Ironically I just posted an ugly, rambling conversation I had with some jackass I went to high school with who is now a sales rep for Wyeth. He stated, Rebecca Riley's parents killed her and Big Pharma had nothing to do with it. And then went on to say Zyprexa and Seroquel are wonderful drugs that help MILLIONS. He's now pimping, er selling the "new and improved!" Effexor XR but also called Effexor a GREAT drug. Anyway, Wyeth headquarters have been visiting my site all morning. blah.

Sometimes i just think this society is so ridiculous and awful I want to go to an island somewhere.

This is one of those posts that make me wish I was blogging on "quick recipes with no more than three ingredients".
Psychiatrist belongs to jail. Diagnosing a 2 years old girl and prescribing these drugs?
However he has a whole consortium to protect his crime, APA included. Harvard, of course... the whole system.
This is outrageous.

In this case, there wasn't even a too swift of a dx of pediatric bipolar--it was reckless endangerment of Rebecca's life; there is NO long-term study for any doctor to use to base giving a 2 year old these drugs.

That doctor should be in prison, with a lot of time to re-read the oath to "First do no harm" over and over again.

Who gives 2 year olds Seroquel, Depakote etc? hell!

Children and toddlers ARE NOT MINI-ADULTS.
Their brain works differently.
One of the theories is that toddlers have amygdaly more activated tha frontal lobe...
There are many theories based on the the stone-age of understanding the brain.
I'm not bloging on this for now because it makes me angry.
You are murderess!

University of Hopkins, the first to make Hemispherectomy in 1923 is treating epilepsy by removing one side of the brain.
http://justana-justana.blogspot.com/2009/03/girl-had-left-brain-hemisphere-removed.html

Perhaps they are planing transplant one side of the brain or parts.

Always children... in this case they explain because of their easy neuroplasticity.

If the parents are the plaintiffs, and are under investigation for intentional overdose, the case must get dismissed.

1) Any proven overdose breaks the chain of causation between the prescribing and the damage.

2) It is against public policy in most states to reward a crime with a civil settlement.

3) The plaintiff expert must be questioned better. All his records treating two year olds must be entered into the court record, with identities removed. It is not enough to make these claims. One must show that one does as one says. How does he treat a very aggressive and dangerous four year old child? What monitoring did he actually do in his record, and not just in spouting off? If a single record is missing what he claims are the elements of the standard of care, then a mistrial should be demanded, along with all legal costs from the personal assets of the expert. All sanctions against false experts must be obtained inside the trial, from the judge. Otherwise, the expert is immune from outside accountability.

Philip Dawdy responds: SC, you seem to misunderstand. the hearing referred to in this piece is connected with the state medical board not the civil suit brought by the parents. a dangerous four year old? that's quite an assumption, but you are welcome to make it.

I've just realized that I know nothing whatsoever about this case. This is a review of what I *do* know:

1. A little girl died;
2. She had been diagnosed as mentally ill - some (me included), might argue on a questionable basis;
3. She was prescribed lots of drugs, which are held to be safe, except when they're not (ie, one has to be mindful of side effects and dosage);
4. Her parents have been convicted of wilfully overdosing her;
5. The shrink concerned is being sued for being negligent in his diagnosis and in his monitoring of the situation.

None of which is going to prevent it happening, again.

Matt

Even though the FDA "said so", there is no clinical evidence for the condition "pediatric bipolar". None. There is no approval for giving atypicals to children for anything, no matter what the doctors think up. Nor is there yet one long term study showing the damage the atypicals can do over time to the developing organism that is a human child. Put this doctor away for life and set an example, finally, that what is going on is genocide - as is happening with the elderly and these drugs as well.

Supremacy Claus wrote:
"If the parents are the plaintiffs, and are under investigation for intentional overdose, the case must get dismissed..."

The question of the causal chain is an interesting one, but while the parents may have wilfully overdosed Rebecca, the shrink was under a common law Duty of Care to her, in the Tort of Negligence. A court might decide that in failing to follow the shrink's directions, the parents absolved the shrink of responsibility, but not necessarily - if her condition deteriorated (on the drugs), such that a reasonable shrink would review and change/reduce the amount of medication, then he's still negligent. If it were held that he failed to exercize his expertise properly, such that a reasonable shrink would have realized that Rebecca was experiencing severe side effects, consistent with overdose, then he's negligent, again, I think.

However, it's not the parents who are suing - it's the estate of Rebecca Riley. Rebecca Riley from beyond the grave, in other words. I hope she creams the cunts.

Matt

One last word from me, on this one... I strongly suspect that when Rebecca Riley was presented to the shrink, at age 2, the parents conveniently neglected to mention the behaviour that they were exhibiting that was causing Rebecca to exhibit the behaviour that they were complaining of (God alone knows how fucked up the parents are). The shrink, trained to see illness, as he was, failed to ask the obvious questions, for whatever reasons he may have had.

Nothing happens in isolation: I've seen children beaten for triggering their parents. Indeed, it's happened to me. It is never the child's fault nor responsibility, and I'll happily discuss that point, with anyone, including the cowards at Harvard.

Matt

SC: No. "Aggressive" (you don't know) behavior by a four year old does not justify Rebecca Riley's prescribed "treatment". At any rate, the good news is -- it worked. Her teachers reportedly described her as a floppy doll.

And here's an idea: you, Biederman, and Janet Juvederm Wozniak can go write a letter to the Boston Globe about how an abused child's unwanted behaviors justify your psychopharmacological-armageddon. Wait, don't. We're all tired of that.

By the way, The Boston Globe reported initially that the medical examiner stated she died of the combined effects of chronic administration of all the drugs.

Sure, the parents overdosed her. But that's the Goddamn point! The psychiatrist WAS negligent. She did deviate from the standard of care (It's a she by the way. At least you've got your basic facts down.)

The fact stands that we can all be sure without overstating ourselves -- 4 year-old Rebecca Riley did not have bipolar disease. She did however, come from a documented, abusive househould, with fucking bat-shit-crazy parents, that in all likely hood did kill her.

Still, the psychiatrist should have not diagnosed her emotional-behavioral dysregulation as Bipolar disease -- mostly because she did not suffer from said "disease", but also because, doing so obscured the obvious environmental causes of her condition.

Social Services was apparently heavily involved and the father was accused of abuse and found to be so.

This psychiatrist must of had her f'ing head in the sand -- or alternately -- she's a zombie, to not say, "Oh. Wait a minute these parents are negligent and abusive. Should I indulge my biological-science-fiction masturbations (err, explanations) or get the damn kids out of the house, or, initiate extensive interventions because I am well trained in developmental psychology, trauma neurobiology, and attachment theory?

Thank God for the Massachusetts General hospital psychiatry residency programs.

This is ridiculously clear. And technically speaking the case should not be dismissed because her prescriptions are not the main question.

That damn girl has been rotting in the Goddamn ground for 3 fucking years because of her grossly mismanaged care spawned by completely bunk, cash-saturated theories that will be totally discarded within the next 10 years. You, in my opinion denigrate her memory, by your shameless, loathesome, cynicism.

You are insensitive and profoundly, cosmically, shallow. Wait, let me guess...

SC: you're male, white, middle-aged to lated middle aged, and bald. We know you're wealthy. Relatively speaking, all physicians are at your age. So, you're the perfect picture of who to entrust our societies most vulnerable members.

You might take this lightly and think the take home message here is saddle up the legal-defense Bronco, call in John Wayne, and go mow-down all the societal queers that stand in your way, but I can assure you a young, beautiful, innocent, girl, coming from an abusive home and having to put up with that much already, only to have her life cut off by some unthinking, dis-insightful child psychiatrist, stands in contrast to any similar thinking about what actual controversy lies in all this mess that you happen to be conjuring up in your angry, narrow head.

Inappropriate (read: wrong) diagnosis and inappropriate monitoring. Giving abusive and negligent parents all that chemistry to administer to a 4 year old... um, sounds like malpractice to me.

Let's just hope to God this doctor is a zombie...

Here comes the grandiosity: I have news for MGH -- the party is over. Us people diagnosed as Bipolar by MGH psychiatrists and then sent down the psychiatric shit slide are living proof of your sweeping wrongeness. Obliterating the normality of a troubled childs life in the name of treatment -- with the ends being a condition not worth living in -- doesn't justify the means.

Supremacy Claus wrote:
"...How does he treat a very aggressive and dangerous four year old child?.."

I missed this gem. My apologies.

Let's assume, just for the sake of argument (because I do like to argue, it's what I'm good at) that Rebecca Riley was "aggressive and dangerous" (to whom, do you imagine?). I have a question, for you: where do you imagine that she learned that behaviour, or, in your world, is it the case that "mental illness," including bipolar disorder, magically appears in the minds of certain people, but not others, or is hereditary, or something else that we can't track down with any precision (and thus we can continue to ply them with drugs with no proven efficacy)?

And where did you learn your behaviour? Why, for example, do you find it necessary to seek to protect a fellow professional(?), particularly with an unqualified legal argument? Do you imagine that we're impressed by the profession's complete inability to do the thing that it claims to do (cure people)? We're not. I generalize: *I'm* not.

Matt

"I strongly suspect that when Rebecca Riley was presented to the shrink, at age 2, the parents conveniently neglected to mention the behaviour that they were exhibiting that was causing Rebecca to exhibit the behaviour that they were complaining of (God alone knows how fucked up the parents are)."
Matthew

A good psychiatrist has to take into consideration everything. But in the last 20 years it seems that they have no time for that.
This is very good and I'll write a post about my experience with two great psychiatrists.

Thank you Matt. It's not a suspicion of yours. It's a fact.

Supremacy Claus wrote:
"...How does he treat a very aggressive and dangerous four year old child?.."

BTW, the answer to your question is "as though (s)he were a highly intelligent human being." Treat him/her like (s)he's an aggressive and dangerous animal, and do you know what? Yep, fuck me, they'll be aggressive and dangerous.

It's all done with mirrors, mate, and the sooner it dawns on you that Rebecca's parents were describing their own behaviour (and probably very accurately, too), the better.

Matt

It's a shame how many people think that all media coverage is the truth. DSS was not heavily involved with the family prior to Rebecca's death. I am not a medical proffessional, but I have read the "expert's" autopsy report, which says that none of Rebecca's drug level's was above what should be expected for the amount prescribed. When all is said and done, an awful lot of people are going to look very silly for making assumptions without any proof.

Well if anybody here knows personally the "expert" so called witness Dr. Howard Goldman, one would have to argue "where the hell did they find him". He must have prostituted himself to be a PAID expert! He himself has many psychological issues. His office is like a circus. His wife runs the place and she is CRAZY in need of help (meds). His children growing up were troubled and substance users and abusers. One might question that perhaps the Dr tried to rule out ADD and Bi-polar does mask itself as ADD. Perhaps this child had a positive family history of Bi-Polar which would leave one to understandably dx Bi-Polar. Dr. Goldman himself is Bi-Polar and Lori the wife well she's where the DSM gets their complete definitions on all mental diagnosis!