(1888PressRelease)
March 30, 2007 - Under heavy pressure from growing public scrutiny over people being drugged for normal behavior, in addition to increasing international warnings on the deadly side effects of psychiatric drugs, prominent psychiatrist Robert Spitzer made an astounding admission—in effect, he conceded that there is no science to psychiatric diagnoses. Columbia University’s Robert Spitzer is one of the leading architects of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychiatry’s billing bible, who oversaw two out of five revisions of the DSM and defined more than a hundred mental disorders. “What happened,” Spitzer stated in the BBC documentary, “is that we made estimates of the prevalence of mental disorders totally descriptively, without considering that many of these conditions might be normal reactions which are not really disorders. That’s the problem, because we were not looking at the context in which those conditions developed.” Yet only a week after the documentary aired, afraid of the ramifications of his statements for his field, he is denying the implications of the BBC interview—that normal people are being led to believe that they are disordered.
Psychiatric labels, such as “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder” and “Oppositional Defiant Disorder,” have resulted in millions needlessly subjected to dangerous and life-threatening psychiatric drugs. Now, thirty-three years after he began working as Chairman of the DSM Taskforce, Spitzer has become embroiled in the debate over whether something is dangerously awry with the diagnostic system he helped to invent. The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), a mental health watchdog, charges that the psychiatrists behind the DSM have misled the public and placed many at risk by convincing them that they are “mentally ill” and in need of harmful psychiatric treatment such as drugs, involuntary commitment, electroshock and restraint.
There is no scientific evidence that any of the millions of people labeled with “mental disorders” have any physical abnormality that justifies the diagnosis, and because of this, psychiatrists cannot agree on who is sick and who is well. Yet, despite this inept psychiatric diagnostic system, worldwide sales of psychotropic drugs prescribed to treat “mental disorders,” including stimulants, antipsychotics and antidepressants, now exceed $80 billion annually.
Although Spitzer has falsely promoted the safety of psychiatric drugs, stating that the drugs “don’t have serious side effects,” this claim is contradicted by numerous FDA warnings, official studies, adverse event reports to the FDA and lawsuits over psychiatric drug injuries. Following is a sample of these:
· The FDA has warned that psychiatric drugs cause heart attack, stroke, suicidal and homicidal behavior, diabetes, psychosis and sudden death.
· In 2006 the FDA announced that they received 51 reports of sudden death from ADHD drugs such as Adderall. (Keith Altman, an expert in analyzing adverse event data, stated that only an estimated 1-10% of adverse events on drugs are reported to the FDA.)
· According to a USA Today study of FDA data collected between 2000 and 2004, there were at least 45 child deaths with antipsychotics listed as the “primary suspect.” During this time period, there were also 1,328 reports of bad side effects, some of them life-threatening.
· Eli Lilly, manufacturer of the antipsychotic Zyprexa, has agreed to pay approximately $1.2 billion to settle more than 25,000 individual claims against them for diabetes and other side effects.
· Dr. David Healy, director of Cardiff University’s North Wales department of psychological medicine, published a study in September last year in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal which found that antidepressants increase the risk of violence in children and adults.
To learn more, visit www.cchr.org and read these publications by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights: "The Report on the Escalating International Warnings on Psychiatric Drugs" or "Psychiatric Diagnostic Manual Link to Drug Manufacturers."
