Bipolar Disorder: Epidemic Without a Disease
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A child neurologist says bipolar disorder may be a fictitious disease that bankrolls big pharma, hurts kids.
In the Newsweek cover story of May 26, 2008, Growing Up Bipolar, Mary Carmichael describes yet another magical psychiatric epidemic. In any report of an epidemic there should be a description of the disease of which the epidemic is comprised and mention of the test by which the disease is diagnosed. But nowhere is there mention of a physical abnormality-gross (visible to the naked eye), microscopic or chemical, to make it a disease. Where is the proof that Max Blake, now ten, is other than physically, medically normal?
Related Breaking: Researchers Fail to Reveal Drug Pay
A world-renowned 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. (NYT, Jun 8, 2008)
Symptoms abound. Max can't sleep. Max is sad. Max wants to kill himself. All serious symptoms to be sure, but entirely subjective -- not objective "signs," abnormalities, diseases. Undaunted, Carmichael calls "bipolar" an "elusive disease" with a grave prognosis: a "horror story," in which "terrible things happen." But still no disease.
Next, we are told: "some doctors do not believe (bipolar) exists in children." But diagnosis is not a matter of belief. If no abnormality is demonstrated the diagnosis is "no evidence of disease" -- NED, or "no organic disease" -- NOD.
Absent abnormalities, Carmichael marshals more symptoms: "These babies are born screaming."
Seeking to overwhelm with epidemiology, Carmichael writes: "800,000 children in the United States have been diagnosed." "The disease is hard to pin down." Nor does repeating the word "disease" make it so.
Parents are asked to chose from among the "many drugs" available even though "it's unclear how they work." How could it be otherwise without a disease to treat. No infection, cancer, or diabetes -- all diagnosable, all treatable. In psychiatry, drugs change emotions and behaviors by damaging the normal brain, causing intoxication, poisoning, abnormality -- disease.
"The disease is hard to pin down." "Its unclear how they (the drugs) work." This is not medical science, it is the "medical-speak" of "biological," psychiatry that is deceptive, fraudulent, and intent on peddling drugs. When the patient is known to be normal but is called "diseased" and is "medicated," is that not poisoning? Is it not assault and battery? If the same patient dies, what is that called?
While false diagnostic labels alone may not make persons psychiatric patients-in-perpetuity, drugs which cause chemical dependency and conspicuous injury, such as Parkinson's syndrome or tardive dyskinesia in a seven year-old, surely do. Max's parents were told (1) "treat (your) child and risk a bad outcome," or (2) "don't treat and risk a worse one." In either case, this message is surely to the liking of the pharmaceutical industry which bankrolls it all.
Max and his parents have come to believe the "bipolar" fiction and to play out their roles in it. The main authors -- perpetrators of this and all of psychiatry's fictitious "diseases" are the DSM Committee of the American Psychiatric Association and "researchers" at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
For Max's mother: "There was one good thing about this strange diagnosis, she thought: at least it meant she wasn't a bad mother." Max and his parents all had roles to play. Max's role is to be "bipolar," a psychiatric patient-in-perpetuity. Everything else would take care of itself and psychiatry and Big Pharma would reap billions a year. And who knows, perhaps the 800,000 "bipolar" Max's Carmichael says we have this year will become 1.5 to 2 million next year, which many think it already is.
Harvard psychiatrists Joseph Biederman and Janet Wozniac were said to have "described" pediatric bipolar disorder in 1995. I have no doubt that they "described" it but, as is the case with all of psychiatry's "chemical imbalances" they have never proved that a single one is an actual disease, as throughout the rest of medicine.
At 2 1/2 years of age, Rebecca Riley of Hull, Massachusetts was "diagnosed" ADHD and bipolar disorder, by child psychiatrist, Dr. Kayoko Kifuji, and was put on Clonidine, Depakote and Seroquel, the last of which is a potent, poisonous, antipsychotic. None had been approved by the FDA for children so young. Rebecca became like a "floppy doll" and died December 13, 2006, at 4 years of age, not from a psychiatric disease, because there is no such thing, but from the very real, very toxic psychiatric drugs prescribed for her. Incredibly, her parents sit in jail, charged with her murder. Who made it appear that Rebecca had two "diseases"? Who convinced the parents she did and that the medications prescribed were "treatments" for them? Countless hundreds if not thousands of children thus diagnosed and drugged are dying, not from psychiatric diseases, but from the one or several drugs prescribed for them as "treatment." Between 1990 and 2000, 186 deaths from methylphenidate-Ritalin were reported to the FDA-MedWatch program, a voluntary reporting program of the FDA itself, says it detects no more than 1-10 percent of the actual number.
Who is responsible for the murder of Rebecca Riley? Who is responsible for the thousands or tens of thousands of deaths from prescribed psychiatric drugs for psychiatric "diseases" that do not exist?
Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD, has discovered and described real diseases and accepts full responsibility for all opinions and representations herein. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology, Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, and author of the book: THE ADHD FRAUD -- How Psychiatry Makes "Patients" of Normal Children
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Comments (6 posted):
I've never seen a bipolar child but have a fair number of adolescents with significant mood instability that seemed much more symptomatic than caused by issues and events (although those are always present before or after the mood episode). The psychiatrist with whom I worked with for over 10 years was far more concerned with symptoms and medication that could relieve those than specific diagnoses. The notion of "rational poly-pharmacy" was not invoked or employed.
Treatment proceeded and was effective. It involved concurrent medication and psychotherapy, individual and family. Of interest, only a few teens did not stay on medications over the life span. All but one benefited initially from the first or second medication. Those who I followed came off the medication at 18 or after a year of college. Depakote worked exceptionally well for teenage males and the same or Trileptal for females. But the premise wasn't treating the latest diagnostic phenomenon. It was focused on symptoms and carefully evaluated and monitored with tests for levels in the case of Depakote and Lithium at the appropriate intervals.
Knowing what I do about the impact of these medications and their power, including the antipsychotic meds used for mood stabilization and emerging psychosis (not uncommon), it's hard to imagine children 12 and younger taking several antiipsychotics. I simply don't see these clients and can’t imagine the impact on a child.
What I do see is pre and early teens placed on psycho stimulants at increasingly higher doses who, at some point, have melt downs that require hospitalization. I also see adolescent who are given SSRI's and have full blown manic episodes shortly after beginning the medication. This is the subject not mentioned in the dialog on suicide and antidepressants. The risk taking during these episodes can be frightening and is clearly not an acceptable outcome. These teens generally have a family history loaded with depression and "nervous breakdowns" or diagnosed mania.
The psychiatrist and I went to a couple of American Academy of Adolescent Psychiatry meetings. In Chicago, I saw Biederman who did, indeed, report hundreds of individuals treated that he argued were headed for disaster, absent intervention.
At the same conference, a very bright D.O. had much more interesting findings to report. He’d headed up a research project at his university and found that almost no teens showed any history of actual major depressive episodes as defined by the DSM. He found that there were significant depressive disorders with dysthymia being the most common (which over laps with teen identity issues). And he also pointed out that SSRI’s were problematic since the reports of improvement are often as frequently on placebos as they are on the SSRI tested.
That was a moment of truth that matched up with my experience and those of my more astute colleagues. The pediatricians and family practitioners who were prescribing antidepressants have largely stopped due to the “suicidal ideation†studies.
Any medication routine, particularly one for problems where the symptoms may be driven by issues and events, rather than symptoms, needs to be carefully considered. For adolescents, it’s a last resort after other factors have been ruled out. In the case of children, the bar is even higher.
One problem working with adolescents, as you know, is getting the entire picture. That’s doable but it takes some real effort. With children, the process is reliant on informants, the parents, and is much more difficult. It’s hard to imagine, for that population, how “rational†poly-pharmacy could ever be.
I’ll be interested to look at your work. I’m sure that you mentioned another unmentionable, although I mention it – psycho stimlants that help with focus for purported ADHD also help with focus for those clearly not diagnoses. In that sense, it seems to me, that successful treatment with medication has no bearing on the validity of the diagnosis.
Thanks for raising these very important questions.
I don't see psychiatry as "an evil industry hell-bent on destroying minds and lives." I do believe that this specialty is infected, as are many medical specialties, with practitioners who choose financial gain over what's best for the patient and for the entire society. The medical community needs to adopt and enforce meaningful oversight and reign in financial and political interests. The same could be said for the entire spectrum of entities serving the public.
Psychiatry is a valuable resource when someone needs to talk and doesn't have someone to really listen to them. Just my feeling on it though. :)
-njppa
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