[NYAPRS Enews] HP: Gottstein Protects America's Children w Psychiatric Disabilities

[Matt Canuteson]

A Hero Protects America's Children from Psychiatric Abuse

Dr. Peter Breggin Huffington Post February 4th 2009


Alaska attorney Jim Gottstein has taken the bull by the horns. It's a
bull of many terrifying shapes and forms. First and foremost, it is the
raging bull of the Psychopharmaceutical Complex that is goring America's
children. It's also the rampaging state government bull that everywhere
runs roughshod over the children in its custody and care. And then it's
the "bull" handed out by drug companies and organized psychiatry to
justify using drugs to suppress the behavior of children. 

Jim Gottstein's Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights.org) has
gone to court to stop the drugging of Alaska's children. Before they are
given psychiatric drugs, Jim wants the following standards to be met: 

(1) That proven psychosocial interventions have been exhausted. 

(2) That the benefits of the drug outweigh the risks.

(3) That those authorizing the prescriptions are fully informed about
the risks and benefits, and the alternatives. 

(4) That the children are thoroughly monitored, including for side
effects.


There is nothing radical or in your face about Jim's attempt to require
the state of Alaska to use science and common sense before drugging the
children in its care, usually for the mere convenience of their keepers.
A sane society would bar the state from giving psychiatric drugs to any
children under any circumstances. Their brains are growing--and should
not be made to develop in a toxic internal environment. Instead of
psychiatric drugs, they need what all children need--more and better
attention from caring adults, improved family life, and better
schooling. And they need protection from people who would give them
drugs! 

About fifteen years ago I spent more than a week as a consultant in
Alaska working with a marvelous wrap-around program for children and
youth. Alaska had been farming out its more difficult children to the
lower 48, as far away as Texas. Not only was that bad for the children
and their families, it was outrageously expensive. So Alaska developed a
program that aimed at the community wrapping its arms around the child
and the child's family, spending money to provide what the family needed
to raise its children decently--everything from job training and parent
training for the mothers and fathers to counseling and tutoring for the
children. Called the Alaska Youth Initiative (AYI), it worked incredibly
well and while costly it was a lot cheaper than institutionalizing these
very distressed and distressing children in Alaska or elsewhere. 

What happened to Alaska's wrap-around program? It went the way of all
good "mental health" programs--out of existence. Why? Because the
Psychopharmaceutical Complex provides a seemingly much quicker and
easier fix by suppressing the brains of our children. At every
opportunity, organized psychiatry rejects effective psychosocial and
educational programs in favor of psychiatric drugs and
institutionalization. This is because psychiatrists have no competence
and no monopoly over psychosocial and educational programs. Their power
and authority rests on the presumed necessity of diagnosing and
medicating children.

Attorney Gottstein points out that the state takes custody over children
who have already been abused and suffered at the hands of adults, and
then "saddles them with a mental illness diagnosis and drugs them. The
extent of this State inflicted child abuse is an emergency and should be
corrected immediately." The children, of course, are involuntary
patients. They need special protections from the state, not the
destruction of their mental faculties and brains with toxic agents.

Alaska is not an especially egregious offender. The state-run drugging
of children is endemic throughout the fifty states. Everywhere, most
children in state custody, including institutions and foster homes, are
given psychiatric diagnoses and drugs. 

Psychiatric diagnoses do not address the real problems of the children,
such as "abandoned or abused by parents," "victim of sexual and physical
abuse," "mishandled by state officials" or "ground down by poverty and
racism." Instead, diagnoses such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity
Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and Bipolar Disorder carry the
untrue implication that the problem lies within the child and even
within a defect inside the child's brain. This is a tragic betrayal of
young children whose problems always have their real origin within the
family or lack thereof in their lives, and with other adults and
institutions that have failed or abused them.

I have written extensively about the destructive effects of psychiatric
drugs on children, including brain cell death, shrinkage of brain
tissue, suppression of physical growth, and cognitive and emotional
impairments. My most detailed account can be found in my medical
textbook, Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry: Drugs, Electroshock
and the Psychopharmaceutical Complex, 2nd Edition (2008). You can find
many more books and articles about children on my website,
www.breggin.com. You can find additional information on Jim's website,
psychrights.org. 

Jim is a heroic warrior on behalf of some of America's most vulnerable
citizens. In 2006 he took the enormously risky road of making public
internal Eli Lilly documents, indicating among other things, that the
drug company was pushing its deadly "antipsychotic" drug Zyprexa
(olanzapine) for unapproved uses. These documents led to federal
criminal charges against Lilly and to settlements with the government
exceeding $1 billion in which Lilly plead guilty to promoting unapproved
uses. Lilly has paid yet another $1 billion plus in settlements in civil
lawsuits over its alleged cover up of Zyprexa causing fatal cases of
diabetes and pancreatitis--lawsuits that this writer participated in as
a medical expert against Lilly. Eli Lilly is so rich and powerful it can
spend billions of dollars to bail itself out of its own malfeasance and
still go on making a profit. 

Meanwhile, Zyprexa remains one of several so-called antipsychotics drugs
that are too often given without rational, ethical or scientific
justification to subdue children throughout the United States. Just this
week I received a phone call from parents struggling with the tragedy of
Zyprexa-induced tardive dyskinesia that has been inflicting agonizing
and disabling muscle spasms on their son. Most cases of tardive
dyskinesia are irreversible.

People were understandably horror-struck when they saw seal puppies
being clubbed to death in the wintry north of our continent. Now
consider what's happening to human pups in Alaska--and to our children
throughout America--when psychiatric drugs crush their brains. Quieter
and more subtle than beating baby seals to death, but deadly
nonetheless. 

Want to do a good deed? Jim Gottstein's nonprofit Law Project for
Psychiatric Rights can use your support. Jim has huge, wealthy enemies;
and poor and vulnerable constituents. He takes no salary for his reform
work. Get in touch with Jim. Lend his projects some help. America's
children will be grateful.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/a-hero-protects-americas_
b_164020.html.

 

 

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