“ . . . No one is really paying attention to what’s going on. . . The issue is how many Medicaid kids are being drugged to death, not how many kids in fostercare are being over medicated."
Grace E. Jackson, M.D., Author: Rethinking Psychiatric Drugs: A Guide for Informed Consent
A Bill of Rights
For Children with Mental Health Disorders and their Families
These basic rights should be afforded all children with mental disorders and their families, regardless of socioeconomic, gender, cultural, or racial status. These rights apply to families and children with neurodevelopmental, neuropsychiatric, and psychological disorders.
1. Treatment must be family driven and child focused. Families and youth, (when appropriate), must have a primary decision making role in their treatment.
2. Children should receive care in home and community based settings as close to home as possible.
3. Mental health services are an integral part of a child’s overall health care. Insurance companies
must not discriminate against children with mental illnesses by imposing financial burdens and barriers to treatment, such as differential deductibles, co-pays, annual or lifetime caps, or arbitrary limits on access to medically necessary inpatient and/or outpatient services.
4. Children should receive care from highly qualified professionals who are acting in the best interest of the child and family, with appropriate informed consent.
5. Parents and children are entitled to as much information as possible about the risks and benefits of all treatment options, including anticipated outcomes.
6. Children receiving medications for mental disorders should be monitored appropriately to optimize the benefit and reduce any risks or potential side effects which may be associated with such treatments.
7. Children and their families should have access to a comprehensive continuum of care, based on
their needs, including a full range of psychosocial, behavioral, pharmacological, and educational services, regardless of the cost.
8. Children should receive treatment within a coordinated system of care where all agencies (e.g., health, mental health, child welfare, juvenile justice, and schools, etc.) delivering services work
together to support recovery and optimize treatment outcome.
9. Children and families are entitled to an increased investment in high quality research on the origin, diagnosis, and treatment of childhood disorders.
10. Children and families need and deserve access to mental health professionals with appropriate
training and experience. Primary care professionals providing mental health services must have
access to consultation and referral resources from qualified mental health professionals.
March 12, 2008
The final paragraph of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry's
Code of Ethics:
Principle X Legal Considerations
"In order to practice medicine in optimal fashion, the child and adolescent psychiatrist must have awareness of the laws governing medical practice of those states in which the physician performs professional work, as well as local and federal laws that may apply. While bearing in mind that laws may vary subtly or substan- tively between states, the child and adolescent psychiatrist must consider, in particular, those laws concerning reports of child abuse and/or neglect, custodial arrangements and guardian responsibilities, warnings to others concerning patients’ potential self- or other-directed threatening behaviors, assent and consent, release of information, documentation of care, and medical responsibilities and negligence. These legal considerations cannot minimize or supercede the ethical principles of this code. Rather, knowledge andconsideration of pertinent laws is an important component of ethically responsible practice."
via the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry:
Enhancing Transparency in Research
Statement from Thomas F. Anders, M.D., President of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry"Washington, D.C., February 6, 2007 – The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), along with other professional organizations, academic institutions, professional journals and the pharmaceutical industry, all are working toward protecting the integrity of clinical research and ensuring that accurate and complete data are disseminated following each clinical study. The commitment made by the pharmaceutical industry to register all clinical trials in public databases, like ClinicalTrials.gov, and to publish accurate results of these trials is necessary.
"The commitment to registration is critical to protecting the child and adolescent subjects in these trials, as well as all children who are treated subsequent to the trials. Child and adolescent psychiatrists, like all physicians, need access to all relevant data in order to make optimal treatment decisions for their patients.
"The AACAP supports these and other actions designed to enhance the transparency of clinical research.
"The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry's (AACAP) mission is to actively promote mentally healthy children, adolescents and families through research, training, advocacy, prevention, comprehensive diagnosis and treatment, peer support, and collaboration. Representing over 7,500 child and adolescent psychiatrists, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry is the leading authority on children’s mental health. To learn more about the AACAP, please visit www.aacap.org."
Some Questions that need answers:
What evidence supports the AACAP's continued defense of using SSRIs for children and youth when it is well established that the FDA approval for the these drugs for use in children and adolescents was based on data that was incomplete, biased or altered; i.e. fraudulent?
On what basis does the Academy continue to defend the off label use of neuroleptic drugs? Here again, the FDA approval for the drugs was based on scant evidence of efficacy or effectiveness. The drugs are teratogenic so they cannot be called 'safe.' The FDA approval for neuroleptic drugs in children appears to have been driven by the pharmaceutical industry's marketing expansion agenda; and psychiatry's interest in legitimizing at least some of the widespread indiscriminate use of the drugs on children.
The drugs are, for the most part, being prescribed to poor children who are on Medicaid which means the cost for the off label drugs is billed to the Federal Medicaid program fraudulently. In effect, and in fact, this makes the Academy itself willing accomplices participating in an ongoing criminal enterprise. The American people are being defrauded to pay for the drugs children are being given, often to their detriment. Neuroleptics cause a wide variety of iatrogenic diseases and neurological impairments because the drugs alter the function of the entire parasympathetic nervous system. The fact that the the drugs cause impairments, means they drive up the costs of medical care for children on Medicaid due to the iatrogenic, or physician caused, diseases and impairments. The impairments can be disabling and this causes many of them to need federal disability programs increasing the cost of those programs.
The AACAP uses consensus based practice parameters, and treatment guidelines. Study 329 has not been retracted from the Journal of the Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, which is the #1 "professional" journal in the world, according to it's editor. The same editor that continues to deny requests from around the world for Study 329 be retracted.
The final report and the raw data from the TEOSS drug trials is still not available and it's been five years since the study was concluded. That this is important I've no doubt. There has been a total of three Senate investigations into the off label drugging of foster children each one has painted a grimmer picture and quantified and increasing number of children and adolescents are being given neuroleptic drugs, when are the America people going to wake up to the fact WE ALL have a responsibility to the children in foster care. We are paying for them to be harmed. It is a situation that demands action on the behalf of foster children, and remaining silent is to be passively complicit.
All of these facts belie the above statement made by Thomas F. Anders, M.D, that the AACAP, in collaboration with other stakeholders is, "ensuring that accurate and complete data are disseminated following each clinical study."
On what basis does the Academy continue to defend the off label use of neuroleptic drugs? Here again, the FDA approval for the drugs was based on scant evidence of efficacy or effectiveness. The drugs are teratogenic so they cannot be called 'safe.' The FDA approval for neuroleptic drugs in children appears to have been driven by the pharmaceutical industry's marketing expansion agenda; and psychiatry's interest in legitimizing at least some of the widespread indiscriminate use of the drugs on children.
The drugs are, for the most part, being prescribed to poor children who are on Medicaid which means the cost for the off label drugs is billed to the Federal Medicaid program fraudulently. In effect, and in fact, this makes the Academy itself willing accomplices participating in an ongoing criminal enterprise. The American people are being defrauded to pay for the drugs children are being given, often to their detriment. Neuroleptics cause a wide variety of iatrogenic diseases and neurological impairments because the drugs alter the function of the entire parasympathetic nervous system. The fact that the the drugs cause impairments, means they drive up the costs of medical care for children on Medicaid due to the iatrogenic, or physician caused, diseases and impairments. The impairments can be disabling and this causes many of them to need federal disability programs increasing the cost of those programs.
The AACAP uses consensus based practice parameters, and treatment guidelines. Study 329 has not been retracted from the Journal of the Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, which is the #1 "professional" journal in the world, according to it's editor. The same editor that continues to deny requests from around the world for Study 329 be retracted.
The final report and the raw data from the TEOSS drug trials is still not available and it's been five years since the study was concluded. That this is important I've no doubt. There has been a total of three Senate investigations into the off label drugging of foster children each one has painted a grimmer picture and quantified and increasing number of children and adolescents are being given neuroleptic drugs, when are the America people going to wake up to the fact WE ALL have a responsibility to the children in foster care. We are paying for them to be harmed. It is a situation that demands action on the behalf of foster children, and remaining silent is to be passively complicit.
All of these facts belie the above statement made by Thomas F. Anders, M.D, that the AACAP, in collaboration with other stakeholders is, "ensuring that accurate and complete data are disseminated following each clinical study."
the irony of the pot calling the kettle black
Leading Psychiatric Medical Associations Speak Out On
New Antidepressant Clinical Trials Study
"Leading Psychiatric Medical Associations Speak Out On New Antidepressant Clinical Trials Study Arlington, Va., January 16, 2008 -- The American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) today renewed their call for a mandatory public registry for clinical trials in light of a study that shows medical research is published selectively, effectively suppressing and misrepresenting studies deemed negative." hereBoth the APA and the AACAP require members to practice in compliance with the principles contained in their Code of Ethics. Both the APA and the AACAP fail to hold their members accountable for ethical failures. Analogous to a chain only being as strong as it's weakest link, a profession is perceived to have the ethical integrity of it's most unethical members. In psychiatry unethical professionals become Key Opinion Leaders, are elected President of their organization, and advisers to patient advocacy groups, the ones funded by pharmaceutical companies---such as the groups featured on the Bill of Rights above.
Excerpts from the Excerpts the AACAP Code of Ethics Related to Transparency
(These values were not evident to me at Child Study and Treatment Center)
• Child and adolescent psychiatrists’ primary concern is the welfare, functioning, and optimum development of children and adolescents.
• The child and adolescent psychiatrist’s primary responsibility is to act on behalf of children, adolescents, and their families.
• Child and adolescent psychiatrists put the health and welfare of children above any other competing interest.
• As third parties raise possibilities of conflicts of interest, child and adolescent psychiatrists must keep the interests of children and adolescents paramount.
• Examples of third party influence could include gifts, dinners, educational opportunities, recreational outings, medication samples, financial support, or investments.
• The first priority of researchers is the welfare of research participants and their families.
• All aspects of a research study must defer to the safety and well-being of the participant.
• Child and adolescent psychiatrists who conduct research must ensure that their investigative processes are conducted ethically and are compliant with all federal, state, local, and institutional regulations. Institutional Review Boards must approve all research protocols before research
studies are implemented.
• Child and adolescent psychiatrists conducting research must report all potential conflicts of interest with the research study participants before the research begins.
• All potential risks and benefits of the research should be clearly described to the study’s participants and their guardians.
• Study results must be made public in a timely manner after a research project is completed, regardless its findings.
link to the Code of Ethics link the the Excerpts related to transparency in research
This is one of the efforts that resulted from the latest investigation into the off label drugging of foster children. For an example of how the AACAP plans on "educating" professionals who work at child serving agencies about psychiatric drugs (unethical) read:
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