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You are not alone in questioning psychiatric business as usual regarding our children. Legislatures and school boards across the country are looking into this sordid matter. I know you are aware that three class action lawsuits have been filed against Novartis, the manufacturer of Ritalin, the American Psychiatric Association, and the attention deficit support group called CHADD. These lawsuits are arguing that a fraud has been perpetrated on the public in the form of misinformation downplaying the harmful effects of Ritalin, and leading consumers to believe that ADD is a real disease. Educational professionals have also been lead astray. Accepting false biopsychiatric beliefs as fact, educators create, promote and allow the practice of giving psychiatric drugs to the children in our schools. You may be aware that some are so adamant about these beliefs that parents have been threatened with having their child removed by the state if they did not go along with the demand that their child take psychiatric drugs. More commonly, school personnel simply pressure parents to consider drugs. Even as I speak, a mother with whom I consulted last week is involved in an ARD meeting for her son at a local elementary school with personnel who asked her, "Have you considered medication for your son?" This is customary and usual practice in Texas schools. As an educational authority in our state, you are absolutely acting in a responsible, ethical manner by making this inquiry into what has tragically become customary and usual practice. We have medicalized what must rightfully be considered educational challenges The Effects of Psychiatric Drugs For a short version of the physical effects of psychiatric drugs, the standard Physician's Desk Reference is adequate. For our purpose here, suffice it to say that every organic system is affected: cardiovascular, central nervous system, gastrointestinal, endocrine/metabolic, and more. Members of the Board, please make no mistake about the fact that giving children these powerful drugs causes brain damage! Whatever the language, however you justify it, the truth is that some degree of arrested and altered brain and central nervous system development is an inevitable consequence of psychiatric drug use with children. Some children die; 160 Ritalin-related deaths were reported to the FDA between 1990 and 1997, mostly cardiovascular in nature. There are at least two parents sitting in the audience today for whom the deaths of their children can be attributed to the effects of psychiatric drugs. I will briefly mention just a few of the many significant emotional or behavioral effects of these drugs. The Zombie Effect Many parents have voiced the poignant observation that they have somehow lost their child, that the spark is gone, the eyes are vacant, the zest and vitality are lessened. The defenders of biopsychiatry acknowledge this so-called zombie effect, but, incredibly enough, construe it as harmless. In their 1995 Comprehensive Textbook on Psychiatry, L. Eugene Arnold, professor emeritus of psychiatry at Ohio State University, and Peter Jensen, chief of the National Institute of Mental Health research branch on children and adolescents, make the following admission: "The amphetamine look, a pinched, somber expression, is harmless in itself but worrisome to parents, who can be reassured. The behavioral equivalent, the 'zombie' constriction of affect and spontaneity, may respond to a reduction of dosage, but sometimes necessitates a change of drug." Even when the effect is not so dramatic, something is always lost due to suppression by the drug. Character Development One thing that is always lost when a child takes drugs is the inborn right and need of individuals to develop their characters, their abilities to function and regulate themselves without being under the influence of drugs. That is always lost. Also always lost is the inborn right and need of the child to grow and develop on all levels in as wholesome a way as possible. |
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