College Suicide Story is a Big Pharma Infomercial - Shame on TIME Magazine

[Guest guest]

SSRI-Research@

Sun, 21 May 2006 03:29:46 -0000

[sSRI-Research] Shame on TIME Magazine--College Suicide Story

is a Big Pharma Infomercial

 

 

 

 

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION (AHRP)

Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability

http://www.ahrp.org/cms/

 

FYI

 

A feature article in the current issue of TIME Magazine, " When

Colleges Go On Suicide Watch " is a blatant example of an " infomercial "

that extends pharmaceutical compay advertising pages into the news

pages in TIME magazine. The article is passed off as a news report

with the byline of two TIME reporters-Julie Raw and Kathleen

Kingsbury--but the misinformation and slant is clearly a transcription

of psychotropic drug company advertising copy.

 

TIME reports that " student suicides total some 1,100 a year

nationwide, making suicide the second leading cause of death among

college students, after motor-vehicle accidents. " [No source is

provided for this statistic.]

 

But according to a 10-year research study examining suicide rates at

12 Midwestern campuses, " Big Ten Student Suicide Study " (Silverman et

al., 1997) found " College students are far less likely to kill

themselves than are nonstudent peers, according to a 10-year research

study examining suicide rates at 12 Midwestern campuses. "

 

The " overall student suicide rate of 7.5 per 100,000, compared to the

national average of 15 per 100,000 in a sample matched for age, race

and gender. " College students are far less likely to kill themselves

than are nonstudent peers, . "

 

See, Psychiatric Times http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/p021001a.html

 

TIME further reports, " the number of students diagnosed as mentally

fragile appears to be rising. The 2005 National Survey of Counselings, conducted by the University of Pittsburgh, found that 95%

of directors reported an increase in the number of freshmen who arrive

on campus already taking psychiatric medicines. "

 

These TIME reporters apparently followed the pharmaceutical industry

script: like industry, they failed to mention in their " news report "

the very crucial fact that antidepressants-whose widespread use by

teens is matter of concern and dismay-carry the strongest FDA-mandated

black box warnings disclosing that evidence shows that these drugs

increase the risk of suicide.

 

The article quotes Joanna Locke, a program officer at the Jed

Foundation, as if she were an objective, medical authority: " A lot of

students who may not have gone to college five years ago are able to

attend today because their illness has been recognized earlier and

they are on medication. "

 

Readers are told that " the Jed Foundation is a New York City--based

college suicide-prevention and outreach program. " By the way, the

suicide rate, 1,1000 a year, that TIME cites is the first claim on the

Jed Foundation website.

 

What TIME readers are NOT told is that the Jed Foundation,

established in 2000, is a pharmaceutical industry front.

 

Its co-founder, Philip Satow who " has more than 30 years of sales and

marketing experience in pharmaceuticals at Forest Laboratories, Inc.

and Pfizer, Inc. " " He is both the former President of Forest

Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Executive Vice President of Forest

Laboratories, Inc., its parent. He is currently a Director of Forest

Laboratories and a Director of Crucell, Inc., a publicly traded Dutch

biotech company. Phil is a past President of the Columbia College

Alumni Association and a member of the Board of Visitors. "

See: http://jedfoundation.org/articles/PhilSatow.pdf

 

In 2003, Phillip Satow founded JDS Pharmaceuticals whose portfolio now

includes LITHOBIDR, the leading brand of sustained release lithium.

 

" JDS sought to enter the central nervous system market with a proven

product, and thus approached Solvay Pharmaceuticals to purchase

LITHOBIDR. Solvay Pharmaceuticals believed the transfer of LITHOBIDR

to JDS Pharmaceuticals offered the best solution to healthcare

providers and patients who continue to seek LITHOBIDR.

 

See: http://salesandmarketingnetwork.com/news_release.php?

ID= 01859 & key==Pfizer

 

JED serves as a marketing launching pad for psychotropic drug

manufacturers-all of whom serve on JED's Business Council-for " Suicide

prevention " campaigns in America's colleges and universities: " Since

its inception in 2000, The Jed Foundation has become the leading

organization focusing exclusively on college student mental health and

suicide prevention. "

 

The JED board of directors and medical advisory board include

leaders in academic psychiatry who are financially intertwined with

this industry. These are the promoters of mental screening and the

increased use of psychotropic drugs.

 

Although there is absolutely no evidence that suicide can be

prevented by mental health professionals who rely almost exclusively

on drugs whose adverse effects-whether prescribed for depression,

anxiety (personal or social), panic attacks, mood swings, or for

non-psychiatric off-label uses, have consistently shown that they are

more likely to increase the risk of suicide than placebo. And there is

little evidence that the drugs offer any clinically significant benefit.

 

The latest acknowledgment about the increased risk of drug-induced

suicide attempts was by GlaxoSmith Kline, makers of the

antidepressant, Paxil (paroxetine): In a letter to doctors GSK

acknowledged: " patients on the drug may experience " persistently

worse " depression, or may " experience emergent suicidality or symptoms

that might be precursors to worsening depression or

suicidality " and " these symptoms " may be " severe, abrupt in onset, or

were not part of the patient's presenting symptoms. "

 

GSK advises doctors: " " Consideration should be given to changing the

therapeutic regimen, including possibly discontinuing the medication. "

See: http://www.gsk.com/media/paroxetine/adult_hcp_letter.pdf . For an

analysis of the import of GSK's acknowledgement, see :

http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/166/28/

 

The lack of credibility of the information posted on the JED website

is demonstrated by its failure to refer to any of the documented

evidence showing the medication-induced suicide risk. In fact, the JED

website misleads parents and individuals seeking accurate information

by linking to an out dated booklet published by the National Institute

of Mental Health in 2000, BEFORE the black box warnings on

antidepressant labels were mandated.

 

The central figure in the TIME story is a 20-year old student at

Cornell University who " struggled with depression and anorexia since

the sixth grade. " We are not informed whether she had been prescribed

any drugs. We are told she enrolled in a " double major in German and

neurobiology. " Clearly such a load of school work put her under a

great deal of unnecessary stress. Not surprisingly, the young woman

couldn't take the pressure: " the stress was so bad that I knew if I

stayed at Cornell one more week, I would kill myself. "

 

The pharmaceutical industry has used Jed Satow's suicide to penetrate

college campuses for the purpose of expanding psychotropic drug

sales. Who, other than pharmaceutical executives would consider

exploiting the suicide of a son for commercial purposes? JED actively

engages in " disease mongering " through its online information

" resource center " ULifeline. " Since its inception, ULifeline and The

Jed Foundation have reached millions of parents, students,

administrators...The Jed Foundation provides ULifeline to all colleges

and universities free of charge, regardless of the size or

type of institution. Currently, more than 530 colleges and

universities participate in the ULifeline Network. "

 

A small note acknowledges: " The Initiative is made possible through

educational grants from AstraZeneca, Bristol-Meyers Squibb Company,

The E.H.A. Foundation, Eli Lilly and Company, Forest Laboratories,

Inc., GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer Inc, and Wyeth. "

 

See: http://www.ulifeline.org/page/main/Home.html

 

TIME magazine failed to reveal ANY of those Pharma connections.

 

 

We list the JED Business Council; its Board of Directors; ULifeline

Board; and Medical Advisory Board after the TIME story.

See: http://www.jedfoundation.org/documents/2005AnnualReport.pdf

 

 

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav

212-595-8974

veracare

 

http://www.time.com/time

TIME MAGAZINE

Sunday, May 14, 2006

 

When Colleges Go On Suicide Watch

Schools are getting sued for doing too little--and too much--to help

mentally fragile students

 

By JULIE RAWE, KATHLEEN KINGSBURY

 

Anne Giedinghagen wanted desperately to stay in school. Having

struggled with depression and anorexia since the sixth grade, the

rail-thin Cornell junior was meeting regularly with a therapist at the

university's counseling center in Ithaca, N.Y. But late last fall,

when she told her therapist about her increasingly strong urge to kill

herself, Giedinghagen received an ultimatum from the school she loved

so much: she had to get better or she would have to leave. So she did

what any crafty 20-year-old would do. She tried to carve out a third

option--feigning improvement by, as she put it,

acting " as normal as I could. " When she agreed to spend her winter

break at a psychiatric hospital, the university stopped threatening to

kick her out. But afterward, says Giedinghagen, " I felt like I had to

hide how I was doing from my doctor, my counselor, my nutritionist, so

that I could stay. "

 

Giedinghagen is one of thousands of troubled college students who

each year are forced to make such stark choices. With two recent court

rulings holding that college administrators may be held partly

responsible for student suicides--which total some 1,100 a year

nationwide, making suicide the second leading cause of death among

college students, after motor-vehicle accidents--many universities

have hastily adopted mandatory-leave policies in an effort to reduce

the risk of self-inflicted, on-campus deaths. But a tragic result, say

psychiatrists and student advocates, is that emotionally

distressed students may be less willing to come forward and get the

professional help they need.

 

Another unintended consequence: hypervigilant colleges are getting

sued by students who allege they are being discriminated against for

being mentally unstable. The U.S. Department of Education last year

warned at least a handful of schools that receive federal aid that the

Americans with Disabilities Act protects people with mental problems.

Several students who were suspended after threatening to commit

suicide are in the process of suing their schools; others have been

offered settlements before their cases reached the courts. In a sign

of just how flummoxed the world of higher education has become over

the issue of suicide, United Educators, which insures more than 1,100

colleges and secondary schools, issued a bulletin

last month noting that when dealing with emotionally distressed

students, schools are left " with the quandary of being sued no matter

what they do. "

 

That is particularly alarming since the number of students diagnosed

as mentally fragile appears to be rising. The 2005 National Survey of

Counseling Directors, conducted by the University of Pittsburgh,

found that 95% of directors reported an increase in the number of

freshmen who arrive on campus already taking psychiatric medicines. " A

lot of students who may not have gone to college five years ago are

able to attend today because their illness has been recognized earlier

and they are on medication, " says Joanna Locke, a program officer at

the Jed Foundation, a New York City--based college suicide-prevention

and outreach program.

 

The pressure to inoculate schools from legal liability has sometimes

led them to come across as shockingly insensitive. In a case study of

apparent hamhandedness, Jordan Nott had spent less than 48 hours in

the psychiatric ward he checked himself into, in October 2004, when he

received a terse letter from George Washington University informing

the sophomore that he had been suspended for being a danger to himself

and others. " It was a huge slap in the face, " says Nott, 20. " They

don't hand out this letter that says, 'We want you to get help.' What

it says is, 'You've been suspended; you've been

barred from campus.' " The letter went on to explain that if he

returned to campus, he would be arrested. Rather than contest the

suspension, he switched schools and is now suing for compensatory

damages. A spokeswoman for G.W.U. says that because Nott's suspension

fell within the school's disciplinary system, the wording of that

letter may have seemed impersonal. However, she stresses, " the goal

here was to protect a life. "

 

But how, exactly, does yanking a kid out of college count as

protection? " A lot of suicidal people don't just kill themselves, "

says Peter Lake, a higher-education law professor at Stetson

University in Deland, Fla. " They also can hurt others, even if it's

unintentionally. " Schools steadfastly reserve the right not to let one

person's disturbing behavior disrupt anyone else's educational

experience. And they argue that their mandatory-leave

policy can force emotionally distressed students to get the best

possible help. Gary Pavela, a judicial-policy expert at the University

of Maryland and author of a book on student suicide, says the approach

is designed for " getting rid of troubled kids, getting them into the

hands of others, as soon as possible. "

 

Litigious parents are also to blame for the tough line. After

Elizabeth Shin died in 2000 in a dorm-room fire at M.I.T. within hours

of threatening to kill herself, the sophomore's parents filed a $27

million lawsuit against her psychiatrists, as well as her house master

and a dean of student life, for failing to take adequate precautions.

(They had scheduled an appointment to see her the following day.) When

a judge last year refused to throw out

the suit, alarm bells went off in administrative offices across the

country. " To hold a university liable for simply trying to help a

student is extraordinary, " says Nelson Roth, Cornell's deputy

university counsel, explaining why the school joined six others in

supporting M.I.T. in the case. Shin's death was a tragedy, Roth says,

" but not every tragedy warrants a lawsuit. "

 

Although the Shins settled last month for an undisclosed amount--and

publicly admitted that their daughter's death appeared to be

accidental--the case has had a chilling effect on student-services

professionals and has led to more frequent use of emergency-leave

policies. But after several students complained about getting

summarily booted, the Department of Education's Office for Civil

Rights started informing schools that a person should be

considered a direct threat only when there is " a high probability of

substantial harm and not just a slightly increased, speculative or

remote risk. " In other words, there needs to be a detailed evaluation

and at least some opportunity for students to make a case for why they

should be allowed to stay.

 

Many schools are trying to emulate the University of Illinois, which

requires students who express suicidal thoughts to see a counselor

for four sessions if they want to remain in school. More than 1,800

students have gone through the program since it was launched in the

early '80s, and none have committed suicide. Only one participant was

forced to leave.

 

While Illinois rarely advocates taking time off from school, Cornell

pushes a hundred or so of its students each year to take a voluntary

medical leave that allows them not only to get help but also to

de-stress. In Giedinghagen's case, it didn't take long for her to

realize her fake-it-till-you-make-it strategy wasn't working. By

April, she says, " the stress was so bad that I knew if I stayed at

Cornell one more week, I would kill myself. " After lengthy discussions

with her therapists, the double major in German and neurobiology

agreed to head home last month to Kansas City, Mo., with plans to

enter a psychiatric hospital. Five weeks later,

she's disappointed that Cornell hasn't made any follow-up calls to

see how she's doing.

 

But Cornell's deputy counsel Roth has an explanation: " Once the

student is gone or goes home, the individual becomes the

responsibility of parents. Our obligation ends. "

 

@Copyright Time, Inc

 

 

See: http://www.jedfoundation.org/documents/2005AnnualReport.pdf

 

The JED Foundation Business Council

 

Michelle Bartenbach

Associate Product Manager, Bifeprunox

Neuroscience US Marketing

Solvay Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

 

Trey Benson

Senior Product Manager, Depokote

Neuroscience Marketing

Abbott Laboratories

Stephen Caulfield

Chairman

The Chickering Group

 

Meg Columbia-Walsh

Managing Director

Faith Popcorn's BrainReserve

 

Donald F. Foy, Jr.

Public Affairs Liaison

Eli Lilly and Company

 

Theresa Frangiosa, Global Commercial Leader

Johnson & Johnson, Pharmaceuticals Group Strategic Marketing

 

Mark Friedlander

National Associate Medical Director

Aetna Behavioral Health

 

Robert Goodman

Sales Manager, Connecticut

Pfizer Inc.

 

Catherine Grimes

Associate Director - Integrated Health

Bristol-Myers Squibb

 

Michael Heffernan

President

Collegium Pharmaceutical, Inc.

 

Dennis Langer, MD, JD

President

Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, Inc.

 

John MacPhee

Vice President, Branded Sales and Marketing

Par Pharmaceutical

 

Katherine Rielly-Gauvin

VP Marketing

Janssen Pharmaceutica

 

Gerard Schmitt

Product Director, Effexor XR Marketing Team

Wyeth Pharmaceuticals

 

Patrick Toalson, R.Ph., BCPP

Senior Neuroscience Medical Associations Liaison

Eli Lilly & Company

 

Suneet Varma

Vice President & Global Business Manager

Wyeth Pharmaceuticals

 

Steven Vorrius

Senior Director, CNS & Specialty Marketing

Organon Pharmaceuticals. USA, Inc.

 

Lynn O'Connor Vos

CEO and President

Grey Healthcare Group, Inc.

 

Douglas Young

Senior Director, Neuroscience Marketing

Bristol-Myers Squibb

 

JED FOUNDATION Board of Directors

 

Jonathan Cole, PhD

John Mitchell Mason Professor of the University, Provost and

Dean of Faculties, Emeritus, Columbia University

 

Ron Gibori, ULifelineT

The Jed Foundation

 

Martin B. Keller, MD

Chairman, Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior

Brown University, Butler Hospital

 

Larry Lieberman

Chief Marketing Officer

Virgin Comics, LLC

 

Conrad Lung

President

Sunnex, Inc.

 

Marc Mazur

Business & Financial Consultant

 

Richard S. Pechter

Chairman (retired)

Donaldson, Lufkin, Jenrette Financial Services Group

 

*Michael S. Satow

Chief Operating Officer

*JDS Pharmaceuticals, LLC

 

*Phillip M. Satow

Co-founder

The Jed Foundation

 

Lynn O'Connor Vos

Chief Executive Officer

Grey Healthcare Group

 

 

Medical Advisory Board

 

David Brent, MD

Academic Chief, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic

 

Jonathan Cole, PhD

John Mitchell Mason Professor of the University, Provost and

Dean of Faculties, Emeritus, Columbia University

 

Martin B. Keller, MD

Chairman, Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior

Brown University, Butler Hospital

 

Ronald C. Kessler, PhD

Professor of Health Care Policy

Harvard Medical School

 

Ranga K. Krishnan, MD

Chairman, Department of Psychiatry

Duke University Medical Center

 

Jane Pearson, PhD

Chair, Suicide Research Consortium

National Institute of Mental Health

 

David Shaffer, MD

Irving Phillips Professor of Child Psychiatry, Department of Child Psychiatry

Columbia University/New York State Psychiatric Institute

 

Morton Silverman, MD

Senior Advisor

National Suicide Prevention Technical Resource Center

 

 

ULifeline Board

 

Greg Eells

Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS)

Cornell University

 

Dan L. Jones, Ph.D.

Counseling and Psychological Services Center

Appalachian State University

 

Amy Katzenberg

VP, Client Services

Avenue-e Health Strategies

 

Ben Locke, Ph.D.

Assistant Director, Research and Technology

Center for Counseling and Psychological Services

Penn State University

 

Jon McCarus

VP, Business Development

Grey Alliance

 

Glenn Morgan

Chief of Operations

Interactive Factory

 

Jon Williams

Chief Technology Officer

Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions

 

 

 

Drug-Free School Zone? Just Say NO to Prozac for Children.