PRESS RELEASE:

April 14, 2004
Contact: Marla Filidei
humanrights@cchr.org
1-800-869-2247

Group Charges Psychiatrists are Misleading the Government about Childhood "mental disorders" to Champion Deadly Drugs

LOS ANGELES - Amid increasing controversy surrounding the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) failure to accurately report the suicidal effects of certain antidepressants being prescribed to children, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) says that the source of this problem is being ignored. It accuses psychiatrists of pushing a drug agenda by falsely claiming that more and more children are "mentally ill" requiring FDA approval for and the mass consumption of mind-altering medication. Charging that this is a fraud, the group says that without questioning the validity of what psychiatrists claim are childhood "mental disorders," the FDA continues to approve dangerous drugs for an epidemic that simply doesn't exist. Children's lives, CCHR says, are at stake.

CBS Evening News and the Los Angeles Times recently obtained documents showing the FDA withheld damaging findings about antidepressants by one of its own medical experts, Dr. Andrew Mosholder. After examining the results of more than two dozen clinical trials of Selective Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants, Dr. Mosholder found an unusually high correlation between the drugs and children becoming suicidal. Children who took the drugs were twice as likely to be involved in suicide-related behavior as those who did not. This data was suppressed from the public for more than two months and the FDA refused to allow Dr. Mosholder to testify at a recent hearing it held into SSRIs and suicidality. The U.S. Senate Finance Committee, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations now want to know why and have launched investigations.

Australian researchers published their findings in this month's British Medical Journal that also determined doctors should not prescribe SSRIs to children because they carry significant risks and are not much better than a placebo. Harvard University psychiatrist, Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, author of Prozac Backlash, stated, "What this shows is that, on balance, there is no good reason to prescribe these pills."

Yet on March 22, the FDA issued a public health advisory to doctors about the potential for SSRIs to cuse suicidality or worsening depression, but claimed that there was no conclusive scientific evidence to prove it.

Bruce Wiseman, the U.S. President of CCHR says, "The issue is that there is no scientific evidence to substantiate that two million children in this country have a 'mental disorder' requiring antidepressants and another six million are so 'disturbed' or 'hyperactive' they need addictive stimulants. This is a hoax. The FDA has been approving psychiatric drugs based on the American Psychiatric Association's 'billing bible,' The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which medical experts say is junk science. Subsequently, millions of children have been forced onto powerful drugs and children are now dying from them. No one is investigating that the statistics psychiatrists bandy around about childhood mental illness are false. Because of the DSM, we have become a nation convinced that childhood is a mental disorder and that the answer is to hook kids on drugs."

Wiseman added, "Psychiatrists should be held accountable for the alarming increase in children being labeled as 'disordered' and prescribed mind-altering drugs." According to an IMS Health Survey, between 1995 and 1999, the use of antidepressants increased 151% for 7 to 12 year olds and 580% for children under six. Between 1998 and 2003, there was another 49% increase in children taking antidepressants. Sales of the drugs have now reached more than $13 billion a year that CCHR says is a key factor in psychiatry and the FDA ignoring the dangerous effects of antidepressants.

CCHR also says Congress must take more effective action and pass laws to protect children from being forced onto psychiatric drugs through schools. Last May, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Child Medication Safety Act last May by a landslide vote of 425 - 1. The bill, which prevents school personnel from coercing parents into placing their children on psychiatric drugs, was introduced into the Senate in July.

To read more about the Senate and House investigations of the FDA go to:

http://finance.senate.gov/press/Gpress/2004/prg032504b.pdf

or

http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/News/03242004_1243.htm

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was established in 1969 by the Church of Scientology to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights. For more information, visit www.cchr.org or call 1-800-869-2247.