeable. During two months at Austin State Hospital, Aliah was diagnosed with "depressive disorder not otherwise specified," "mood disorder not otherwise specified with psychotic features," and "major depression with psychotic features." In addition to the antidepressants Zoloft,  Celexa, Lexapro, and Desyrel, as well as Ativan,
an antianxiety drug, Aliah was given two newer drugs known as "atypical antipsychotics"-Geodon and Abilify-plus an older antipsychotic, Haldol. She was also given the anticonvulsants Trileptal and Depakote-though she was not suffering from a seizure disorder-and Cogentin, an anti-Parkinson's drug also used to control the side effects of antipsychotic drugs. At the time of
her transfer to a residential facility, she was on five different medications, and once there, she was put on still another atypical-Risperdal.

The case of Aliah Gleason raises troubling-and long-standing-questions about the coercive uses of psychiatric medications in Texas and elsewhere. But especially because Aliah lives in Texas, and because her commitment was involuntary, she became vulnerable to an even further hazard: aggressive drug regimens that feature new and controversial drugs-regimens that are promoted by drug companies, mandated by state governments, and imposed on captive patient populations with no say over what's prescribed to them.

In the past, drug companies sold their new products to doctors through ads and articles in medical journals or, in recent years, by wooing consumers directly through television and magazine advertising. Starting in the mid-1990s, though, the companies also began to focus on a powerful market force: the handful of state officials who govern prescribing for large
public systems like state mental hospitals, prisons, and government-funded clinics.

One way drug companies have worked to influence prescribing practices of these public institutions is by funding the implementation of guidelines, or algorithms, that spell out which drugs should be used for different psychiatric conditions, much as other algorithms guide the treatment of diabetes or heart disease. The effort began in the mid-1990s with the creation of TMAP-the Texas Medication Algorithm Project. Put simply, the algorithm called for the newest, most expensive medications to be used first
in the treatment of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression in adults. Subsequently, the state began developing CMAP, a children's algorithm that is not yet codified by the state legislature. At least nine states have since adopted guidelines similar to TMAP. One such state, Pennsylvania, has been sued by two of its own investigators who claim they were fired after exposing industry's undue influence over state prescribing practices and the resulting inappropriate medicating of patients, particularly children.

Thanks in part to such marketing strategies, sales of the new atypical antipsychotics have soared. Unlike antidepressants-which have been marketed to huge audiences almost as lifestyle drugs-antipsychotics are aimed at a small but growing market: schizophrenics and people with bipolar disorder. Atypicals are profitable because they are as much as 10 times more expensive than the old antipsychotics, such as Haldol. In 2004, atypical antipsychotics were the fourth-highest-grossing class of drugs in the United States, with sales totaling $8.8 billion-$2.4 billion of which was paid for by state Medicaid funds.

At a time when ethical questions are dogging the pharmaceutical industry and algorithm programs in Texas and Pennsylvania, President Bush's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health has lauded TMAP as a "model program" and called for the expanded use of screening programs like the one at Aliah Gleason's middle school. The question now is whose interests do these programs really
serve?

Rob Waters has written extensively on the use of psychiatric medication by children. Last year he revealed in the San Francisco Chronicle that the FDA suppressed an internal report linking antidepressants to an increased risk of suicide among children, a story that led to congressional hearings and warnings being issued for the drugs.

[BuzzKill]

//Do you listen to economists and talk of the stock market? You know where the safe investments are right now and the distant future? Medicine/Health Care/Mental Health Care. That's not an accident.//
No, it's 'cause the Boomers are getting grey and are often not happy about it.

Deb - this debate seems to have gotten off kilter.
I don't think Timoclea is in favor of the Bush plan to screen the nations school children; and I know I'm not.

The story about the girl you quote is appalling to any thinking person, I am sure. That this could happen is an outrage.

But saying there are people who benefit greatly from their psyche meds, who need them and should take them; is not tantamount to saying they should be forced on anyone in they way they were in the article.

And yes, I am aware of the debate about psychotics being monitored and "forced" to take their meds - but I don't see even that, as being nearly the same situation. Generally, in such cases there is a definite history of dangerous activity by the patient and a clear need for the medication to keep them and those around them safe.

Here in Louisville, we have a local case - Rodney Abernathy (not sure on the spelling) but he was a Paranoid schizophrenic who went off his meds and walked into a park and began beating himself in the head with a crow bar. The cops were called, and when he went after one of them with his crow bar, they all shot him. I think it was six cops - and they blew the dude away. Of corse I am outraged at the cops - I feel this lethal action was inexcusable - but the sad fact is, if the man had not gone off his meds, he'd be fine today.  

Another recent case here in town - Kid shot a cop in the head and then did the same to himself. The kid had stolen a truck and set it afire. The cops got called. The kid was in another vehicle which the cop pulled over - and the kid shot him - and then himself. The kid has a long history of beyond control behavior. His troubles began middle school, as they so often do. One thing after another for years. The courts just shuffled him along and the social workers did the same.  The community is all in an uproar b/c he wasn't in jail as they all feel he should have been (and he should have been) but I am more upset that this CLEARLY disturbed kid was never received any remotely adequate level of mental health care or treatment. I feel he most certainly could have been helped with is anger and his lack of impulse control - and yes it might have required medication. And yes, the medication might have had a side effect - but I am pretty dam sure it wouldn't have been as devastating as murder/suicide.

SO - the point being - errors are made in both directions. To much and to little mental health care and intervention.

Which is why I am so adamant - the patients and families MUST educate themselves and learn how to advocate effectively for good and appropriate mental health care.

[Deborah]

Karen, I appreciate your sweet 'peace keeper' nature.

***No, it's 'cause the Boomers are getting grey and are often not happy about it.

Well, that is the party line. Does it fit with your perception of reality?

***Deb - this debate seems to have gotten off kilter. I don't think Timoclea is in favor of the Bush plan to screen the nations school children; and I know I'm not.

Have you asked? As I recall she thought it was a good idea, unless she has changed her mind.

***The story about the girl you quote is appalling to any thinking person, I am sure. That this could happen is an outrage.

It happens more often than you can imagine. And I feel certain we will see more of it in the future. I hear your good intentions. And.... from an article, ?TeenScreen is nothing but an industry-invented scheme to recruit the nation's 52 million school children as new customers. When it comes to paying for these drugs, if parents can't afford to, government funds are already set up to do it.? [Not where I want MY tax dollars going.]
Pediatrician, Dr Karen Effrem has said, "The treatment of choice mandated under TMAP guidelines are the most expensive, profit-enhancers.
TMAP is a blatant profit-enhancing scheme that is already bankrupting Medicaid budgets." (For links to reports from Massachusetts, Florida, Texas, and Illinois, visit http://www.ahrp.org)
Allen Jones, a former investigator in the Pennsylvania Office of Inspector General and the Bureau of Special Investigations, and now a
federal whistleblower who monitors mental health initiatives country-wide, worked in Penn when the drug companies bought off public officials and pushed TMAP into public institutions in that state. He know exactly how the scheme works and says, "The pharmaceutical industry is gaining back door access to all of our children by compromising key decision makers," he says.
Dr Peter Weiden, who was a member of the original panel that created the TMAP, now has second thoughts about how and why the list was created. He now admits that the guidelines were based on "opinions, not data" and says the funding sources undermine the credibility of the drug schedule since "most of the guideline's authors have received support from the pharmaceutical industry," according to British Medical Journal.
In addition to SSRI antidepressants being dangerous, these expensive drugs are a rip-off because studies have shown they do not even work on children The August 10, 2004 Washington Post, reported, "Two-thirds of the trials conducted by drug manufacturers found that the medications performed no better than sugar pills, but details of the negative trials were kept from doctors and parents."
Recent studies show they cause suicide. The 2005 American Hospital Formulary Service Drug Information, reports the "FDA ... has determined that antidepressants increase the risk of  suicidal thinking and behavior in children and adolescents with major depressive and other psychiatric disorders," and "a causal relationship to antidepressants has been established in pediatric patients."
The Service also reports a study of over 4,400 children ... revealed a greater risk of suicidal behavior or thinking ... during the first few
months of treatment. The average risk was 4% among children receiving antidepressant drugs ... whereas those receiving placebo had a 2% risk. In other words, those on antidepressants were at "twice the risk."
The SRRIs have other serious side effects as well. For instance, a review of Prozac's adverse reactions by the University of Pittsburgh, found that 23% of children (8-18) who were prescribed Prozac suffered mania or manic symptoms and another 19% became aggressive and hostile, and exhibited grinding anger and short tempers.
This article presents a good history of Teen Screen. More here:
http://www.sierratimes.com/05/04/17/12_ ... _36763.htm

***But saying there are people who benefit greatly from their psyche meds, who need them and should take them; is not tantamount to saying they should be forced on anyone in they way they were in the article.

Did I say or implied that? They are already  forced on people everyday. Did you happen to read the story I posted a while back ?Crazy Until Proven Sane?  It?s lengthy, but a good read:
http://psychrights.org/Stories/CrazyUntilProvenSane.pdf

So, people need to take their drugs to avoid being killed by the police? Why aren?t the police equipped with tranquilizer dart guns? That would just be too humane I suppose. Bullets are their only course of action? And I (hypothetically) should drug myself in order to avoid the risk of being killed by the police? Poison myself to keep from getting shot. No thanks, I'll try a different approach.

Yeh, if he?d taken his meds he MIGHT be alive today. If he?d gotten ?alternative? mental health treatment, he MIGHT also be alive.
This discussion gets ?off kilter: because most people can?t or won?t consider the possibility that people can deal with their emotional issues with anything other than drugs.

As for the kid, there are clearly many things the kid didn?t get. And if he?d been medicated he MIGHT have killed 20 people at his school and/or committed suicide. Those side-effects are pretty damn risky, in and of themselves.

?Mental Health Intervention/Drugs? is no more a ?solution? to peoples? problems than programs are. They are a band-aid and can cause a worse outcome in many cases.

I appreciate your position, but I feel people should be ?fully informed and educated? and have the freedom to choose.

[BuzzKill]

But not yet :wink:

Sweet peace keeping nature?  Well, I am fairly certain there are many a one who would disagree with you there.

//Well, that is the party line. Does it fit with your perception of reality? //

Yes. It IS reality. There are other realities at play, I don't doubt - but this IS a major factor.

//Have you asked? As I recall she thought it was a good idea, unless she has changed her mind.//

No, but I don't recall ever reading that she thought this was a good idea. I could easily have missed it I guess. If I miss represented her point of view - then my apologies to her - and I would in that case disagree - as I do not approve in the least with this screen them all skeem.

//So, people need to take their drugs to avoid being killed by the police? Why aren?t the police equipped with tranquilizer dart guns? //

Well of corse they should not have shot the man! Its an outrage and most folks around here think so. But still, it happened, and it happened partly b/c the man went off meds he very much needed to be on. There are countless such examples of tragedy due to very ill mental patients not taking their meds. I just used the ones I know of from my home town.

//I appreciate your position, but I feel people should be ?fully informed and educated? and have the freedom to choose. //

Couldn't agree more.

I have read the articles, but I'll look them over again. I often miss stuff when reading off a computer screen. I don't know why. . .

[Anonymous]

Again, if you have the mental illness equivalent of "the sniffles"---by which I mean anything that does not involve being psychotic or seriously suicidal---feel free as all hell to not take meds, not give your kids meds, tell other people with the sniffles they shouldn't take meds.  Fine.  Fine and Dandy---so don't come in talking to be about ODD or CD, because that's what's known in logical argument as a STRAW MAN.

If a patient is psychotic or seriously suicidal, and it is not just an ephemeral reaction of a mostly normal or mostly eccentric person to an abnormal situation  (that is, it *is* the result of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression), then that patient needs psychiatric meds or other major conventional medical intervention to stabilize that patient.

Once the patient is stable, if you have a nonviolent patient that's in a period of spontaneous remission and doesn't want to take the drugs until the symptoms come back, as long as that patient is having his condition followed closely by his pdoc, fine.

I *do* think people should be screened nationally for major mental illness.  (Not "the sniffles")

I think that you thinking that the present administration could not possibly want the screening to prevent people from suffering and dying--or killing others--from major mental illnesses when many of those deaths are preventable with treatment----I think you thinking there must be some sinister motivation is paranoid as all hell.

I'm not in denial, you're freakin' paranoid.

If it's put in place and it's abused, and they don't modify it to wipe out the abuse while keeping the saving lives part, fine.  THEN I'll want it eliminated.

But your assumption that someone you don't agree with politically *must* have sinister motives and anyone who *doesn't* "see that" is "in denial" is absolutely outrageously paranoid.

Who the hell gave you the magic crystal ball to look in someone else's brain and tell us what his motivations are?  What, does he have 666 tattooed under his hair line and you know his barber?  Did you find the name change records and he was really born "Damien Thorne"?  

I think *mentally competent* people should have the right to informed consent.  I think people who are not mentally competent should be appointed a guardian ad litem, or have their next of kin serve as such, or whoever they specified in a living will serve as such and make those decisions when and only when the patient is mentally incapacitated---and I mean that *genuinely*, not playing fast and loose with defining competent people as mentally incompetent for some nefarious purpose known only to you.  I think people who have a history of violence and are psychotic should be subject to outpatient commitment on a DOTS plan where a responsible person--legally responsible--watches them take their meds at the appropriate times.

I think anyone accused of being mentally incompetent should have the *right* to a firm diagnosis and then a SPECT scan, which their insurance (or the government if they're uninsured) should have to pay for.  They should then have the right for their attorney, or one appointed for them if they cannot afford one (where the attorney has to presume the patient *is* mentally competent and try to prove it) to use the SPECT results to challenge the diagnosis as incompatible with those results.

SPECT may not be able to perfectly give you a diagnosis without accompanying accounts of the patient's behavior and history and family history, but SPECT can sure as hell rule out a lot of problems if someone mostly normal or even eccentric as hell is being accused of being incompetent when they aren't, or can provide data supporting the patient's claim when someone is claiming the patient is violent and they aren't.

If you are normal and being accused of being loopy for nefarious purposes---SPECT will show it.

On the other hand, if you *think* you're normal and your SPECT picture has either swiss cheese holes all over the brain on the fluffy cloud brain picture, or big patches of red all around the temporal and frontal lobes (or especially huge red blotches in "bad" parts of the limbic system) on the red line and blue line picture, then to hell with thinking you're normal, if your scan looks like that, and they didn't take it until *after* people made a credible allegation that you're mentally incompetent--they're right, you're wrong, take the damned drugs.

I also don't have a problem at all with follow-up scans, if you really don't like taking the drugs, if your lawyer can make a credible case that they're not working anyway.

The algorithms for using SPECT to diagnose exactly what's wrong with a patient's brain and the combined data for telling which drugs are most likely to help and not harm will only get better and better from here.

You think I'm in denial, I think you're paranoid.

I emphatically do not believe that a schizophrenic or bipolar patient with a personal history of violence, who is actively psychotic, should be allowed to walk around loose in society off his meds.  And I just don't care if you like that or not, and I don't care if he or she consents or not.

There are too many murder-suicides that happen each year for me to think people with major mental illnesses who are actively suicidal should be running around loose unmedicated, either.

The only right, in those two cases, to "consent" that I think the patient should have is the right to stay in a locked mental ward rather than taking the meds if that's his or her preference.

Innocent people who are not violently ill shouldn't have to die just because you're paranoid about you or someone else getting forcibly medicated for the sniffles.

That's not a popular position, but it's mine, and I stand by it.

Timoclea

[Deborah]

Tim,

I don't think you're in denial. I think you are uneducated or miseducated or differently educated.
Do you think doctors who advocate alternative have sinister motives? Do you think they want their 'mentally ill' patients to suffer? Do you think doctors like Ty Colbert, who refutes the efficacy of SPECT scans, has sinister motives?
http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/issues/is-siss.htm
What might they be?
Bush etal has far more to gain from mental health screening than doctors promoting alternatives.
And if it weren't so late I could provide a lengthy list of 'sinister' things the government has done that were not pro-human or pro-life. Including those who will benefit from the mass screening of women and children through public schools.
Paranoid.  :lol:

[Timoclea]

I think different people disagree about things even when they've researched them in good conscience.

The paranoid denial on your part where I have a problem with you on this issue is that you don't appear willing to admit to other people (hell, maybe you don't admit it to yourself) that out of all the people who have done a great deal of background literature research and/or actual research on this subject and have looked into it in great depth in good conscience----out of all those people, your position is an extreme minority position.

I don't know if: you know that and just don't like to admit it because it doesn't help the case you make trying to persuade others;

OR

you don't even admit to yourself, or maybe *can't* even admit to yourself, that you're in that extremely small proportional minority of opinion on this subject.

See, because there are very few people discussing this on Fornits, and because Fornits is not a statistical sample of people anyway, out of the group of people here that really care about this issue, when you argue with me it can look to observers like opinion is pretty evenly divided across the country and the industrialized world.

It's not.

I would be frankly amazed if even 5% of people with *at least* an undergraduate degree in psychology, or biology, or nursing, or pre-med, or any other related field, who had read enough to form an opinion on mental illness and pharmacology, shared your opinion *on the major mental illnesses and the known effective treatments for them*.

As you whittled the numbers down to people whose degrees were more and more related to brain physiology and human behavior and abnormal psychology, the percentage of people who agree with you would shrink even further.

The more people know about the human brain, the less of them agree with you.

You can *always*, in any field, find *someone* with pretty credentials who's a flake and will say whatever it is that you want to hear.

That disregards the huge majority of people with equally pretty credentials in the same field who are all basically saying the same or very similar things, and who won't necessarily call your guy with pretty credentials a flake flat out (because calling a colleague, however strange, a flake would lack proper scientific dignity), but they will tell you that his position is an extreme minority position in the field.

You have a very small minority of people with pretty credentials telling you what you want to hear on this subject, but they're flakes.

Occasionally in scientific history a flake has been right about something and not been a flake but been a genius.  However, the flakes who were actually geniuses and not just plain flakes have been less than one percent of the people who were called flakes because they REALLY WERE FLAKES.

You have no idea how polite I am usually when I say that your collection of flakes might possibly be right, barely possibly, no matter how on the fringe your "experts" are.

But frankly, they're flakes.  And by listening to what you want to hear instead of the mainstream, on this subject, you're a flake, too.

You're fine and frequently insightful on most other subjects, but on this one, you're a flat-out flake.

I think program survivors sometimes *feel* like flakes against the rest of the world because *in the programs* they were outnumbered by people drinking the kool-aid.

The *truth* is that the dissident (from the program) survivors on Fornits are the ones in line with mainstream society's opinions on the proper care and treatment of children---mainstream society just, for the most part, has no idea what's happening in the programs behind closed doors.  The survivors are mainstream in a "pool" of flaky program people that tries very hard to make the dissidents and survivors think they're flakes and that they're abnormal.  It's the program people who are the flakes.

I don't call all people with minority opinions flakes.

I've got some minority opinions myself.

The difference between having a minority opinion and being a flake is someone who's *NOT* a flake can and will admit that their opinion on a subject is in the minority----and can and will admit approximately how small of a minority their opinion is.

Maybe I missed it, but I've never seen you admit that your position is a very small minority position among people with college-level education about human biology, brain biology, or abnormal behavior.

That's what makes you a flake.  Not that you have a minority opinion, but that you're so reluctant to admit that it *is* a minority opinion, and how small that minority is among people with a college level amount of mainstream education in related fields.

I'm not saying those people can't *also* have all kinds of in-depth study of certain minority opinions and what they're based on---I'm saying among people with enough basic mainstream education to know their ass from a hole in the ground to even begin to determine what's a reasonably scientifically supported position and what's wishful thinking or personal prejudice.

If you have even half a clue how much of a minority position yours is on this subject, I've never seen you admit it.

"differently educated"----if you call personal prejudice that ignores the vast body of data "educated" I suppose your stuff would qualify as educated, but not otherwise.

There's nothing at all wrong with having a minority opinion.

There's everything in the world wrong with, when you expound that opinion to others, you try to pretend it's *NOT* a minority opinion---or that your minority is a larger percentage of educated opinion than it is.

I'll go you one further----among all people who graduated with an undergraduate degree from *any* accredited science and engineering college or university *OR* with any science, math, or engineering degree from *any* accredited college or university----among all those people, your opinion is *still* a very tiny minority.

A mark of being a flake is when you discount the overwhelming majority of other people educated in related fields as "miseducated" or discount their opinions in computing whether your opinion is a minority opinion or not.

It doesn't matter what size group you use----from all those with accredited science, math or engineering undergraduate degrees, down through every succeedingly smaller filter until we get to people with graduate degrees in psychology, psychiatry, or neurology-----it doesn't matter what size filter you use----people with enough education to find their ass with both hands very largely just don't agree with your position.

And you can't admit that.

And that's what makes you, on this subject, a flake.

Timoclea

There is not a "fragment" in all nature, for every relative fragment of one thing is a full harmonious unit in itself.
-- John Muir