According to Medco Health Solutions Inc., roughly one in four children and nearly 30% of those ages 10 to 19 years take prescription medication on a routine basis.
There is only one mental health disorder: Psychiatristentia Delusiono Grandeur Disorder (PDGD) Suffers believe themselves to be the sole arbiters of mental health and they compulsively invent new names for mental health disorders and then accuse people of suffering from them. These are seriously disturbed and dangerous individuals best not approached alone. Symptoms include breaking into a sweat and being struck dumb when encountering someone who understands logical fallacies.
Gage Martindale, who is 8 years old, has been taking a blood-pressure drug since he was a toddler. “I want to be healthy, and I don’t want things in my heart to go wrong,” he says.
According to a recent study from Medico Health Solutions Inc., a leading American pharmacy-benefit manager, more than a quarter of U.S. children and teenagers are taking prescription medication on a regular basis. Close to 7 percent are on more than one medication.
With little oversight and apparent carte blanche, a relative handful of Texas physicians wrote $47 million worth of Medicaid prescriptions for powerful antipsychotic and anti-anxiety drugs over the past two years, according to a Star-Telegram analysis.
Washington, DC, 7 December 2010 ? The enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 expands Medicare benefits to scores of previously uninsured individuals including many of our nation's children. While access to treatment is laudable, the quality of such treatment is the subject of an article in the December issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
The Food and Drug Administration will hold a meeting to determine if there is a negative link between child consumption of synthetic color additives in food and a child’s behavior.
Doctors are urging caution with over-the-counter children's medicine as new research released today shows that many products are confusing and could lead to deadly overdoses.
The study found that of 148 products that came with measuring devices, almost all of them - 146 - had inconsistencies between the directions in or on the package and the markings on the device. The research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at the 200 top-selling pediatric liquid medications in late 2008 and through October of 2009.
Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) Birmingham today released the figures in the Freedom of Information Act highlighting the psychiatric infiltration of the education system and subsequent damage to young girls? S minds in the West Midlands and Birmingham.
I cam across this article recently from the New York Times. It discusses the case of a young boy who was started on an antipsychotic medication when he was 18 months old, and by the time he was three, he was on an antidepressant, antipsychotic, sleeping tablets, and something for ADD (presumably a stimulant).
Johnson & Johnson continues to have troubles with its pharmaceutical plant in Puerto Rico, where subsidiary McNeil Consumer Healthcare had to recall millions of bottles of Tylenol, Motrin and other products in January. The latest bad news for Johnson & Johnson came from the Food and Drug Administration after inspectors found numerous problems with the Puerto Rican operation.
The chance that a teenager or young adult will receive a prescription for a controlled medication has nearly doubled in the last 15 years in the U.S., according to a new report.
It was disturbing to read about the dramatic increase in diagnosed cases of ADHD in N.C. between 2003 and 2007 (“Cases of ADHD rocket in state,” AC-T, Nov. 20). This huge increase in such a short time frame seems inexplicable. In the mid-1990s, there was an explosion in the number of people diagnosed with ADHD once adults were included and the inattentive type of ADHD recognized. Expansion in diagnostic criteria and several popular books like “Driven to Distraction” and “Out of the Fog” increased public awareness of this disorder.
CHICAGO — Removing cough and cold medicines for very young children from store shelves led to a big decline in emergency room visits for bad reactions to the drugs, government research found.
At the request of Congress, the Government Accounting Office (GAO) is seeking information regarding cases in which state foster children have been prescribed psychotropic medication outside of federal regulations or accepted medical standards of practice.
National School Psychology Awareness Week takes place each year during the second week of November. This is a time set aside for efforts to promote awareness and understanding of the field of school psychology. So, who are school psychologists and what exactly do they do? To begin with, they are trained at the graduate level in the areas of both education and psychology. They use this training to help children in the areas of academics, social and behavioral relations. School psychologists do receive highly specialized training for working in educational settings, but in most cases they are not doctors and they are not licensed for private practice as a psychologist. School psychologists are trained to advocate for the best interests of children while also collaborating with parents, teachers and administrators. In recent years, there has been an increasing focus on providing positive learning environments for children in school.
Ideas about children and their development have varied across different times and cultural contexts. However, within the discipline of child development within psychology four common views about how children develop have been identified.
They're Nevada's foster children--and as Contact 13 Chief Investigator Darcy Spears uncovered, they're being given potentially dangerous and powerful drugs that they may not need... with taxpayers footing the bill.
Tommy made good grades in the first grade, and his teacher said he was a big help and a delight to have in the classroom. Soon after this report card was sent home, Tommy’s toddler sister drowned in the bathtub while Tommy was watching her and his other siblings. Tommy’s parents were arrested, the surviving children entered foster care and Tommy’s early successes and hopes for the future began to fade.
SPECIAL REPORT: To many parents, diagnosing a child with depression as young as 2-years-old sound unconscionable. Many ask, what child doesn’t cry or become irritable? What toddler doesn’t become bored or unhappy at times?
Neuroscientists at the Georgetown University Medical Center have pointed out that a brain scan with functional MRI (fMRI) was enough to predict which patients with paediatric anxiety disorder will respond to 'talk therapy', and so may not need to use psychiatric medication.
In the past, society believed that the world was flat and that the sun revolved around the earth. Today we believe that the government knows what's best for us and that the drug Ritalin (Methylphenidate) is a cure for the brain disorders Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
In a rare move, the Justice Department on Tuesday announced that it had charged a former vice president and top lawyer for the British drug giant GlaxoSmithKline with making false statements and obstructing a federal investigation into illegal marketing of the antidepressant Wellbutrin for weight loss.
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurobehavioral disorder that typically begins in childhood and often persists into adulthood. ADHD is characterized by developmentally inappropriate levels of inattention and hyperactivity resulting in functional impairment in academic, family, and social settings (1). ADHD is the most commonly diagnosed neurobehavioral disorder of childhood, with previous reports documenting increasing trends in prevalence during the past decade and increases in ADHD medication use (2,3). National estimates of the number of children reported by their parents to have ever been diagnosed with ADHD and the percentage of children with ADHD currently taking ADHD medications were published in 2005 using data from the 2003 National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH) (4,5). This report describes results from the second administration of NSCH in 2007 (6), which indicated that the percentage of children aged 4--17 years with a parent-reported ADHD diagnosis (ever) increased from 7.8% to 9.5% during 2003--2007, representing a 21.8% increase in 4 years. The findings in this report help to further characterize the substantial impact of ADHD on families.
According to a new survey by Consumer Reports, 84 percent of children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are treated with drugs at some point.
Dr. Peter Breggin (breggin.com) has been the medical expert in countless court cases involving the use or misuse of psychoactive medications. This unusual position has given him unprecedented access to private pharmaceutical research and correspondence files, information from which informs this straight-talking guide to the most prescribed and controversial category of drugs: antidepressants.
Defective drug legislation is big right now. Pharma is rapidly becoming the next big tobacco but on a much grander scale.
Class action lawsuits with 10,000s of victims are lashing out against drug firms while even State governments level more lawsuits against them.
Law firms are suing pharmaceutical companies for unethical marketing practices, a failure to warn the public about potentially harmful and sometimes deadly side effects when they were known about prior to marketing, downplaying side effects while hyping up benefits, etc.
If you have been damaged by a medication you can potentially sue and in most cases lawyers will take your case for free.
Some drugs that are listed on law office websites as defective drugs include; Vioxx, Bextra, Celebrex, Crestor, Baycol, Viagra, Cialis, Risperdal, Seroguel, Zyprexa, Adderall, Ritalin, Neurotin, Paxil, Prozac, Ambien, Zoloft.
Some defective drugs have been associated with death, suicide, homicide, neurological damage, heart attacks, diabetes, excessive weight gain, sexual dysfunction, impertinency, vision loss and a host of other side effects.
Virtually every psychotropic (psychiatric) drug is listed on some defective drug website including antidepressants, antipsychotic, anti-anxiety medications (anxiolytics), etc.
Drug companies that are being sued include Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, Janssen, Abbott, Novartis, Wyeth, etc.
You can get a free legal consultations just by doing a search with the drug name and the world lawyer.
Medications given to children for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) do not appear to pose risks to their cardiovascular health over the long term, at least at low doses, according to a new study conducted in Sweden.
(NaturalNews) The European Commission has approved a chewable version of Pfizer's blockbuster cholesterol drug Lipitor, for use in children over the age of 10.
In the 1990s, the pharmaceutical industry repeatedly was named the most profitable industry in the world. More than a decade later, the industry tops a more dubious list: the No. 1 source of fraud-related settlements with the Department of Justice, an advocacy group says.
Drug companies say the millions of dollars they pay physicians for speaking and consulting justly compensates them for the laudable work of educating their colleagues.
Drug companies have long kept secret details of the payments they make to doctors for promoting their drugs. But seven companies have begun posting names and compensation on the Web, some as the result of legal settlements. ProPublica compiled these disclosures, totaling $258 million, into a single database that allows patients to search for their doctor. Receiving payments isn’t necessarily wrong, but it does raise ethical issues.
More than half of U.S. medical schools don't provide any instruction on federal fraud and abuse laws, according to a report from the Office of Inspector General.
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD or ADHD) is a neuron behavioral developmental disorder. It is the most commonly diagnosed psychiatric disorder in children affecting about 3 to 5% of children globally with symptoms starting before seven years of age. It is characterized by a persistent pattern of impulsiveness and inattention, with or without a component of hyperactivity. ADHD is diagnosed twice as frequently in boys as in girls, though studies suggest this discrepancy may be due to subjective bias. ADHD is generally a chronic disorder with 30 to 50% of those individuals diagnosed in childhood continuing to have symptoms into adulthood. As they mature, adolescents and adults with ADHD are likely to develop coping mechanisms to compensate for their impairment.
Drug giant Pfizer has canceled a scheduled clinical trial of its antipsychotic drug Geodon after the FDA accused it of subjecting child participants in a prior study to "widespread overdosing."
A Bangor psychiatric practice that serves thousands of area residents will stop seeing MaineCare patients next month, citing an untenable reduction in payments from the MaineCare program.
Washington state is working to reverse a disturbing trend: the disproportionate use of adult antipsychotic drugs to treat poor kids with mental illness.
It may be hard for people to imagine that drug reps can get us to prescribe a particular drug by simply giving us a meal or being nice to us. The process is subtle, but it happens all the time. To quote Ahari again: “Drug reps increase drug sales by influencing physicians, and they do so with finely titrated doses of friendship.”
The Supreme Court heard arguments in a case Tuesday that could pave the way for numerous lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers, a particularly high-stakes issue in light of the thousands of claims, so far unproven scientifically, linking vaccines to autism.
For the next seven years, Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics will play a key role in a $95 million federal contract to improve drug label dosing instructions for children.
What do you imagine the halls of a juvenile detention facility sound like? Loud and rowdy? These youth weren’t incarcerated for being docile and submissive, after all, so it would seem highly unlikely one could find a quiet spot in such an institution, right? But, according to some, the sounds of juvenile detention centers have changed drastically over the past several decades -- they've gotten a lot quieter -- largely due to the use of prescription sedation.
Due to a paucity of data, controversy persists regarding the risk of cardiac events associated with children taking medications for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, according to a speaker here at the 2010 American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference and Exhibition.
The FDA has approved clonidine hydrochloride (Kapvay) as the first attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) drug concomitantly used with a stimulant.
Every few months some miracle drug or other is rolled out with bells and confetti, but only once or twice in a generation does the real thing come along.
The American Psychiatric Association has a hot potato on its hands as it updates its catalog of mental disorders — whether to include parental alienation, a disputed term conveying how a child's relationship with one estranged parent can be poisoned by the other.
The figures are out and they are startling to say the least ! It is now reckoned that about 10% of American children are kids with ADHD and that could be as many as 2.4 million children. Even more alarming is the fact that only about 50% of these have actually got diagnosed and are getting treatment. ADHD in small kids may seem a relatively minor problem but with figures like these, it does mean that there is an enormous pool of people who are going to carry ADHD into adulthood.
In a recent TED conference presentation, Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, who has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to new vaccine efforts, speaks on the issue of CO2 emissions and its effects on climate change. He presents a formula for tracking CO2 emissions as follows: CO2 = P x S x E x C.
Should psychiatric medication be prescribed for a child? Only a parent, in consultation with a doctor, can make that choice. Parents should be fully aware of the conditions that call for such medication and the appropriate drug used for treatment. Though a medication treatment plan for a child may not completely remove all symptoms of a disorder, at the very least, the child will experience a definite improvement in his or her day-to-day life. Long-term problems are minimal when compared to the continuation of a mental disorder.
(NaturalNews) The use of long-term prescription drugs by children has increased four times faster among children in the past decade than among the general population, according to a report by Medco Health Solutions.
The narrative of personal improvement is as American as baseball—almost as American as a fondness for illegal and prescription drugs. From steroids and human growth hormones on the baseball diamond to amphetamines in college libraries and quadrangles, performance enhancing drugs combine a desire for productivity and success with drug abuse in a way that is uniquely American. And the statistics confirm their growing demand: the journal Addiction reports that on certain college campuses, especially competitive Northeastern colleges, up to 25 percent of students admitted to having misused ADHD medication in the past year. Yet despite their prevalence, these drugs, and the disorder they treat, are highly misunderstood.
There is something strangely disquieting about standing in a padded cell – focusing on the tiny chink of light coming through the slatted window in the equally padded door; imagining the distress and confusion that must have once surged through the patients at the Glenside psychiatric hospital when they found themselves locked in one of these padded rooms.
A local mother says she came dangerously close to giving her child the wrong prescription. As Susan Wornick reports, it's one of about 2 dozen mistakes by CVS pharmacy over the last year.
Over the past decade, psychotropic medication use in the general youth population has more than doubled. Estimated rates of psychotropic medication use in foster care youth, however, are much higher (ranging from 13-52%) than those in the general youth population (4%).
The Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) today issued a landmark report from a multi-state study on psychotropic medication oversight in foster care. Led by Laurel K. Leslie, MD, MPH at Tufts CTSI, Christopher Bellonci, MD at Tufts Medical Center and Justeen Hyde, PhD at Cambridge Health Alliance, the study examined state policies and practices in 47 states, including Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia regarding the use of medication for treating behavioral and mental health problems in foster care children and adolescents ages 2 to 21 years.
Johnson & Johnson has taken a huge hit this year with its massive recall of over-the-counter children's cough medicine and Tylenol products. But new information gathered through a Congressional investigation has revealed that the company knew about problems with its Motrin pain reliever product as well, and planned to secretly hire subcontractors to buy up the product from store shelves without notifying consumers about potential dangers.
Sandy Waide's grandson was having a difficult time in preschool. He ignored his teacher's instructions and refused to sit still. One morning he took a fish out of the classroom aquarium. That ended up being his last day there.
Forest Labs (FRX) appears to have initially underestimated how much it needed to pay the feds to go away: In 2009, the company said it had set aside $170 million in case it needed to settle a Department of Justice investigation of the kickbacks it paid in its marketing of Celexa and Lexapro, two antidepressants. Today, the company paid $313 million to wrap up the probes.
Drug maker Forest Laboratories of Earth City is paying 313-million dollars to settle criminal and civil complains filed against it by the federal government.
Shire plc (LSE: SHP, Nasdaq: SHPGY), the global specialty biopharmaceutical company, has partnered with the Entertainment Industries Council (EIC) , the Lab School of Washington and other organizations in support of National Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) Awareness Week to host "Fact or Fiction: ADHD in America, a Capitol Hill Forum." The panel discussion aims to dispel myths and provide facts about the diagnosis, treatment and management of ADHD. Held in the Rayburn House Office Building on Thursday, September 16th, this briefing promotes education and increased awareness of ADHD by featuring insights from ADHD experts and advocates.
A unit of Forest Laboratories, the maker of the antidepressant Celexa, agreed on Wednesday to pay more than $313 million to settle criminal and civil complaints, including a claim that it had illegally promoted the drug for use in children.
The diagnosis of ADHD has soared by 500 percent since the 1980s. Now a new study suggests a large number of kids are misdiagnosed and are often medicated for a disease they don't have. Dr. Bill Evans teaches economic statistics at Notre Dame. Evans and colleagues at North Carolina State and the University of Minnesota joined forces to study ADHD and why so many more children are being diagnosed and medicated. They spent a year looking at the exact birth dates of 60,000 kids in grades K-12. "What our work tends to demonstrate is that there seems to be a lot of misdiagnosis and we estimate that there are probability about a million kids that are misdiagnosed defining them as having ADHD when really they're just young for their grade," Dr. William Evans explained. Start dates for schools varying from state to state make a big difference for the youngest children. "Every day has a school that you have to turn five by in order to start kindergarten and if your birthday is before that, a lot of kids are going to start and they're going to be the youngest in their class. If your birthday is right after that, then you're going to be the oldest kid in your class," Dr. Evans said. Using those exact birth dates, their study, published in the Journal of Health Economics suggests shows children considered young for their class are misdiagnosed with ADHD at a much higher rate. "But if you take a look on either side of the cutoff there are staggering differences in the cutoff of the ADHD diagnosis," Dr. Evans said. Teachers are often making the suggestion of ADHD when the problem could simply be maturity. "Part of the problem is that a lot parents are getting their child diagnosed because the teacher says he's acting up in school so you have to ask, is the kid acting up in school because of this condition or is the kid acting up because he's just young for the grade," Dr. Evans said. It makes a difference from school performance to athletics and it's much harder for kids to catch up, even when they get to high school and college. "The evidence is pretty clear that the older ones are the kids that are doing better in class," Dr. Evans said. So how do we help our children, especially those who make the date but may just not be ready for school? "I think the solution is to ask a lot of questions have the kid evaluated by a professional and ask "is this really behavior that is consistent with the disease or is this behavior that's consistent with the age," Dr. Evans said. For those who do have ADHD the behaviors last into adulthood so a true diagnosis is important. Just as important is making sure our kids are not misdiagnosed with a disorder that may really have more to do with them just being too young for school. Dr. Evans says more than one million kids may have been misdiagnosed and more than 800,000 may be taking stimulant medication based only on maturity. Once you have a true diagnosis, the National Institute of Mental Health says treatment options include medication, behavioral treatment or a combination. Their study found the combination produced better results than behavioral treatment alone.
“Child’s Ordeal Reveals Risks of Psychiatric Drugs in Young” (front page, Sept. 2) illustrates a disastrous course for one young child. Millions of children with psychiatric and learning disorders get the wrong treatment or no treatment because of a lack of access to proper care, general misinformation about child development, and a lack of training for pediatricians.
Wisconsin will get over a half-million dollars after a drug company agreed to settle a lawsuit.
Ortho-McNeil-Janssen was accused of marketing the drug Topamax for conditions not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. They included psychiatric problems like bi-polar disorder, and drug and alcohol dependency.
First Lady Michelle Obama reveals some requirement of the new Health Care law that seemed to have been hidden in its 2,000+ pages. Nancy Pelosi famously said "We have to pass the bill to see what is in the bill." Well, now we are finding out little gems like this.
Is your child high spirited and unfocused -- or suffering from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder? These ADHD guidelines will help you decide if a checkup is in order.
This week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data on prescription-drug use through 2008. According to the data, almost half of Americans -- 48.3% -- took at least one prescription drug per month in 2008, up from 43.5% a decade ago.
Doctors are increasingly prescribing antipsychotic drugs to treat young children, even infants, for conditions that some psychiatric experts say rarely warrant such strong treatment, The New York Times reports.
In the wake of a little boy's suicide and the admission by child welfare chiefs that they violated a 2005 law aimed at protecting kids from psychiatric-drug use, some Florida lawmakers suggest the death may be a symptom of deeper problems.
Today, the administration of psychoactive drugs to children (6-17) is all too common and growing at an alarming rate. These drugs often cause the opposite of the intended effect, often condemning children to a life of misery and ill health. The prescription of these drugs is said to treat "chemical imbalances" which were said to cause ADHD, Depression and Bi-polar disorder. It turns out, however, that what we were calling "disease-causing chemical imbalances," is simply incorrect . The sad irony is, the inappropriate use of these medications is in fact creating different chemical imbalances, which do cause mental disorders, many of which are both life-long and debilitating.
Nearly 100 million children in China will be vaccinated against measles this month to help eliminate the disease, a leading cause of avoidable death and disability in developing countries, the WHO said on Wednesday.
While no amount of money can adequately compensate for a life-altering birth defect allegedly caused by or linked to the use of the antidepressant Paxil, the average settlement in a Paxil birth defect lawsuit appears to be in excess of $1.2 million for each family involved. The Newark Star-Ledger noted in July that Paxil manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline (Glaxo) has put aside $2.4 billion for the resolution of litigation involving Paxil and one other drug in Glaxo's product line.
Recently while cleaning out my office in anticipation of my new job, I discovered that I had unknowingly been witness to to an historic moment in child psychiatry. I found a binder from a course I had taken in June of 2001 sponsored by Harvard Medical School on Major Psychiatric Illnesses in Children and Adolescents.
A teen prisoner who fell to his death down a courthouse elevator shaft after tussling with guards had not taken his medication for severe behavioural problems for two weeks, a nurse told an inquiry Tuesday.
Scientology Propaganda video featuring Kelly preston, John Travolta, Catherine Bell, Marisol Nichols, and Sofia Milos. Ironicly Jett Travolta the son of Ms Preston and Travolta died at the age of 16 after his Depakote treatment had been halted.
The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights®) announces the unsealing of the first Medicaid Fraud case for prescribing psychiatric drugs to children and youth by someone other than PsychRights using PsychRights’ model Qui Tam Complaint.
Childhood should be a carefree time of happiness and discovery. So when doctors begin to talk about depression among preschoolers, it’s no surprise that the diagnosis is met with skepticism, an issue explored in this week’s New York Times Magazine.
A study of birth records in Denmark shows no increase in birth defects among children born to mothers who received the antiviral drugs acyclovir, valacyclovir and famciclovir during the first trimester of pregnancy, researchers said Monday. The drugs are often used to treat herpes simplex and herpes zoster infections.
According to the 2010 Drug Trend Report, Prescription drugs, prescription drug use increased by 5 percent in American children in 2009, it is the highest of any other single demographic group. More than one in four insured children are now taking at least one prescription medication to treat a chronic medical condition. Usage of prescription medication has been seen in antipsychotic, asthma, diabetes drugs, there is most significant increase over the past nine years.
Grades are important, but for some overly ambitious students, they are more important than their health.
Adderall is a prescription drug that is prescribed for kids with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Now, the drug is being clandestinely used to improve grades on college campuses. Since the drug is known for its ability to promote concentration and focus, students desperate to get a winning edge in school are popping it in order to enhance their ability to retain knowledge, stay up later and work faster during study sessions.
The World Health Organization has granted prequalification status to Pfizer Inc.'s children's pneumococcal vaccine, Prevenar 13, paving the way for United Nations agencies and governments to start ordering the product.
A law intended to speed up development of new drugs for US kids has ended up financing clinical trials in poor countries, where the medicines might never become available.
Ketamine, a general anesthetic usually administered to children and pets, is also highly effective in low doses as an anti-depressant, according a study published Thursday.
Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity disorder (ADHD.) splits health professionals and parents alike, and it has been shown that around one million children are misdiagnosed with the disorder. This has come about due to them being the unlucky child in their year, being the least mature and/or the youngest in their class.
They're illicit, lead to hallucinations and out-there sensations, and can be dangerous and even downright deadly. But illegal psychedelic drugs such as ecstasy, LSD, mushrooms and ketamine might also be able to help treat myriad serious medical conditions, including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
For years, natural health proponents have been sounding the alarm about the dangers of new drugs being pushed on consumers. But is that a one-sided, inaccurate view? Not at all. In fact, new research now shows the problems with Big Pharma's hugely hyped medications are far worse than most people have even dreamed. Independent reviewers found that about 85 percent of new drugs offer few if any new benefits -- but they carry the risk of causing serious harm to users.
AstraZeneca Plc won dismissal of a lawsuit in which it was accused of backing out of a deal with Verus Pharmaceuticals Inc. to develop a children’s asthma drug and instead aligning with competitor Map Pharmaceuticals Inc.
Almost one million children in the United States are potentially misdiagnosed with Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) because they were the youngest and least mature in their kindergarten classes, a US study released Tuesday found.
In a guest contribution, Oxfam's Mohga Kamal-Yanni argues that the Affordable Medicines Facility-malaria has chosen the wrong way to tackle the problem of malaria drug shortages in poor countries
Data presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association showed that the number of college students with a serious mental illness is rising, reported the Los Angeles Times.
Many local families are getting in the back-to-school mode. There's a myriad of things to take care of when it comes to the new school year, including required immunizations.
Teens from around the world who regularly take acetaminophen, best known as Tylenol, were more than twice as likely to have asthma as teens who never take the over-the-counter pain and fever reducer, new research finds.
While most children with Autism Spectrum Disorder are diagnosed around age 2 or 3, a new study suggests it may someday be possible to flag these children as young as just a few months old. The idea that an autistic child could be diagnosed as an infant, and therefore be able to get the earliest treatment possible, is intriguing to experts in the field. The new study of babies who'd been placed in the neo-natal intensive care unit after birth was originally intended to research infant development. "This was not meant to be an autism study, but they went back and said: 'Mmm we have some features here that can differentiate the kids with autism compared with kids who don't,'" explains Dr. Max Wiznitzer of Cleveland's UH Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital. Some of the children who were later diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder had developmental anomalies as young babies including differences in muscle tone and how they responded to noises and visual patterns. The differences were subtle, and experts say could not be identified by a parent. It's too early to generalize these findings to healthy newborns. "These were babies who were sick enough that they ended up in an intensive care unit and then were followed afterwards to monitor their development," Dr. Wiznitzer says. Still, these red flags could be used in future infant autism studies. The hope is to find solid autism markers that doctors can look for even in their tiniest patients. Even though there's no real cure for autism experts say getting these children into treatment programs as early as possible helps. Current early signs of autism include not making eye contact, not responding to their name, repetitive behaviors and not socializing or interacting appropriately.
As a toddler, Ian Barrier got expelled from day care.
"They just said that he was all over the place, he couldn't handle the structure, they didn't have the staff or the skills to deal with it," said his mother, Amy Barr. "They said, 'We think he has ADD or ADHD' and I'm like, 'What is that?"
While antidepressants are commonly given to people with autism, there is no evidence from clinical trials that the drugs are helpful for children with the disorder, and only limited evidence that they benefit adults, a new research review finds.
When Zachary Berge was diagnosed with autism shortly after his second birthday, he couldn't speak a word. He often threw tantrums because he couldn't express himself.
It is summer camp season for kids and well run camps require a medical history and record of prescription medications that the child is taking. One prestigious camp for teens in Southern California had 153 residential teenagers last week. The ages are 11 to 19 with the average camper age 16. These kids come from California and other states across the U.S. Fifty percent come from out of state and a number of campers each week are international. OK, so far so good. Healthy teens getting together for a week of learning and fun. Here is the shocker!
Investors interested in pharma stocks and patients eager to know if an experimental drug works have one thing in common: they devour stories reporting the results of clinical trials, which assess whether a new drug is safe and effective. Now it turns out they have something else in common: they’re not getting the whole story.
A new study from researchers at Children's Hospital Boston suggests that clinical trials that are funded through sources within the pharmaceutical industry are more likely to give positive results than those funded through other means.
Vista Del Mar Child and Family Services has been providing specialized services and therapeutic treatment to generations of Southern California children. Vista Del Mar offers a comprehensive range of social and psychological services that include psychiatric residential treatment, day treatment, outpatient, individual, family, and group therapy, medical and dental services provided on site by doctors and registered nurses, community treatment units, educational and vocational services, foster care and complete adoption services. From its original mission in 1908 as an orphanage, Vista Del Mar has evolved to the forefront of dealing with victims of child abuse, neglect, abandonment, domestic violence and family dysfunction. The broad-based approach to these problems is evident from the diversity of programs offered to emotionally impaired children, ages 2 to 18, of all ethnicities and backgrounds, and their familie
New Jersey psychiatric hospitals regularly medicate patients against their will, and state law prevents an outside review of medication practices, according to a federal lawsuit filed by a patient advocacy group.
Drug companies have been instrumental in promoting psychiatric diagnoses designed to market drugs. These corporate giants persuade consumers that a gamut of what may be common human feelings can be interpreted as serious psychopathology. They even invent diagnoses in a way that will best sell costly and profitable drugs. People suffering from emotional problems are often duped into adding to corporate profits and become distracted from the possibility of making progress in coping with their pain.
A union pension fund has sued drugmaker Pfizer, saying that directors should be held liable for the company's repeated violations of federal laws governing drug-marketing practices that resulted in the company having to pay a $2.3 billion settlement.
http://www.cchrint.org/szasz - Dr. Thomas Szasz is co-founder of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) a psychiatric/mental health watchdog. He is a professor of Psychiatry Emeritus, author of 35 critically acclaimed books on psychiatry and the mental health industry. To see Thomas Szasz's full CV, including more than 40 international awards and recognitions for his outstanding and precedent setting work, click here
Recent breaking news: Lipitor, the world’s best selling drug by Pfizer will now be available in chewable pill form for your children to enjoy. Yummy. In an article written by the Associated Press earlier this month, it states that this pill will be designed for children with “Genetic Diseases” like Familial Hypercholesterolemia.
As a parent of a child who has Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) you are faced with deciding how to manage your child’s ADHD symptoms. One options for treating the symptoms of ADHD that is highly debated is medication; some people strongly believe it is the best options and other believe medication shouldn’t be used on children. Determining the best option for your child is an important decision that shouldn’t be made without sufficient information. Before you make this decision, you should know that there are pros and cons to ADHD medication and that medication may be right for one child but not another. This article may help you as a parent or caregiver decide if medication is the right treatment method for your child.
Giving children pharmaceuticals for nontherapeutic reasons may be an under-recognized form of abuse, a retrospective study showed.
Data from U.S. poison control centers revealed an average of 160 cases of "malicious" use of pharmaceuticals in children younger than 7 annually over a nine-year period, Shan Yin, MD, MPH, of Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center in Denver, reported online in the Journal of Pediatrics.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved Cuvposa (glycopyrrolate) Oral Solution to treat chronic severe drooling caused by neurologic disorders in children ages 3 years to 16 years.
The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday warned menopausal women using Evamist to avoid allowing children and pets to come into contact with the drug. Evamist contains the estrogen hormone estradiol and is sprayed on the forearms between the elbow and wrist to reduce hot flashes. The FDA said it has received eight reports of adverse effects from exposure to the drug in children ages 3 to 5, and two reports of problems with pets.
You’ve been diagnosed with a mental disorder and have been in treatment now for years. You’ve done both psychotherapy and psychiatric medications, and now it’s time to try to live life drug-free. You’ve successfully ended your psychotherapy treatment, but now you’re looking for advice and information about how to end your psychiatric medications.
A form of Pfizer Inc.’s erection drug Viagra, sold as the blood-pressure treatment called Revatio in adults, may be used for children with a rare lung disorder if U.S. regulators can agree on how to test it.
Insomnia is a major problem among children in mental health treatment and at least a quarter of these patients are given sleep medication, a new survey of child psychiatrists indicates.
Researchers at the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) have revealed that medical devices have forced tens of thousands of kids and teens to visit the ER every year. The study is published online in the journal Pediatrics. The researchers FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health assessed the medical records from ER visits registered in a national injury surveillance system. Data from nearly 100 nationally representative hospital showed that 144,799 medical device-related complications took place during the period of 2004 and 2005. That amounts to 70,000 injuries per year, the researchers highlighted.
HEY KIDS, DRUGS R BAD, U SHOULDNT DO DRUGS, MKAY, IF U DO THEM, U R BAD, CUZ DRUGS R BAD, MKAY, IS A BAD THING TO DO DRUGS, SO DONT BE BAD, BY DOIN DRUGS, MKAY, THAT WOULD BE BAD, CUZ DRUGS R BAD, MKAY..
Melanie Dunham, editor for Austin Family Magazine, discuss the misuse of ADHD medications and how misuse can harmful side effects. Why are these drugs popular with tweens and teens and what should parents know about this trend?
Washington • The Food and Drug Administration said Saturday it was investigating a health care company for other potential problems following its recall of more than 40 over-the-counter infants’ and children’s liquid medications.
Last year, 12-year-old Ryan Mendoza's obsessive compulsive disorder became so bad, his mother said, that his triggers -- the wind and spotting the number "6" -- would drive him to have crippling and violent meltdowns.
Sometimes the degree of fraud that takes place in the drug industry is so mind-boggling that it's hard to determine whether drug regulators and the media are paying attention at all. For the past several months, drug giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has been under scrutiny for tampering with clinical trial data for its diabetes drug, Avandia. Reports show that the company lied about Avandia's safety in order to get the drug approved and keep it on the market. But despite numerous pieces of credible evidence and witness testimonies that have all come forward -- all of which reveal GSK's deception -- an FDA advisory panel is still recommending that Avandia remain on the market.
Medical ghostwriting is a threat to public health which currently takes place only due to the cooperation of researchers employed at academic medical centers. Although there is growing awareness of the danger posed by medical ghostwriting, we find that few academic medical centers have public policies which prohibit this behavior, and many of the existing policies are ambiguous or ill-defined. We have proposed an unambiguous policy which defines participating in medical ghostwriting as academic misconduct akin to plagiarism or falsifying data. By adopting and enforcing this policy, academic medical centers would adhere to the norms of science followed across the rest of the University, and would no longer facilitate clandestine industry influence over the peer-reviewed scientific literature. By prohibiting medical ghostwriting, academic medical centers have a rare opportunity- to significantly reduce a major threat to public health with the stroke of a pen.
If the kids become too much to handle, slip 'em a little cold medicine. It's an often-repeated joke -- or advice -- that parents share on the playground or on Twitter and Facebook pages.
Child abuse is a serious problem that affects nearly one million children a year in the United States alone. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the US Department of Health and Human Services classify child abuse into four categories including neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and emotional abuse. None of these categories, however, clearly includes the abusive use of drugs on children. A study soon to be published in the Journal of Pediatrics investigates the malicious use of pharmaceuticals and attempts to shed light on this under-recognized problem.
More than 80% of children who are diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder take prescription medications at some point to treat their symptoms, according to a new nationwide survey of parents by Consumer Reports Health.
So many children take medication for any number of issues and when a doctor recommends a change we tend to go along with it. But one family says an abrupt and drastic change in medication turned their gentle song into a killer.
Which treatments work best for kids who have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)? A recent Consumer Reports survey reveals that parents rank drug therapy as the most beneficial, followed by changing schools.
An experimental treatment which could help fight a cancer that attacks the nervous system of young children has been granted orphan drug status by the Food and Drug Administration.
GlaxoSmithKline Plc has agreed to pay more than $1 billion to resolve more than 800 cases alleging its Paxil antidepressant caused birth defects in some users’ children, according to people familiar with the settlements.
Close to 4.5 million children have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, commonly known as ADHD. Consumer Reports recently surveyed 900 parents whose children have this condition to help other parents understand which treatments work the best.
Findings from a new study that shows that anti-psychotic drugs are likely to cause brain damage has raised alarm bells among health campaigners and human rights groups.
Johnson & Johnson’s McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit will be eliminating 300 of 400 jobs at the Fort Washington, PA manufacturing facility that made Tylenol and other over-the-counter drugs that were recalled earlier this year. The plant has been closed since April 30, and could remain closed well into next year, McNeil said.
One of two women accused of drugging children in a Springfield Township day care center was sentenced today by a Hamilton County Judge. 56 year old Pamela Hartley of Cleves will spend six months in jail and can no longer work in childcare.
Children in Afghanistan are often fed opium to stop their crying, and many are born to addicts. A few clinics offer drug rehab for youths, but they are scarce and socially taboo.
Want to protect your kids from high cholesterol? Just give ’em drugs—like the new, chewable form of Lipitor. Yes, chewable. Like candy. A new Action Alert asks Congress to repeal a really rotten law that encourages this.
Lipitor, the world’s top-selling drug—made by Pfizer, the world’s largest pharmaceutical company—has just been approved for use with children in the European Union. It is already approved for children in the US. The motivation is obvious: Lipitor’s 2009 sales were about $13 billion, but its US patent expires at the end of November 2011. This means Pfizer will quickly lose much of its Lipitor revenue once the generic competition hits the market. The company is desperately trying to boost its sales everywhere it can before then.
A world-renowned Harvard child psychiatrist whose work has helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic medicines in children earned at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007 but for years did not report much of this income to university officials, according to information given Congressional investigators.
Consumers are accusing Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) of fraud and racketeering in a lawsuit stemming from its recent children's drug recall. The buyers of those recalled meds are demanding cash refunds--rather than coupons for replacement products--in five suits seeking class-action status in federal court in Chicago.
U.S drugmaker Johnson & Johnson was recently forced to recall children’s Tylenol and some other over the counter pediatric medications which has now resulted in a lawsuit being filed in federal court agains the company. Some consumers are unhappy with the company’s plan to offer replacement products or coupons to those who bought the affected drugs.
The Judge Rotenberg Center, located outside of Boston, has been under the media’s fire since their methods of reprehension for students were revealed. The school uses aversives to correct the behavior of children who are acting out. What kind of aversives do they use? Skin shock treatment.
Kid Drugging NAMI Big Pharma Psychiatry Wake Up America 17
Radhia and Peter discuss the wide spread use of psychiatric drugs in todays society. This video goes over the relationship between big pharma and NAMI, The National Alliance on Mental Illness. Is this really an advocacy group for mental health consumers or a front group to help market drugs for big pharma and push legislation in favor of the Big Pharma Profits? Whats the relationships between Big Pharma, NAMI, psychiatry and children's meds?