Feel better, Philip! Interesting NYT article.

ProPublica don't know what they missed!

I hear there will be more in the Trib tomorrow!!!

I'm sorry you are having a bad day. I hope tomorrow is better for you.

Philip,

I feel badly that you are not having a good day. You are such a good guy and such a wonderful writer. I hope you are better or feel better tomorrow.

In the meantime, this morning there was a hostage situation inside a school in a small town in New York [grades 6 though 12] where a man with a gun held the principal and three others hostage. Fortunately, all is well now. The gunman said he just needed his med for depression. Here is the way the case appears on SSRI Stories:

http://www.ssristories.com/show.php?item=3761

Paragraph two reads: "Christopher Craft, 42, said: 'Jail’s not the place for me I need to be in a psychiatric center. I’m supposed to get medication [pause] treatment for depression'.”

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20091110/NEWS05/91110003/SCHOOL-GUNMAN-IN-CUSTODY -

PINE PLAINS STISSING MOUNTAIN SUSPECT CHARGED WITH KIDNAPPING

Suspect blames depression
November 10, 2009
PINE PLAINS ­ During his arraignment, a lone gunman who held a middle school principal hostage blamed depression and mental illness.

Christopher Craft, 42, said: "Jail’s not the place for me I need to be in a psychiatric center. I’m supposed to get medication [pause] treatment for depression.”

Craft, of Stanfordville, was accused of holding Robert Hess, Stissing Mountain Middle School principal, hostage at gunpoint in the school this morning. Hess is OK. The school’s students were released to parents.

Sorry to hear about the kick in the ass via a job interview gone bad.

I must chime in here that Clozaril is used more often than people realize and most often when the patients are on Medicaid and in state funded facilities.

Cheap and generic, clozaril works as much as the others and is cheaper so of course it's what they use.

There is something completely wrong with this country regarding our care of mental health patients and I regret that I know this inside information as a result of my daughter running out of private health insurance.

At age 21 she is the product of Medicaid level of care and it frankly SUCKS.

She has been in the worst shape of her life the last 3 years, once she entered the adult system on less than best care.

This is why it is so sickening, that she has suffered at the hands of prestigious doctors on expense drugs such as Zyprexa and Seroquel, and she ends up on CLozaril in a state funded group home, where they are negligent in duty of her care.

Philip, my suggestion is to not be used as a source again, just like the Rolling Stone magazine incident.

You must have a legal and binding contract for a dollar amount to be paid for your information given in these cases or at least one crediting your blog or you as a source.

It is unfortunate that I sit here telling this to the one reporter that NAMI told me to call when you were employed at the Seattle Weekly, when my daughter was going to be shipped off to the state institution.

No one had any advice for me as a mother finding my way in this gross system, except to call the media and you are the only name that came up (as you know).

There is something wrong in America when we read articles like the one you linked to above and I can just shrug it off as an every day occurence.

Sadly, I see these people all of the time, day in and day out and most horrifically it is my daughter who is one of them.

Let my daughter's story be a cautionary tale to the over-medicating of children, teens and adults, and let this be a statement in how this country does not care for mentally ill patients.

Life is unfair to the most vulnerable in this world, and I regret to inform people that after a decade of being inside this system deeper than most people ever see---nothing--nothing has changed, in fact it is worse.

Sorry to hear about ProPublica! "A good fit" -- that's one particular piece of CorporateSpeak that makes me want to throw a good fit. Along with "stakeholders" and "win-win." The ProPublica writer on the story is no longer with them -- she's moved on to CaliforniaWatch. Maybe PP just likes to hire'em young and burn'em out. Keeps the health ins premiums low.

Tomorrow's story is titled "A Prescriber And A Promoter". I hope it gets into Dr. Reinstein's relationships with Novartis and AstraZeneca. So far the Tribune's series about overmedicated, neglected nursing home residents has managed to avoid taking on the pharma companies entirely.

That sucks about ProPublica. I wonder if they suffer from prejudice against people who've openly dealt with mental illness? I would not be surprised if that played a role in their decision because it is one of the last 'acceptable' forms of bias. ("unstable guy..would he make his deadlines?" etc.)

Horrible story about the overprescribing dr.; however, he is far from the only one. I briefly saw a psych like that -- she saw about 4 people per hour and handed out neuroleptics like candy. Word is getting round on the rate-a-doc websites, thank goodness.

I'm sorry to hear about that Philip. Your work speaks for itself. A door will open up soon.

And we still love you anyway.

No one is more dedicated than you. Please,please,please be good to yourself. As for the reject email-they are idiots for not recognizing your talents-thus they do not deserve you.

Keep trying...

Hugs til things even out

Psychiatrists love to prescribe kids psych meds, especially for off label uses. I really wonder why they enjoy it so much. They just seem to get a thrill every time they prescribe a kid more and more psych meds and have no guilt behind putting young kids on rotating cocktails of 5 or 6 serious psychotropics for off label use. I wonder if they believe what they are doing is for the good of the patient or if they they are doing it for the pharm kickbacks? A lot of psychiatrists are really freaky themselves and sometimes you wonder if they have the best intentions and believe that they are really helping the kids or are doing this for themselves and don't care about what effect this has.

Did you hear about a psych in Quebec, who was caught falsely diagnosing, and grossly overmedicating, a few of his patients? Sadly most were between the ages of 6 and 12. I'll try to find the article.

"Psychiatrists love to prescribe kids psych meds, especially for off label uses. I really wonder why they enjoy it so much."

My guess? Power. With kids you get a two-fer or three-fer. You overpower the kid AND the parent(s). That's a lot of people licking your boots at one time.

These are mostly pretty crazy people we're talking about (the docs, not the patients) and it's the power freaks who dole out the most meds. The kick backs, I suspect, are merely gravy. Of course, it's the kind of gravy that in our society indicates--power.

I put the link to part 2 of the Seroquel $500,000 dollar promotor Dr Michael Reinstein article on my blog--and then went and found the original 1999 abstract that AstraZeneca used to pimp this drug:

LOOK at the conclusion of the abstract, and tell me that wasn't influenced by $$$$$$$

http://bipolarsoupkitchen-stephany.blogspot.com/2009/11/effect-of-clozapine-quetiapine.html

Effect of Clozapine-Quetiapine Combination Therapy on Weight and Glycaemic Control: Preliminary Findings -1999

Authors: Reinstein M.J.1; Sirotovskaya L.A.1; Jones L.E.1; Mohan S.1; Chasanov M.A.1

Source: Clinical Drug Investigation, Volume 18, Number 2, August 1999 , pp. 99-104(6)

Publisher: Adis International

"Methods: Sixty-five clinic charts were reviewed. All patients were from long-term care facilities."

Conclusion: An unexpected, yet welcome, clinical effect of quetiapine is its apparent propensity to induce weight loss and improve glycaemic control in patients who gain weight and develop diabetes on clozapine therapy. The results of this retrospective study support the safety and tolerability of clozapine-quetiapine combination therapy.
---
Dr. Reinstein was paid $500,000 the next decade for promoting Seroquel to doctors, gave a televised promotion talk, and his photo was on fliers pimping the drug.

Talk about a pharma whore, he is the King of Unethical behavior as a doctor, that may as well make Charles Nemeroff share a little of his toxic glow!

This, as with other deeply disturbing stories of profiteering, fraud, and medical malpractice which have become far too numerous to even fathom for most average citizens; that do not follow the antics of this modality and industry regularly.

This should be highlighted on every national network news outlet with the Headline "AZ sponsors Doctors of Death in the drugging of America"

This doctor has ties to that big scandal of the AZ sex and corporate espionage fame Wayne McFadden "AZ chief of deception", who worked covering up the side effects of seroquel through ghost writers and burying studies.

This Chicago psychiatrist was featured on advertising pamphlets and spoke to countless doctors as a paid promoter for AZ.

I have to wonder when a billion dollars in legal wrangling will stop protecting AZ from the nasty whole truth being exposed. You might also ask when will the US Attorney General step to the plate and bring criminal charges (with real prison time attached) against these evil entities.

re: Quebec doctor
The story in french here.LINK
Use google translate to get an idea of what is written. The reporter is sympathetic to parents who needed their children drugged.

"Another guilty verdict just fallen on the head of the controversial psychiatrist Pierre Mailloux"
" He was convicted of 13 of the 14 charges brought against him. Le comité de discipline du Collège des médecins juge en effet qu'il a enfreint son code de déontologie de 2002 à 2007 en faisant des diagnostics inappropriés. The disciplinary committee of the College of Physicians judge that he violated its code of ethics from 2002 to 2007 by making inappropriate diagnoses. "

story on Quebec doctor convicted, written in english that seems more of a real news report LINK

wikipedia has an article on him, it isn't pretty.