The vast majority of Americans are unaware of most of what is included in the Senate and House health care reform bills as they head for reconciliation in the House-Senate Conference. They will be in for a big surprise concerning parity mental health care coverage, covering mental problems comparably to physical problems.
Many states have sued over the cost of atypical antipsychotic drugs, especially the cost of treating the diabetes and metabolic disorders they cause, which has decimated Medicaid budgets. Yet now the FDA gives pharma the Christmas present of approving Seroquel and Zyprexa for children and hence, Medicaid reimbursement even as its own Division of Pharmacovigilance (DPV) reported a “a direct association between adverse metabolic effects of treatment with atypical antipsychotics” and children!
“No matter how DSM V will be written, it will be flawed. There is no psychiatric diagnosis which has an objective measure. At the moment, all diagnoses are clinical diagnoses, meaning they are subjective. This is a field of humility. There is a lot that we do not know. I think there should be an introduction to DSM V which clearly states that this book is a product of work groups…” – Shirah Vollmer, MD
Ritalin remains one of the primary drugs prescribed for children with supposed behavioral problems. Rather than be encouraged to modify diet and increase exercise, children are being given drugs by their doctors instead. Research from the National Institute of Mental Health has revealed that popular Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) drugs like Ritalin are responsible for causing sudden death in many children.
Genita Petralli, president of nonprofit Green Body and Mind, director of Patient Services at Alternative to Meds Clinic, and an author of several books, says it’s her mission to “educate all those interested in what is causing the epidemic mental health crisis of today, how to avoid it, how to get off psychiatric drugs if you are on them now, and why toxic drugs should not ever be called medicine.” To that end, Petralli launched the area’s first Green Mental Health Care Day, a day where speakers and healers came together to address the problems of psychiatric drugs and offer several alternative solutions.
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