OT? PBS's Medicated Child kind of crappy

[Guest guest]

I suspected it was going to be way too diplomatic when I didn't see

many of the main voices in the psychiatric reform featured as the

series of " experts " . Turned out to be true. Sure the show made the

correlation between suicide and SSRIs, but the program itself

provided false information and did not offer dissent to these

assumptions. That dissent would have been so easy to find but those

people were all noticeably missing from the program. Instead there

were a lot of NIMH and FDA folks just unquestioningly asserting the

bogus message that some kids " need " these drugs. Oh, " some need them

but for others they're not effective " .

Mental illness isn't caused by pharmaceutical deprivation.

For another thing, the suicide rate spiked among teens just prior to

the placement of the black box warnings on SSRIs, though the voice-

over asserted the reverse. The show lied, in other words. Secondly,

the increased uptake of antipsychotics was due to multiple factors,

not just a matter of the poor shrinks having to give kids something

else because their poor parents were scared off of SSRIs by the mean

black boxes, which is how the PBS doc characterizes it.

In fact, aside from fresh child market approvals (or the promise of

them) spurring on unprecedentedly aggressive marketing campaigns by

the drug companies for antipsychotics, the increase in antipsychotic

prescriptions for children is MOSTLY due to side effects of

antidepressants and stimulants, which both cause mania, which is then

diagnosed as bipolar disorder. And--tada-- you have polypharmacy in a

nutshell: give one drug then diagnose a " comorbid disorder " because

of the side effects of the first drug. Give another drug, dx

another " comorbid disorder " from the second drug's side effects> Then

never blame the drugs for any of it. In fact, thank the drugs

for " uncovering " the previously " invisible " disorders. Ugh.

And then of course there's the use of antipsychotics to treat vaccine

side effects, including autism (all the big marketing guns are aimed

right at our kids), which in a sense is also polypharmacy. I think

we're all more than aware that vaccine toxins like mercury cause

irritability and erratic behavior at the very least, which can easily

be diagnosed from a slew of meaningless DSM entries signifying

surface behavior: BP, ADHD, conduct disorder, reactive attachment

disorder, bla bla bla. This has been known about metals for

centuries. I didn't expect the show to mention this, but I didn't

expect it to undercut the important potential message with a lot of

the usual pharma disinformation.

Diplomacy isn't always a good thing. I suppose that in film making,

like getting political candidacy, sometimes you've got to lick a few

of the wrong hands. Maybe the film maker had to make concessions just

to pound home the message that these drugs increase risk of suicide

and diabetes, etc.. I'm just tired of the luke warm half truth on all

counts.