[SSRI-Research] The Selling of Suicide for Profit

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[sSRI-Research] The Selling of Suicide for Profit

 

 

 

07/29/06

 

The Selling of Suicide for Profit

 

Jeanyne Wanner

 

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2006/07/29/the_selling_o\

f_suicide_for_profit

 

A child's suicide; an un-imaginable tragedy to any parent whose life

and love is so invested in that child! What greater, more disturbing

fear could there be than to consider that one's child would

deliberately take his or her own life? Such terrible sadness, what

senseless waste; what an opportunity for the psychiatric community!

 

[More:]

 

Though this remark would seem to fly in the teeth of everything

compassionate and feeling, not to mention civil, it is nevertheless

true. The suicides of this country's children are being promoted and

used to convince and coerce parents fearful for their child's life

that only psychiatry and pills can detect and save their children from

the likelihood of a self-inflicted demise.

 

Yes, this is a shocking statement and one that is, no doubt, either

uncomfortable or provoking to think about. But, if we care about our

children and their futures we must face the rather distasteful truth

that all is not as it appears with the reigning proponents of mental

health and " suicide screening. "

 

What these proponents suggest and what they seek to implement with

programs such as TeenScreen, as a solution to suicide, could be the

very demise of those they would purport to help.

 

In the field of medicine and pharmaceuticals there is a term known as

Disease Mongering - the medicalizing of normal conditions into

" diseases " for what many scientists agree are questionable motives by

the pharmaceutical companies. In an April 11, 2006 article by UPI

Senior Medical Correspondent Steve Mitchell, he reported, " The trend,

which is dubbed " disease mongering " by the experts, " turns healthy

people into patients, wastes precious resources, and causes iatrogenic

[caused by medical examination or treatment] harm, "

 

If we segue to the field of mental health, we will see that not only

is this practice seen, it is the norm. None of the over 370 " Mental

disorders " carefully detailed in the diagnostic and statistical manual

of psychiatry has any basis in science or fact. These " disorders " are

just categories of symptoms, voted on and given a name so as to label

individuals and bill insurance companies.

 

Yet, these psychiatric proponents of screening would have us believe

that the reason our children might eventually commit suicide is

because they are afflicted with one or more of these " disorders " which

can then be " detected " by screening, and which, according to

pharmaceutical psychiatry, most every one, is a result of a

biochemical imbalance in the brain. This theory is completely

unproven. Even the US Preventative Special Task Force found, in 2004

" no evidence that screening for suicide risk reduces suicide attempts

or mortality. "

In a recent interview with neurologist Dr. Fred Baughman he made the

point that. " Not one case report of one [mental] disease was validated

- not one. " . " What they do is they meet at the American Psychiatric

Association, they meet in the DSM Committee and vote on making new

behavioral and emotional disorders, and they vote and then they start

immediately calling them diseases - total fraud! "

 

The website for the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control,

reported in 2004, " The overall rate of suicide among youth has

declined slowly since 1992. "

 

According to TeenScreen's website, which relates figures from the

National Survey on Drug Use and Health, approximately 900,000 youths

aged 12-19 made a plan to commit suicide during their worst or most

recent episode of major depression and 712,000 acted upon it.

 

Actual national suicide figures for children 12-19 for 2003 was a

total of 1707 deaths out of over 33 Million children in that age

group. That is approximately 5.13 per hundred thousand children or

..000513 percent. Even former director of TeenScreen, Rob Caruano

stated: " suicides are so rare that you'd have to screen the whole

country to see a difference in mortality between screened and

unscreened students. " In actuality your child has 100x better chance

of contracting a rare disease than committing suicide. Terrible though

these suicide figures are they are a far cry from the epidemic that is

being promoted by these psychiatric screening proponents.

 

What you will not see on the TeenScreen website is that " of the over

15,000 children who were admitted to the hospital for drug related

suicide attempts, over 40% were on psychotropic medication. " Strange

that this was not mentioned as this was on the same website as the

other information. In addition, in Florida over 50% of the child

suicides since 2001 were found to be on psychotropic medication or

already under psychiatric care. Not exactly what you'd want to put on

the front cover of your brochure.

 

So what does this mean? Though any number of suicides of children are

shocking, the corollary that the psychiatric community is making -

i.e. that all of these children have a mental disorder - for example,

major depressive disorder or bi-polar - is just bad science and a slap

in the face of conscientious observation.

 

Dr. David Cohen, Professor of Social Work at Florida International

University, is quoted in an article in April of 2006 as saying,

" Unless one has been living in a cave the past 20 years, one knows

that youth with psychological/ behavioral learning problems are likely

to be referred for psychotropic medications. If this is so it should,

in effect be considered to be one of the major " purposes " of youth

screening. " . " Encouraging screening as presently constituted simply

encourages children to be put on medications - with no idea what this

will do to the suicide rate, and with some indications that it could

" increase " suicide. "

 

This is not to say that children do not get depressed. It happens to

everyone at some time or another. There are generally identifiable

reasons however, which have nothing to do with the chemical reactions

in their brains. Whether those reasons stem from hopelessness, loss,

medical difficulties or just the human condition, pretending

understanding where there is none is just an arrogant betrayal of man.

If we take the recent example of farmers in India's Andra Paradesh

State who, in the last 6 years over 3000 of them, have committed

suicide under the crush of insurmountable debt, do we conclude without

at least a nod in recognition of their plight, that they all had

" mental illnesses? " Would we actually think that the correct solution

is let's drug them so they aren't bothered by their situation, or

would we seek to fix the deplorable conditions which have driven them

to this outcome? If the tire were flat why would we kick the tail pipe?

 

In such a way we must consider the source of our children's upsets as

palpable, real conditions that are unique to each child and that

cannot be diagnosed, or even determined by their filling out a canned,

invasive and divisive survey designed with the particular goal of

creating a " patient for life " for the psychiatric and pharmaceutical

community.

 

From the TeenScreen Questionnaire.

Has there been a time when nothing was fun for you and you just

weren't interested in anything?

Has there been a time when you felt you couldn't do anything well or

that you weren't as good-looking or as smart as other people?

How often did your parents get annoyed or upset with you because of

the way you were feeling or acting?

Have you often felt very nervous when you've had to do things in front

of people?

Have you often worried a lot before you were going to play a sport or

game or do some other activity?

Have you tried to kill yourself in the last year?

Are you still thinking of killing yourself?

Have you thought seriously about killing yourself?

Have you often thought about killing yourself??

Have you ever tried to kill yourself?

Food for thought for your 12 year old!

Not surprisingly, TeenScreen and it's supporters - after being exposed

for their true intentions - are now trying to distance themselves from

the inevitable outcome that will result from children who are found to

be " at risk " from a mental disorder - that of psychiatric evaluation

and more often than not, a label and a prescription.

TeenScreen's director, Leslie McGuire recently stated, " The program

(TeenScreen) is not affiliated with or funded by pharmaceutical

companies. " And " does not involve treatment and does not recommend or

endorse any particular kind of treatment for the youth who are

identified as at risk by the screening. "

Her Co-director, Laurie Flynn, in direct opposition to Ms. McGuire's

pronouncement stated " Treatment is the long term goal for TeenScreen. "

Interesting, in that according to the Journal of the American Academy

of Child Psychiatry in 2002, a survey of recently trained child

psychiatrists found the treatment for 9 out of 10 children consisted

of drugging.

 

Couple this with the knowledge that Ms. Flynn was the former director

of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), a

psychiatric/pharmaceutical front group. NAMI received millions of

dollars in funding from various pharmaceutical companies during

Flynn's tenure. These funds were to promote the validity and

acceptability of " mental illnesses, " and forward and reward the

" concerns " of its patrons, the psychiatric and pharmaceutical

industries. Their denial of this incestuous relationship and their

agenda to medicate our children is preposterous.

 

Perhaps TeenScreen is trying to distance themselves from their

pharmaceutical connections because they realize they need to be more

guarded of their " alliances. " This will be a difficult task for them

however as TeenScreen, from its inception was developed by

psychiatrist David Shaffer who is a consultant and apologist of

pharmaceutical companies. Shaffer has served as an expert witness for

various drug companies and as a consultant on various psychotropic drugs.

 

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) sent out a press

release on May 8, 2000, that said Shaffer was their president and they

had just released a national survey they had done on suicide. The

funder of the survey? Pfizer, Inc. Shaffer's AFSP has also received

$1,250,000 from Solvay Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

(http://www.psychsearch.net/advisors.html)

 

Though the goal of screening may sound admirable, its actual intent is

a wolf in sheep's clothing, skulking around, preying on the sympathies

of concerned parents and legislators, despite the outcries of the

thousands who have been harmed or who recognize in psychiatry's

duplicitous methods the terrible threat not only to the children of

this country but to all of our individual freedoms.

 

Right now there are plans afoot by proponents of mental health

screening to screen everyone in the country. President Bush's New

Freedom Commission on Mental Health has opened the door for psychiatry

to now spread to all sectors of our society. This includes seniors,

school children, and pregnant and new mothers. Even babies and

toddlers are now being drugged and are targeted as the up-and-coming

group of potential patients. Tell me, just how does one determine if a

baby is depressed?

 

Is this to be the fate of our citizenry, checking in routinely for

mental health " exams " which will adjudicate our need for medication?

Is this what we want for our children? Are we so scared by all the

propaganda that our children will kill themselves without intervention

by psychiatry that we would subject them to such ridiculous,

ineffective and even dangerous programs such as TeenScreen?

 

Look at the FDA Black Box warnings that are prevalent on many

psychotropic medications. They caution against risk of suicidal

thinking and behavior in children and adolescents but are used as

" treatment " for depression and suicidiality. Find out about the many

high profile school shootings and the suicides by children already

under psychiatric care or on psychotropic medication. Examine the

deaths from heart failure and other medical causes from these drugs,

not to mention the mental effects. Is this fraudulent practice to be

regarded as the " savior " of our children?

 

Beyond the obvious goal of billions of dollars into psychiatric and

pharmaceutical coffers - 3.3 billion dollars realized on Zoloft sales

alone in 2005 - will we see a society where the continued labeling and

fraudulent " diagnosing " of our children by unscientific means will be

the catalyst by which their rights and personal freedoms will be

usurped? Will this medicated homogenizing of all of our children's

singular gifts for the spurious purpose of " protecting " them result in

children with less thoughts of suicide? Or will we label and medicate

our future's brightest hopes for no more reason than they were

unfortunate enough to wrongly answer their survey? Yes, even

psychiatrist David Shaffer stated that TeenScreen " does identify a

whole bunch of kids who aren't really suicidal, so you get a lot of

false-positives. " (84%).

 

If the billions of dollars that are now spent by US taxpayers to

medicate our country's children, were funneled into workable programs

instead of medications, would we be more likely to effect real changes

for the better? If our focus was centered more on educational or

social activities and programs which fostered communication,

compassion for abused or neglected children, productive ideals, and

which promoted an understanding of life's worth and capabilities,

would we not see changes in our children which would spread into the

future like an ever widening road, instead of the dead end path upon

which we have now set so many children?

 

No one can say why one child will commit suicide and not another. Life

is not a predictable activity and people's viewpoints of life are as

varied as the people that possess them. Who's to say that by locating

a particular set of feelings in a child that that child will be at

risk or not? Life cannot be distilled down to such predictable

uniformity. Perhaps the best we can do is to provide a caring

environment that nurtures our children's goals and offer a supportive

shoulder for their concerns and troubles. Perhaps the worst we can do

is to take from them their right to best their own demons and in so

doing condemn them to lives as victims of every pharmaceutically

contrived chemical reaction that will course in their brains.

 

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July 29, 2006 Jeanyne Wanner is a freelance writer and activist living

in Florida jeanynewanner