The Psycho-Therapeutic School System: Pathologizing Childhood

According to a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control, a staggering 6.4 million American children between the ages of 4 and 17 have been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), whose key symptoms are inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity—characteristics that most would consider typically childish behavior. High school boys, an age group particularly prone to childish antics and drifting attention spans, are particularly prone to being labeled as ADHD, with one out of every five high school boys diagnosed with the disorder.

AbleChild Seeks Release of Newtown Shooter’s Medical Records

On April 4, 2013, AbleChild.org filed an appeal with the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission (FOIC) seeking release of Adam Lanza’s medical records held by the Connecticut Medical Examiner’s Office. That appeal, prepared by Emord & Associates and filed by the Heitke Law Office (Rhode Island), contests the Connecticut Medical Examiner’s refusal to disclose the shooter’s records.

The New Yorker: The D.S.M. and the Nature of Disease

When the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders hits the stores on May 22nd, it will signal the end of a fraught thirteen-year campaign. Every revision of the D.S.M. causes controversy; that’s what happens when experts argue in public about the nature of human suffering. But never has the process provoked warfare so brutal, with attacks coming from within the profession as well from psychiatry’s usual opponents. Indeed, it’s possible that no book has ever been subject to such scrutiny in the course of being written. It is as if J. K. Rowling had produced her Harry Potter sequels in a glass studio with fans looking on and banging the windows whenever she typed something they didn’t like.

Be Skeptical of Pharmaceutical Company Claims

Ben Goldacre’s TEDTalk describes the selective bias in research and publishing which strongly favors articles with positive outcomes. In my field of psychiatry, this bias is only the tip of the iceberg. In many cases, the articles are not even written by the scientists whose names appear on them. They are “ghostwritten” by drug company minions.

In my role as a medical expert in product liability lawsuits against drug companies, judges have empowered me to dig into the otherwise secret interiors of drug company data vaults. The following observations have been generated during my forensic investigations and have been documented in my books and scientific articles.

NY Times: Wars on Drugs

Last year, more active-duty soldiers committed suicide than died in battle. This fact has been reported so often that it has almost lost its jolting force. Almost.

Worse, according to data not reported on until now, the military evidently responded to stress that afflicts soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan primarily by drugging soldiers on the front lines. Data that I have obtained directly from Tricare Management Activity, the division of the Department of Defense that manages health care services for the military, shows that there has been a giant, 682 percent increase in the number of psychoactive drugs — antipsychotics, sedatives, stimulants and mood stabilizers — prescribed to our troops between 2005 and 2011. That’s right. A nearly 700 percent increase — despite a steady reduction in combat troop levels since 2008.

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