158 House Health Care "Reform" Bill filled with Psycho/Pharma Agenda

(1) House Health Care "Reform" Bill filled with Psycho/Pharma Agenda
(2) Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America
(3) Immigrants from India, Pakistan face U.S. Prostate, Breast Cancer Risks
(4) Government promoting breastfeeding - to reduce obesity & chronic disease
(5) Low-Fat diets preferable to Low-Carb

(1) House Health Care "Reform" Bill filled with Psycho/Pharma Agenda

From: Gary Kohls <gkohls@cpinternet.com>  Date: 13.11.2009 05:29 PM

House Health Care "Reform" Bill foreshadows BigPharma's attempt to get everybody diagnosed and on neurotoxic and unaffordable psych drugs

CCHR Update on U.S. Health Care Reform Bills

UPDATE: New Health Care Bill Drafted by House of Representatives Filled with Psycho/Pharma Agenda

http://www.cchrint.org/legislative-alerts/federal-health-bill-calls-for-billions-in-orwellian-psych-programs-and-treatments/update/

Information: The newly-forged 1990-page “Affordable Health Care for America Act” (HR 3962) offered by the House of Representatives is filled with mental health provisions intended to prop up psychiatry as well as the pharmaceutical industry with billions in future income. Key mental health components of this House bill:

MOTHERS Act
The bill includes the language of the MOTHERS Act, to “expand treatment for postpartum conditions” and calls for the development of “improved screening and diagnostic techniques,” but makes no provisions to ensure any entities doing such research are free from conflicts of interest or pharmaceutical funding.  For example, Screening for Mental Health, Inc., and its sub-organization Signs of Suicide, who heavily promote and conduct mental health screening, received $4,985,925 from pharmaceutical companies prior to 2008, and ten leading psychiatric researchers have been exposed in the last year for failing to disclose millions of dollars in pharmaceutical payments.  Despite their conflicts of interest and biased research, many pharma funded psychiatrists and researchers have been used by so-called advocacy groups (Screening for Mental Health, NAMI, etc which are also heavily funded by Pharma) to promote the need for federal laws that will only increase the number of Americans being needlessly targeted for psychiatric treatment and drugged. Yet this bill contains no provisions for full disclosure of conflicts of interest for any “entity” that could receive federal taxpayer funded grants, do research or promotional campaigns – such as the provision in the bill calling for a national PR campaign using TV, radio public and other public service announcements to urge women be screened and seek treatment for postpartum depression.  The bill also calls for “clinical research” for the development of new treatments (drugs), but again, no guidelines for ensuring that any researchers/research entities are free from pharmaceutical funding or conflicts of interest. Section 2529, Page 1418

Mental Health Parity
The bill mandates Mental Health Parity, or equal insurance coverage for mental disorders as what are covered for physical diseases, whether under their regular health insurance or whether a person gets their new coverage through the Health Insurance Exchange.  Psychiatric patients are traditionally “cured” when their insurance benefits run out.  In this bill, those benefits never run out.  Considering there are no medical tests to verify the existence of any psychiatric disorder, and without anything other than a psychiatrist’s opinion about whether or not the person’s “illness” is “cured,” this legislation becomes nothing more than taxpayer funded billions to the psycho/pharmaceutical industry who will continue their jihad of mass drugging of Americans.  This provision could easily encompass all 374 diagnoses in psychiatry’s diagnostic manual, covering everything from Phase of Life Problem to Arithmetic Disorder.  Section 214, Page 100

Home Visitation Programs for Families with Young Children or Families Expecting Children
The bill creates a home visitation program for families with young children or which are expecting children or who have certain “risk factors.”  The program provides assessments regarding matters of “age appropriate behaviors,” for children, prevention of family violence and referral to outside services.  – Section 1904, Page 1177

School Based Health Clinics
The bill includes funding for School Based Health Clinics that will include subjective psychiatric mental health screening (called mental health assessments) of children, and “referral to a continuum of services including emergency psychiatric care, community support programs, inpatient care, and outpatient programs” as part of their “comprehensive primary health services.”  This is a direct feeder line for the psycho/pharmaceutical industry directly into our schools. – Section 2511, Page 1352

Wellness Program Grants for small employers
The grants in the bill serve as an incentive for employers to include “mental health” as part of the Wellness Program Grants to businesses.  Part of the program entails a “Behavioral Change Component” that encourages “healthy living through counseling” and may include programs relating to “tobacco use, obesity, stress management, depression and mental health.” – Section 112, Page 67

Federally Qualified Behavioral Health Centers
The bill creates new “Federally Qualified Behavioral Health Centers” and in order for existing community mental health centers to qualify, they have to provide, among other things, “mental health screening, assessment, and diagnosis,” as well as “outpatient clinic mental health services, including screening, assessment, diagnosis, psychotherapy and medication,” in addition to “crisis mental health services including 24-hour mobile crisis teams.”  - Section 2513, Page 1367

Your voice needs to be heard in Washington on this outrageous bill. Call, fax, or email your Representative and tell them that you are opposed to the above points in the Health Care Reform bill. To find your Representative and get their contact information, go to http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt to look them up (you need to enter your zip code). You can also call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

(2) Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

From: Gary Kohls <gkohls@cpinternet.com> Date: 27.10.2009 05:04 PM

Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter # 224

Excerpts from Robert Whitaker’s Anatomy of an Epidemic: Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, Vol. 7, Number 1, Spring 2005

Full article, with extensive documentation, accessible at:

http://psychrights.org/index.htm

Excerpted, with minimal editing, by Gary G. Kohls, MD, Duluth, MN

The percentage of Americans disabled by mental illness has increased fivefold since 1955, when Thorazine – remembered today as psychiatry’s first “wonder” drug – was introduced into the market.

There are now nearly 6 million Americans disabled by mental illness, and this number increases by more than 400 people each day. A review of the scientific literature reveals that it is our drug-based paradigm of care that is fueling this epidemic. The drugs increase the likelihood that a person will become chronically ill, and induce new and more severe psychiatric symptoms in a significant percentage of patients.

E. Fuller Torrey, in his 2001 book The Invisible Plague, concluded that insanity had risen to the level of an epidemic. This epidemic has unfolded in lockstep with the ever-increasing use of psychiatric drugs.

The number of disabled mentally ill has increased nearly six-fold since Thorazine was introduced.

The number of disabled mentally ill has also increased dramatically since 1987, the year Prozac was introduced.

Anti-psychotics, antidepressants, and anti-anxiety drugs create perturbations in neurotransmitter functions. In response, the brain goes through a series of compensatory adaptations. Neurons both release less serotonin and down-regulate (or decrease) their number of serotonin receptors. The density of serotonin receptors in the brain may decrease by 50% or more. After a few weeks, the patient’s brain is functioning in a manner that is qualitatively as well as quantitatively different from the normal state.

Conditions that disrupt brain chemistry may cause delusions, hallucinations, disordered thinking, and mood swings – the symptoms of insanity. Infectious agents, tumors, metabolic and toxic disorders and various diseases could all affect the brain in this manner. Psychiatric medications also disrupt brain chemistry. Psychotropic drugs increase the likelihood that a person will become chronically ill, and they cause a significant percentage of patients to become ill in new and more severe ways.

TURNING PATIENTS CHRONICALLY ILL

Neuroleptics (= Anti-psychotics = Anti-schizophrenics = Major Tranquilizers)

In an NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) study, short-term (6 weeks) anti-psychotic drug-treated patients were much improved compared to placebo (75% vs. 23%). However patients who received placebo treatment were less likely to be re-hospitalized over the next 3 years than were those who received any of the three active phenothiazines.

Relapse was found to be significantly related to the dose of the tranquilizing medication the patient was receiving before he was put on placebo – the higher the dose, the greater the probability of relapse.

Neuroleptics increased the patients’ biological vulnerability to psychosis. A retrospective study by Bockoven also indicated that the drugs were making patients chronically ill.

There were three NIMH-funded studies conducted during the 1970s that examined this possibility (whether first-episode psychotic episodes could be treated without medications), and in each instance, the newly admitted patients treated without drugs did better than those treated in a conventional manner (i.e. with anti-psychotic drugs).

Patients who were treated without neuroleptics in an experimental home staffed by nonprofessionals had lower relapse rates over a 2-year period than a control group treated with drugs in a hospital. Patients treated without drugs were the better functioning group as well.

The brain responds to neuroleptics – which block 70% to 90% of all D2 dopamine receptors in the brain – as though they are a pathological insult. To compensate, dopaminergic brain cells increase the density of their D2 receptors by 30% or more. The brain is now supersensitive to dopamine and becomes more biologically vulnerable to psychosis and is at particularly high risk of severe relapse should he or she abruptly quit taking the drugs.

Neuroleptics can produce a dopamine supersensitivity that leads to both dyskinetic and psychotic symptoms. An implication is that the tendency toward psychotic relapse in a patient who had developed such a supersensitivity is determined by more that just the normal course of the illness.

With minimal or no exposure to neuroleptics, at least 40% of people who suffered a psychotic break and were diagnosed with schizophrenia would not relapse after leaving the hospital, and perhaps as many as 65% would function fairly well over the long term. However, once first-episode patients were treated with neuroleptics, a different fate awaited them. Their brains would undergo drug-induced changes that would increase their biological vulnerability to psychosis, and this would increase the likelihood that they would become chronically ill (and thus permanently disabled).

In the mid 1990s, several research teams reported that the drugs cause atrophy of the cerebral cortex and an enlargement of the basal ganglia. The drugs were causing structural changes in the brain. The drug-induced enlargement of the basal ganglia was associated with greater severity of both negative and “positive” (schizophrenic) symptoms.  Over the long term the drugs cause changes in the brain associated with a worsening of the very symptoms the drugs are supposed to alleviate.

Antidepressants

The story of antidepressants is a bit subtler, and it leads to the same conclusion that these drugs increase chronic illness over time. Well-designed studies, the differences between the effectiveness of antidepressant drugs and placebo are not impressive. About 61% of the drug-treated patients improved, versus 46% of the placebo patients, producing a net drug benefit of only 15%.

At the end of 16 weeks (in a study comparing cognitive behavior therapy, interpersonal therapy, the tricyclic antidepressant imipramine and placebo) there were no significant differences among treatments, including placebo plus clinical management, for the less severely depressed and functionally impaired patients. Only the severely depressed patients fared better on a tricyclic than on placebo. However, at the end of 18 months, even this minimal benefit disappeared. Stay-well rates were best for the cognitive behavior group (30%) and poorest for the imipramine group (19%).

Antidepressants were making people chronically ill, just like the anti-psychotics were. In 1985, a U.K. group reported that in a 2-year study comparing drug therapy to cognitive therapy, relapse was significantly higher in the pharmacotherapy group. Long-term use of antidepressants may increase the patient’s biochemical vulnerability to depression and thus worsen the course of affective disorders. An analysis of 27 studies showed that whether one treats a depressed patient for 3 months of 3 years, it does not matter when one stops the drugs. The longer the drug treatment, the higher the likelihood of relapse.

Benzodiazepines

Xanax (a benzodiazepine class “minor” tranquilizer) patients got better during the first four weeks of treatment; they did not improve any more in weeks 4 to 8, and their symptoms began to worsen after that. A high percentage relapsed and by the end of 23 weeks, they were worse off than patients treated without drugs on five different outcomes measures. Patients tapered off Xanax suffered nearly 4 times as many panic attacks as the non-drug patients and 25% of the Xanax patients suffered from rebound anxiety more severe than when they began the study.

Then and Now

Today’s drug-treated patients spend much more time in hospital beds and are far more likely to die from their mental illness than they were in 1896. Modern treatments have set up a revolving door and appear to be a leading cause of injury and death.

MANUFACTURING MENTAL ILLNESS

It is well-known that all of the major classes of psychiatric drugs – anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, benzodiazepines, and stimulants for ADHD – can trigger new and more severe psychiatric symptoms in a significant percentage of patients. It is easy to see this epidemic-creating factor at work with Prozac and the other SSRIs.

Prozac quickly took up the top position as America’s most complained about drug. By 1997, 39,000 adverse-event reports about it had been sent to Medwatch. These reports are thought to represent only 1% of the actual number of such events, suggesting that nearly 4 million people in the US had suffered such problems, which included mania, psychotic depression, nervousness, anxiety, agitation, hostility, hallucinations, memory loss, tremors, impotence, convulsions, insomnia and nausea.

The propensity of Prozac and other SSRIs to trigger mania or psychosis is undoubtedly the biggest problem with these drugs. The American Psychiatric Association warns that manic or hypomanic episodes are estimated to occur in 8% to 20 % of patients treated with anti-depressants.

Anti-depressant-induced mania is not simply a temporary and reversible phenomenon, but a complex biochemical mechanism of illness deterioration. Yale researchers reported that 8.1% of all admissions to a psychiatric hospital they studied were due to SSRI-induced mania or psychosis.

Thus the SSRI path to a disabling mental illness can be easily seen. A depressed patient treated with an anti-depressant suffers a manic or psychotic episode, at which time his or her diagnosis is changed to bipolar disorder. At that point, the person is prescribed an anti-psychotic to go along with the anti-depressant, and, once on a drug cocktail, the person is well along on the road to permanent disability.

CONCLUSION

There is an outside agent fueling this epidemic of mental illness, only it is to be found in the medicine cabinet. Psychiatric drugs perturb normal neurotransmitter function, and while that perturbation may curb symptoms over a short term, over the long run it increases the likelihood that a person will become chronically ill, or ill with new or more severe symptoms. A review of the scientific literature shows quite clearly that it is our drug-based paradigm of care that is fueling this modern-day plague.

Excerpts by Gary G. Kohls, MD, From Robert Whitaker’s long essay at http://psychrights.org/index.htm

NOTE: Robert Whitaker wrote the ground-breaking book, Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill, a book  that should be required reading for everybody, (check out www.madinamerica.com).

(3) Immigrants from India, Pakistan face U.S. Prostate, Breast Cancer Risks

Article Date: 29 Aug 2008 - 4:00 PST

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/119637.php

A team of researchers at West Virginia University has shown that U.S. immigrants from India and Pakistan take on the habits of their adopted country, increasing their risks of prostate cancer among male immigrants and breast cancer among females.

"Breast cancer and prostate cancer develop due to many reasons, but environmental factors and lifestyle play a major role in these cancers," said Jame Abraham, M.D., medical director for WVU's Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center and leader of the research team. "When men and women from India and Pakistan migrate to the United States, their disease profiles change, mirroring the American risk."

The study, to be published in the Sept. 15 issue of the journal Cancer, a peer-reviewed journal published by American Cancer Society, is the first epidemiological analysis of the Pakistani and Indian immigrant population. The authors looked at data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program of the National Cancer Institute, examining almost 7,000 cases between 1988 and 2003.

In India, the No. 1 cancer among men is cancer of the mouth related to tobacco use, and the No. 1 cancer among women is cancer of the cervix, which could be caused by human papillomavirus (HPV), poor perinatal care and lack of screening and early detection. In the immigrant population, by contrast, the top cancer is prostate cancer for men and breast cancer for women.

The Pakistani and Indian immigrant population in the United States also experiences rising rates of lung and colon cancer, again mirroring U.S. patterns.

Immigrants have been shown to embrace the Western lifestyle of marrying later, having fewer children, getting less exercise and adopting a diet higher in fat, alcohol and meat, and lower in fiber.

"We need to educate the immigrant population about risk factors as well as preventive measures they can take to reduce their risk of prostate, breast cancer, lung cancer and colon cancer," Dr. Abraham said.

Immigrants from India and Pakistan make up about 1.5 percent of the U.S. population. They experience a better survival rate from cancer compared with the non-Hispanic white U.S. population. ...

(4) Government promoting breastfeeding - to reduce obesity & chronic disease

{What then of the Feminist agenda, to get mothers back to work early?}

Government to push for mothers to breastfeed newborns

By Renee Viellaris

November 13, 2009 12:00am

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,20797,26342866-3102,00.html?from=public_rss

MOTHERS will be urged to ditch the baby bottle under a controversial and potentially divisive five-year plan to boost breast milk feeding rates.

The government-backed pro-breast-milk message will argue that babies fed on breast milk for longer may reduce risks of obesity and chronic disease.

State and federal health ministers today will endorse the plan and consider establishing a national breast milk bank.

The move will be among a raft of measures designed to monitor and persuade Australians to consider how their lifestyles affect public spending.

It will be the latest in a series of government attempts to influence mothers' choices on feeding.

In June, a $100,000-a-year Queensland Health breastfeeding campaign was attacked for using "guilt-inducing" language. The campaign was called "12+months on the breast: Normal, natural, healthy".

The new federal strategy would include increasing community acceptance of breastfeeding as a cultural and social norm, establishing breastfeeding support networks for pregnant women and improved breastfeeding training for health professionals.

A national breast milk bank would collect, screen and dispense human milk donated by nursing mothers to be fed to premature and sick babies whose mothers were unable to feed them or who needed supplementary feeds.

At the centre of the Australian National Breastfeeding Strategy 2010-15 is the goal of increasing the percentage of babies who are fully breastfed from birth to six months, and beyond 12 months.

"Breast milk is an environmentally-friendly product and there are health risks and financial costs associated with not breastfeeding," the draft strategy says.

"Breastfed babies are less likely to suffer from a range of serious illnesses and conditions (and) . . . protective effects . . . in infancy may extend to later life, with reduced risks of obesity and chronic disease."

A study of Australian children in 2004 found 92 per cent of newborns were initially breastfed but within a week that dropped to 80 per cent.

At three months, about 56 per cent were still being fed breast milk.

A federal report in 2007 championed the benefits of breast milk and recommended the Health Department fund a feasibility study for a network of milk banks.

A Mothers Milk Bank established on the Gold Coast in 2006 closed two years later because of a lack of funding. It is scheduled to reopen in the next few months.

Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon also is likely to announce today an initiative to screen for perinatal depression.

{the remedy being - psychiatric medication?}

(5) Low-Fat diets preferable to Low-Carb

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26343785-421,00.html

Low-carb diets mean increased grumpiness

By Brian Williams

The Courier-Mail

November 13, 2009 12:01am

A STUDY has found that although people lose weight on trendy low-carbohydrate diets, they also tend to become worse-tempered than those on low-fat diets.

Low-fat diets work equally well but improve the dieters' frame of mind.

CSIRO researchers placed 106 overweight people on diets for 12 months, randomly splitting the group between low-fat and low-carb, The Courier-Mail reports.

Researcher Grant Brinkworth and colleagues found a low-calorie, low-fat diet more beneficial to dieters' moods than low-carb with the same number of calories.

Dr Brinkworth said changes in body weight, mood, well-being and cognitive functioning – thinking, learning and memory skills – were assessed periodically during and after the diets.

"Potential explanations include the social difficulty of adhering to a low-carbohydrate plan, which is counter to the typical western diet full of pasta and bread; the prescribed, structured nature of the diet; or effects of protein and fat intake on brain levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter related to psychological functioning," Dr Brinkworth said.

Writing in the Archives of Internal Medicine, Dr Brinkworth said there was no evidence the nutrient content of either diet was associated with changes in cognitive function, since both groups experienced similar changes in thinking and memory performance.

After one year, the overall average weight loss of the two groups was 13.7kg.

After the first eight weeks of dieting both groups experienced a more positive state of mind which reflects that obese people who lose weight generally are in a better mood.

But a lasting improvement continued only in those following the low-fat diet.

Researchers said despite consistent advice that a high-carbohydrate, low-fat, energy-restricted diet for obesity treatment was best, the obesity epidemic had led to widespread interest in alternative dietary patterns.

These included low-carbohydrate diets, typically high in protein and fat – particularly saturated fat.

The study was done with National Heart Foundation and National Health and Medical Research Council grants.

Meanwhile, a French team has found that people who walk slowly are three times more likely to die from heart disease than those who walk faster.

The findings highlight the role of fitness in preserving life and function in older age.

The study at the University Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris monitored 3208 men and women aged 65 to 85 years in three cities.