Our main campaign website is here and if you're on Facebook you can add our fan page and follow what's going on. If you're a registered voter in Washington State, we want your signature!

Among others, I-1068 is endorsed by Seattle Chief of Police (Ret.) Norm Stamper.

With luck, I may be back to semi-regular posting in the near future, but until my hours back off to, say, 70 hours a week I am simply unable to do much of anything non-campaign related including eating and sleeping.

But I will be back. Guaranteed.

I hope you are all well and appreciate the many emails I've gotten the last few days.

Meanwhile, let me offer some preliminary comments:

1. Internet addiction isn't included, which is fine by me and likely will save the APA much sniggering and criticism.

2. Bipolar disorder type 3 or subthreshold bipolar disorder is not included either and that is definitely a victory for critics like me who've long held that the softening of mood disorders--such as with bipolar disorder type 2--has led to millions of Americans being overdiagnosed and overmedicated.

3. Perhaps the biggest losers in the politics of DSM-5 are the Harvard child psychiatry crew and the FDA. The Harvard folks have pressed hard for over a decade to establish mood lability and temper tantrums in children as pediatric bipolar disorder or child bipolar disorder. Harvard's Joseph Biederman and others claimed they had nothing but sound science driving their claims, ones the FDA bought hook, line and sinker. This all led to the wild overdiagnosis and overmedication of millions of American children, basically to shut them up when arguably they needed more attention to their diets and lack of physical activity.

Now, the DSM-5 authors have not included PBD in their proposal, certainly giving the lie to the Harvard crew. Instead, they chose to label these kids as having Temper Dysregulation Disorder with Dysphoria. While anything that steers diagnosis and treatment away from meds first, last and always is to be welcome, I cannot help but feel that slapping a syndrome of any kind on children is dangerous. Especially since the new syndrome is describing behavior that's been around for eons and hasn't been particularly troubling for humanity until child psychiatrists and pharma companies got their hands on all of this in the 1990s.

I'll have more to say on this one as the implications become clearer.

4. Advocates for including psychosis prodrome have won a victory as the DSM-5 draft contains a disorder called Psychosis Risk Syndrome. The research on all of tis is quite slim and such research as exists hasn't pointed to a high percentage of youngsters allegedly at-risk of developing a full-blown psychotic disorder as being readily identified by precursor symptoms. And those who recall the disastrous PRIME study will remember that medicating teens sure didn't help them out. I hope this proposed diagnosis is promptly dropped from inclusion in DSM-5.

5. I've not been able to poke into the newfangled, proposed severity scales for anxiety and depression, so that's something I'll have to push off until later. You can see an example here, however.

"BROCKTON – A South Shore mother was found guilty today of second-degree murder in the death of her 4-year-old daughter who never woke up one night in December 2006 after ingesting toxic levels of psychotropic drugs.

"Carolyn Riley, 35, remained impassive as the jury, which had deliberated 19 hours at the end of a three-week trial, announced the verdict in the death of her daughter, Rebecca. Plymouth Superior Court Judge Charles Hely immediately sentenced Carolyn Riley to the mandatory term of life in prison with parole eligibility in 15 years."

Either way, it certainly isn't good news for child psychiatry either.

"Women who took GlaxoSmithKline's Paxil while taking tamoxifen at the same time were more likely to die of their breast cancer, the researchers found. The longer the overlap between Paxil and tamoxifen, the more likely the patients were to die, they reported in the British Medical Journal.

"It is likely because Paxil, sold generically as paroxetine, interferes with the compound the body uses to process tamoxifen, the researchers said."

A separate study last year reached a similar conclusion about SSRIs as a class.

At this point, you've got to wonder if there's nothing Paxil cannot do. It increases suicidality, is linked to some birth defects, has all kinds of dependence and withdrawal problems and even damages male sperm. Awesome little pill, Glaxo.

I'd thought for years that they were overstating the case for political reasons. I don't think that way anymore. There is far too much red tape and far too many hoops to jump through in starting a small organization of any kind--even one like Sensible Washington, which as a PAC is exempt from many reporting requirements--for many people to give it a go. Government red tape, bank red tape, etc., etc., and on and on it goes. It becomes mind numbing after a while.

I hope some time this weekend to pen a few posts, but for now my body and mind are screaming for rest. And less red tape.

"Another disturbing link could be on the way. The fifth edition of the major psychiatric diagnostic manual, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), is expected to be released in 2013. One proposal under consideration: listing obesity as a mental illness. That would be a mistake, since obesity can be caused by metabolic and other physical problems that are often undiagnosed. And because obesity can also result from psychiatric drugs, calling it a mental illness would create a vicious cycle: Someone is troubled, put them on drugs, they become obese, therefore diagnose them as mentally ill, give them more drugs."

Every so often I just have to say it: psychiatry has absolutely lost its mind.

"John Blenkinsop, the company's former UK medical manager, claimed he was pressurised by the company's marketing arm to approve claims about the drug which he felt did not reflect the medical evidence.

"'The clinical studies at the time of the launch of Seroquel showed patients developed significant weight gain, significant both statistically and clinically,' he told the BBC's File on 4.

"'They [the marketing team] came at me with a number of potential claims all of which were trying to intimate that Seroquel was not associated with weight gain - the data pointed in the opposite direction,' added Mr Blenkinsop who was speaking publicly for the first time since he left the company in 2000.

"He said: 'I understood where they were coming from. I had some robust discussions and exposed them to the data but that didn't seem to stop them because they were desperate for a differential advantage over one of the competitor products and they didn't have one.

"'In the end I was put under quite a significant amount of pressure by the marketeers to sign off claims with regards to the lack of weight gain and I was unwilling to sign that off. The marketeers made it clear it could be career limiting for me," Mr Blenkinsop added.'"

Of course, this weight gain would have absolutely nothing to do with diabetes associated with the use of the drug, so there's no need for the public to know.

"At the time, Kaitlynne Riley was 2 years old, and Carolyn Riley had turned to doctors because the girl was being aggressive toward her older brother, Kifuji testified.

"The psychiatrist said she met with the little girl for an hour, during which the girl talked about seeing 'monsters' and 'ghosts'--but did not display any sign of excessive aggressive behavior. Yet, Kifuji testified, she diagnosed Kaitlynne Riley as having bipolar disorder and prescribed Depakote for treatment.

"'I made a diagnosis of bipolar disorder on Kaitllynne Riley based on information I got and I put her on medication,' Kufiji testified.

"Asked by Middleton whether she saw any sign that the 2-year-old was unduly aggressive, the doctor replied, 'no.'"

Evidence-based medicine at work. Sarcasm aside, who diagnoses a kid so young who is not displaying outward signs of dysfunction based upon a one-hour appointment? If a 2-year-old seeing monsters and ghosts--meaning having an active imagination--is enough to get a kiddo diagnosed and medicated then we are in deep trouble as a society.

The new study joins other recent studies casting doubt on doctors' longstanding claim that anti-depressants aren't linked to birth complications and it sure makes you wonder how post-partum depression can be properly addressed without putting babies at risk.

I expect to be back to a more normal volume of posts fairly soon. I appreciate everyone's understanding.

There's just something about tumor and positive growth that just doesn't quite work, if you know what I mean.