Law Enfocement finds Pennsylvania Shooter prescribed 43 drugs ranging from psychiatric drugs to pain pills

Law enforcement authorities who searched John F. Shick’s North Oakland apartment following his deadly shooting rampage Thursday found 43 medications ranging from psychotropic drugs to pain pills to erectile dysfunction tablets that had been prescribed by about a dozen different doctors, sources close to the probe said.

Additionally, they found the address for Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of UPMC, the scene of the shootings, written on a piece of paper hanging from a wall in Mr. Shick’s fourth-floor flat in the Royal York Apartments.

Rambling messages were written on the walls themselves and in notebooks scattered throughout the apartment. And there were handwritten complaints about his medical treatment for a variety of physical ailments, sources reported.

ABC News: DSM-5 Criticized for Financial Conflicts of Interest—70% of task force members have ties to Pharma

Controversy continues to swell around the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, better known as DSM-5. A new study suggests the 900-page bible of mental health, scheduled for publication in May 2013, is ripe with financial conflicts of interest.

The manual, published by the American Psychiatric Association, details the diagnostic criteria and recommended treatments — many of which are pharmacological — for each and every psychiatric disorder. After the 1994 release of DSM-4, the APA instituted a policy requiring expert advisors to disclose drug industry ties. But the move toward transparency did little to cut down on conflicts, with nearly 70 percent of DSM-5 task force members reporting financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies — up from 57 percent for DSM-4.

John Shick, Psychiatric ‘Shooter,’ Had Mental Health History; Pittsburgh Cops Seek Motive

The gunman in a fatal shooting rampage inside a Pittsburgh psychiatric clinic was previously committed to a mental health facility for treatment following an altercation with police in Oregon in 2009, a prosecutor said.

Details of John Shick’s previous involvement with mental health professionals come as investigators piece together a motive for last week’s shooting that killed one person and wounded six others in the lobby of the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic at the University of Pittsburgh.

Is Mourning Madness? The wrongheaded movement to classify grief as a mental disorder

Is grief a disease? That is one of the crucial questions psychologists are asking as the American Psychiatric Association revamps its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), used by millions of mental health professionals to diagnose patients, for a fifth edition due out in 2013.

A group of psychiatrists have spearheaded a movement to include ongoing grief as a disorder, to be labeled “complicated” or “prolonged grief.” Others have proposed, separately, that a mourner can be labeled clinically depressed only two weeks after the loss of a loved one. The problem with both potential changes is that more people’s grief will be diagnosed as abnormal or extreme, in a culture that already leads mourners to feel they need to just “get over it” and “heal.”

State of Texas prescribed anti-psychotic drug to youth offenders while challenging its effectiveness in court

Left hand, we’d like to introduce you to the right.

For two years while the state of Texas was suing Johnson & Johnson for fraudulently inflating the cost and effectiveness of the anti-psychotic drug Risperdal, taxpayers picked up a $247,666.87 bill for the Texas Youth Commission to continue prescribing the drug to young inmates.

Johnson & Johnson and a subsidiary, Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc., agreed in January to pay the state $158 million to settle the lawsuit. The state had been seeking $579 million.

SHARE YOUR STORY/COMMENT: