Guest post by Joe Hoft of JoeHoft.com, republished with the permission of AbleChild
Despite zero understanding of how even one psychiatric drug “works” as “treatment” for alleged mental disorders, the rate of cocktail (polypharmacy) drugging among children is increasing. One doctor called for informed consent about the benefits and risks associated with the “contraindicated” drugging.
A recent study from Lawrence Kleinman, professor of pediatrics at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, reviewed Medicaid data for more than 141,000 patients (under 21) receiving any psychiatric medication and found that nearly 400 of those patients received at least one “potentially dangerous combination” of psychiatric drugs.
Dr. Kleinman warned that “good practice demands that patients and caregivers be informed of and assent to risks and benefits, including informing them that the intended pair of medications is typically contraindicated.” What Kleinman is warning is that there are serious risks to prescribing cocktails of psychiatric drugs and it is not recommended.
According to Kleinman’s research, polypharmacy (more than one drug prescribed together) is a common practice, with nearly 38 percent of patients in the study filling two or more medications with at least one month overlap, generating more than 11,000 distinct drug combinations.
Kleinman found that the most contraindicated combination involved the antipsychotic Ziprasidone, approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the “treatment” of schizophrenia and bipolar. And the research further revealed that “other risky combinations involved antidepressants such as Fluoxetine (Prozac) and Trazodone paired with various antipsychotic medications…”
This isn’t the first of its kind research as a report in February of this year showed that kids in the state of Maryland also are receiving cocktails of psychiatric drugs at ever increasing rates. Yes. It’s a veritable behavioral chemical lobotomy for America’s children at the whim of the prescribing doctor, despite the serious risks associated with such prescribing.
According to the Maryland research conducted by University of Maryland School of Pharmacy graduate student Yueh Yi Chiang, between 2015 and 2020, those children under the age of 17 were receiving “multiple psychiatric drugs during that time that rose from 4.2% in 2015 to 4.6% five years later.” And sadly, those kids who were disabled or in foster care “were significantly more likely than individuals with low income to receive three or more psychotropic classes overlapping for 90 days or more.”
Three or more psychiatric drugs at one time? How is this prescribing not criminal? Physicians are abundantly aware of the serious risks associated with cocktail drugging, especially in light of the fact that not one doctor has even a clue about how these drugs “work” in the brain as “treatment.”
According to an article on Axios “The Puzzle of Matching Psychiatric Drugs to Patients,” by Caitlin Owens and Alison Snyder, doctors cannot figure out how best to prescribe psychiatric drugs because there is no understanding about the disorders.
According to Owens and Snyder, “despite decades of research and millions of dollars in investment, there’s been limited success treating depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other disorders.” The writers further explain that “treating these disorders is often a trial-and-error process that can unnecessarily expose people to side effects of a drug, or combination of drugs, that may be irrelevant.” Or harmful.
The bottom line is that there is no science to support even one psychiatric disorder. There is no X-ray, CAT scan, blood test, urine test that will reveal an objective confirmable abnormality in the brain that is any psychiatric diagnosis. There is no science to show that depression, anxiety, bipolar, ADHD or schizophrenia, to name a few, are brain abnormalities.
Now add to that the psychiatric mind-altering drugs that are used as “treatment” for these alleged brain disorders. If one reviews the FDA’s approval of all psychiatric drugs like antidepressants, antipsychotics, and stimulants there is no understanding about how the drugs “work” to “treat” the alleged disorder.
For example, the FDA writes this about Fluoxetine (Prozac) the first Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant “Although the exact mechanism of Prozac is unknown, it is presumed to be linked to its inhibition of CNS neuronal uptake of serotonin.” In other words, the FDA has no idea how the drug Prozac “works” in the brain, but “presumes” it has something to do with the levels of the naturally occurring brain chemical serotonin.
There is no known test to measure anyone’s brain chemicals. The pharmaceutical companies are aware of this fact and so are physicians. It’s insulting. If there were a test to measure the chemical levels in the brain, then people would know when their levels were correct and would stop taking the drugs that allege to increase the chemical levels. But there is no test to measure chemicals in the brain and, in 2022, the “chemical imbalance” theory was thoroughly debunked by Dr. Joanna Moncrieff.
Now, let’s look at the Antipsychotic Olanzapine (Brand name Zyprexa) for the “treatment” of the alleged schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The FDA says this about how Olanzapine “works” “the mechanism of action of olanzapine, as with other drugs having efficacy in schizophrenia, is unknown.” This explanation is a riot. The FDA tries to mitigate the lack of any knowledge about how the drug works by explaining that it also doesn’t know how the other schizophrenia drugs work.
However, on a more serious note, it’s important to understand the potential serious side effects associated with these drugs. And while not targeting Eli Lilly, the makers of Prozac and Zyprexa, these two drugs, like all the psychiatric drugs, have potential serious adverse outcomes.
For example, adverse effects possible with the use of antidepressant Prozac include anxiety, nervousness, abnormal dreams, agitation, hostility, hypomania, mania, abnormal thinking, depersonalization, psychosis, neurosis, paranoid reactions, aggression, delusions, hallucinations, and suicidality. And the possible side effects associated with Zyprexa include depression, confusion, personality disorder, anxiety, visual hallucinations, abnormal dreams, aggression, delirium, and suicide attempts.
Taken together, these two psychiatric drugs(polypharmacy) may be prescribed to a child as “treatment” for an alleged mental disorder. The question is whether the patient is provided detailed information about the possible adverse events associated with the drug cocktail and an explanation about the lack of science to support any psychiatric diagnosis. It’s called informed consent.
The fact is there is no regulatory agency overseeing the drugging of America’s children. There are no state or federal agencies that oversee and regulate how many psychiatric drugs may be prescribed. More infuriating, reporting adverse events to the FDA’s MEDWATCH is not explained by physicians to patients. And, worse, the ever-increasing number of mind-altering drug cocktails are not subject to rigorous clinical trials to determine possible adverse effects of prescribing multiple psychiatric drugs.
Given the lack of science to support the alleged mental illness and the FDA’s inability to provide an explanation about how psychiatric drugs “work,” is it any wonder that there is a mental health “crisis” in America? The need to prescribe America’s children with cocktails of mind-altering drugs says all anyone needs to know about the failure of the mental health and pharmaceutical industry. Chemical lobotomies aren’t “treatment.” It’s no longer a secret. No one is getting better.
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