Author name: Bob Carter

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Suicide Prevention Programs Produce More Suicides

Guess What? Suicide Prevention Programs Produce More Suicides By Robert Carter/February 25, 2025 In 1999 federal, state and local government agencies launched the first massive suicide prevention program. Screening tests were  devised – written by psychiatrists, of course – and those who were “depressed” were urged to take antidepressants and other psychotropic medication. Since 2000 the use of prescription drugs by Americans has risen steadily. So has America’s suicide rate, which has also risen steadily since 2000. Similar, coincident increases in suicide rates have been discovered in other countries, as well. An Australian research team found in one hundred countries they studied that suicide rates had only increased in countries that had initiated national mental health policies, programs, and legislation. Those 76 countries they discovered had higher suicide rates were countries that spent more on mental health, had passed mental health legislation, had a greater number of  psychiatrists and  psychiatric nurses, had more psychiatric beds, and gave more training in mental health to primary care professionals. Another analysis of 191 countries found that those countries with “better” psychiatric services also had higher suicide rates. A 2016 U.S. Veterans Department study showed that military members who had a “more severe” mental health diagnosis, but were not treated at all by the VA for their “disorder,” had a much lower suicide rate than those service members who had a “less severe” condition, with no  diagnosis, but who were treated with mental health services by the VA. A 2013 Military Times report showed that from 2001 to 2009 $1.1 billion was spent by the Defense Logistics Agency on  psychiatric drugs and pain medications. Antidepressants and anticonvulsants were the most commonly prescribed for mental health conditions. These were part of the treatment that was given to the service members with the higher suicide rate after undergoing mental health services by the VA. Today prescription drugs are the third leading cause of death for all Americans, right behind heart disease and cancer. Suicides are included in those deaths, and the suicide rate for all  Americans increased 37 percent from 2000 to 2022. Nor surprisingly, antidepressant use by Americans increased 65 percent from 2000 until 2014 and then increased by 66 percent from 2016 to 2022. Psychiatrists today say that antidepressants increase only suicidal thoughts, not suicides. They only say that, of course, because they have to agree with the black box warnings of their partner in crime, the FDA. They also  apparently agree with the profits of the Big Pharma companies producing those antidepressants whose advisory boards they sit on. The rise of America’s suicide rates at the same time as the rise of  Americans’ use of antidepressants cannot just be a coincidence, can it, as these psychiatrists suggest? Common sense would tell any one else that’s far more than coincidence.

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A Primer on Rockefeller’s Medical Mafia

A Primer on Rockefeller’s Medical Mafia By Robert Carter/February 17, 2025 In the 1800s few doctors actually held medical degrees. Known as physicians, they diagnosed patients and recommended medications. The other “doctors,” who did surgery or who prescribed various health tonics, learned their trade apprenticing under a medical mentor. Meanwhile, John D. Rockefeller, the oil baron, recognized that his monopoly of Standard Oil was about to be broken up by the government’s anti-trust purge, and he began looking for another lucrative business venture. He chose petrochemicals. He recognized that only synthetic drugs made from petrochemicals could be patented — natural health remedies could not — but he then had to clear the way for his creation of what would become a comparable monopoly to Standard Oil in the petrochemical industry. First he created the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in 1901. That organization began pioneering research and development of petrochemical-based medicines such as vaccines, antibiotics and the  chemical-based drugs that would ultimately become the foundation of today’s pharmaceutical industry. This research flew in the face of the most popular health therapies of the day, such as homeopathy, chiropractic, and naturopathy, as well as all of the popular “natural” potions and herbal medicines on the market then. Many of these “cures” were mixtures that contained cocaine, heroin, and other dangerous, but then legal chemicals. Their popularity resulted in illness and death, though, and in 1906 the U.S. Bureau of Chemistry was given the power to regulate interstate commerce of foods and drugs and cull the marketplace of these dangerous potions. This fit in perfectly with Rockefeller’s campaign to turn public and government opinion against such popular remedies, and he almost undoubtedly worked behind the scenes to encourage this legislation. In 1910 Rockefeller helped fund the Flexner Report. This broadly disseminated publication ridiculed natural medicine as “unscientific quackery” and called for a standardization of medical education in the country. Abraham Flexner, the author of the report, soon began serving on the Rockefeller Foundation 's General Education Board , and after 1917 he was made its secretary. By the time the Flexner Report was released, Rockefeller had already begun donating millions of dollars to medical schools, starting with the prestigious University of Chicago and Yale medical schools, with the stipulation they only teach pharmaceutical-based allopathic medicine. The American Medical Association, a union of allopathic physicians which had been established in 1847, now came into prominence as the country’s most influential ruling agency with exclusive power over granting and issuing medical licenses in America. Next, Rockefeller and his robber baron associates Carnegie and J.P. Morgan formed a partnership and bought controlling shares of the pharmaceutical giant I. G. Farben, a German pharmaceutical company that would supply the newly patented synthetic medicines that American doctors were now being educated to prescribe. Rockefeller now had a compliant Bureau of Chemistry, which in 1927 became the Food, Drug, and Insecticide Organization (later the Food and Drug Administration) and a significant investment in the production of pharmaceutical medicine that could be patented for profit. Now he only needed to establish a body of doctors who could exclusively write the prescriptions for what he foresaw would become the vast market for  psychotropic medications, given the experimentation that he saw the Nazis doing in this field with the cooperation of I. G. Farben’s laboratories. In 1930 Rockefeller funded a ten year,  $1,000,000 grant to the Yale Medical School to establish their School of Psychiatry. Three years later Charles-Edward Winslow, Professor of Public Health at Yale, founded the  National Committee on Mental Hygiene, the organization that launched the mental hygiene movement in America and set the stage for the widespread chemical treatment of “mental disorders.” In 1938 the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act 1938 was signed into law and in 1951 the Durham-Humphrey Amendment to it defined which dangerous drugs, like barbiturates, could only be prescribed and refilled by licensed doctors such as psychiatrists. In 1992 Congress passed the Prescription Drug User Fee Act that requires drug and biologics manufacturers to pay fees to the FDA for product applications and supplements, and other services. The act also requires the FDA to use these funds to hire more reviewers to assess drug applications. Today forty percent of the FDA overall is funded by Big Pharma, and 75 percent of its drug division is  funded by Big Pharma. Psychiatrists predominate on the FDA approval boards for new psychotropic  medication and members of those boards often move on to lucrative employment in Big Pharma companies. The Medical Mafia – the FDA, Big Pharma, and psychiatry – is alive and well and, oh, so profitable thanks to Rockefeller’s overt and covert manipulation of the public and the U.S. government until he died in 1937. By then the damage to America’s health and mental health was done and his new monopoly was firmly in place. It still is.

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Common Sense or Copious Profit?

Common Sense or Copious Profit? Big Pharma Chooses – Guess Which — for Benzos By Robert Carter/February 6, 2025 Valium, Xanax, Halcion, Ativan, and Klonopin are the most prescribed benzodiazepines. By 2020 more than thirty million people were taking them in the United States. That’s over twelve percent of our country’s population. Benzos, as they are commonly known, are most often prescribed to reduce anxiety. Per the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration they “produce sedation and hypnosis and relieve anxiety and muscle spasms,” but are associated with “amnesia, hostility, irritability, and vivid or disturbing dreams.” Benzos are highly addictive. The DEA reports that patients who try to stop taking them can experience panic attacks, sweating, confusion, vomiting, depersonalization, seizures, and suicidal ideation. They are prescribed twice as often for women as for men. Are there really twenty million women in America who need that level of “sedation and hypnosis” to treat their anxiety? Dr. Heather Ashton, a British psychopharmacologist, was the first in the medical profession to realize the dangers of benzos after so many patients had begun reporting the problems they experienced after long term benzo use. People who had been taking them for months or years came to her and reported their fears that the drugs were actually making them more ill. Their anxiety or depression was no better, and they had begun to have muscle weakness, memory lapses, and heart and digestive issues. Through extensive research, Dr. Ashton then recognized that the problems people were having with benzo dependence were the result of the medication being over-prescribed. She concluded that benzos might be useful in the short term, but that they should never be taken for longer than two to four weeks. Her further research showed that tapering off the dosage — sometimes for a period as long as six months — was the only way to help someone successfully withdraw from these dangerous, menacing drugs without experiencing hideous side effects. Her 1999 publication, Benzodiazepines: How They Work and How to Withdraw , became the medical profession’s definitive work for anyone seeking to quit these prescription drugs safely. It is now known as just “The Ashton Manual.” By 2013 the British National Formulary had updated its guidelines and recommended benzodiazepines for short-term use only. They also suggested a withdrawal protocol based on The Ashton Manual. In 2020 the FDA finally did update their black box warning for benzos to include “the risk of withdrawal reactions, including seizures, when stopping suddenly or reducing the dose too quickly.” But there is still no FDA recommendation for short term use only of benzos. The global revenue in 2022 for benzo sales was just over $2 billion, and it is projected to rise to $3 billion over the next seven years. Guess Big Pharma and the FDA don’t want to cut into that goldmine by limiting benzo prescriptions to a mere two to four weeks, eh?

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You Probably Haven’t Heard of Ernst Rudin

You Probably Haven’t Heard of Ernst Rudin. You Should Have.      By Robert Carter/January 19, 2025       Psychiatry was divided into two schools of practice by 1900. The “talk therapy” guys like Freud introduced a psychoanalytic approach to mental health which tried to help people by having them talk about their emotional and mental troubles. They addressed the mind.      The “biological-cause-of-mental illness” guys like Emil Kraepelin, “the father of modern psychiatry,” who continued their pursuit of an answer to mental illness by addressing the body. They addressed the brain.      The debunked theory of “chemical imbalance” can trace its roots back to these biological cause guys and even to the phrenologists of the early nineteenth  century. From them also came the psychiatric  practices of electroconvulsive therapy and prefrontal lobotomies during the nineteen-thirties to “correct” mental illness.       Kraepelin, like many other psychiatrists of his day, considered  schizophrenia a biological illness, and in 1907 he took on as his assistant at the University of Munich Ernst Rudin. Besides sharing a biological view of mental illness, they both supported the idea that the German race was becoming degenerated by a  “domestication” that was causing higher rates of mental illness.      Rudin began publishing articles on the genetic causes of schizophrenia and he soon became known as the “father of psychiatric genetics,” an advanced theory of body-based mental illness. Rudin’s colleague and brother-in-law was Alfred Ploetz, who himself was known then as the “father” of racial hygiene after the  publication of his “Racial Hygiene Basics” in 1895.      By 1903 Rudin had already argued for the sterilization of incurable alcoholics, and by 1905 he had helped co-found the German Society for Racial Hygiene with Ploetz. In 1917 Emil Kraepelin established the Institute for Psychiatric Research in Munich and he installed his cohort Rudin as head of its Department of Genealogical and Demographic Studies.      By 1920 another Rudin colleague, psychiatrist Alfred Hoche, had  published  “Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Living.” In 1928 Rudin’s department was expanded greatly due to financial assistance from the American Rockefeller Foundation. By 1932 Rudin was in contact with the British psychiatrist Carlos Blacker and Rudin sent him a copy of the pre-Nazi voluntary sterilization laws.In the 1930s the Rockefeller Foundation funded further studies in psychiatric genetics by      Rudin’s department under the direction of genetic psychiatrists Eliot Slater and Franz Kallmann. Kallmann claimed in 1935 that minor anomalies found in any relatives of diagnosed schizophrenics should be grounds for compulsory sterilization. By that time Rudin’s colleagues had dubbed Rudin the  Reichsfuehrer for Sterilization.      In his 1934 speech praising Adolf Hitler’s racial hygiene program, Rudin wrote “Whoever is  not physically or mentally fit must not pass on his defects to his children. The state must take care that only the fit produce children.”      By 1942 Rudin spoke of the value of “eliminating young children of clearly inferior quality,” and he began financially supporting the work of psychiatrist Carl Schneider, whose activity at the University of Heidelberg involved setting up a training center for the Nazi Action T4 euthanasia program that killed children “for scientific purposes” at thirty facilities over a three year period.      Although Rudin was arrested after the war for his Nazi activities, he was released in 1947 and only given a 500 mark fine. Speculation is that he avoided being charged at the Nuremberg Trials because of his financial connections to American genetics researchers and to American funding entities.      Some say, however, that Rudin was a more influential architect of Nazi extermination policies than the infamous Josef Mengele, who attended Rudin’s lectures and was employed under him. Investigative journalist Victor Bernstein wrote that psychiatrist Ernst Rudin was “one of the most evil men in Germany.”      How is it that the field of psychiatry so often draws in such evil men?      Is it that the brain-based theories of mental illness are themselves malevolent, or do evil psychiatrists just find that those biological theories are perfect for masking their own evil intentions toward humanity?

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Big Pharma Cohorts Now under Federal Scrutiny

Birds of a Feather … Big Pharma Cohorts Now under Federal Scrutiny By Robert Carter/December 23, 2024 Profit continues to be revealed as a driving force in the Big Pharma conglomerate. Last week a Big Pharma consulting firm, McKinsey and Company, agreed to pay $650 million as a  settlement with the U.S. Justice Department so as to avoid their criminal prosecution for helping boost Purdue Pharma’s sales of its addictive opioid, OxyContin. This week the U. S. Justice Department released its civil complaint against CVS alleging their complicity in filling unlawful prescriptions of opioids and “trinity” prescriptions (a dangerous combination of an opioid, a benzodiazepine and a muscle relaxant). These two cases illustrate new legal forays by the Justice Department into those ancillary industries that have helped Big Pharma roll out death and addiction to so many unsuspecting users of their dangerous pharmaceutical concoctions. Opioids have been linked to 80,000 deaths per year, and in the early years of their distribution to the public most of these fatalities were from legal prescriptions. Since then drug makers and distributors have paid nearly $50 billion in settlements with governments to atone for their unethical and illegal practices in pushing these drugs. The net of justice is now expanding further as pharmaceutical consulting firms like McKinsey and Company and  pharmaceutical distribution centers such as CVS’s nine thousand pharmacies are coming into the sights of these Justice Department big guns. McKinsey has acknowledged its guilt in contributing to the opioid crisis and has agreed for the next five years not to work for the sale, marketing, or promotion of controlled substances. The firm’s senior partner, Martin Elling, has also pleaded guilty to obstructing justice after it was discovered he had deleted relevant files from his computer about his business relations with Purdue Pharma. “We should have appreciated the harm opioids were causing in our society and we should not have undertaken sales and marketing work for Purdue Pharma,” a company spokesperson said. CVS, on the other hand, is still protesting the current Justice Department accusations. “We will defend ourselves vigorously against this misguided federal lawsuit,” Amy Thibault, external communications director for CVS, wrote in a statement. According to the Justice Department complaint, CVS ignored substantial  evidence from its own pharmacists as well as from other internal and external data and sources that its pharmacies were dispensing controlled substance  prescriptions without any medical purpose from known “pill mill” prescribers. The Justice Department complaint also alleges that CVS sought reimbursement from federal health care programs for these  prescriptions, which is a violation of the U.S. False Claims Act. “Each of the  prescriptions in question was for an FDA-approved opioid medication,” CVS’s Amy Thibault went on to say, and it was “prescribed by a practitioner who the government itself licensed, authorized, and empowered to write controlled-substance prescriptions.” Yes, that’s right, Amy, and these guys are even more birds of a Big Pharma feather.

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John D. Rockefeller Single-Handedly Ruins American Medicine

John D. Rockefeller Single-handedly Ruins American Medicine      By Robert Carter/December 23, 2024      By the early 1900s John D. Rockefeller had become the richest man in the world by taking over the American oil industry and making it his own personal monopoly. Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court found him guilty of illegal business practices and racketeering.      He had to find himself another business venture that might be equally as profitable.      “Hey, how about drugs?” he decided.      Although the health of his own immediate family had always thrived on homeopathic remedies, he knew that these natural cures could not be patented. No money there.      But synthetic drugs could be patented, and there was BIG money there…if he could figure out how to corner that market, just as he had with his oil  monopoly.      He figured it out.      First, he invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the country’s most reputable medical schools – University of Chicago and Yale, to start with – provided they agreed to teach only allopathic, pharmaceutical based medicine. No more natural, nutrition based remedies would be spoken in those hallowed halls.      Then he invested in the German pharmaceutical giant I. G. Farben.      Yes…the same guys who from 1930-1938purged their company of every Jew, used 30,000 prisoners from Auschwitz as free, forced labor in one of their factories, and concocted the Zyklon B poisonous gas to help Hitler kill over a million prisoners in his gas chambers.      Next Rockefeller funded Abraham Flexner to tour the Rockefeller funded medical schools to  “evaluate” the new  treatments they were teaching. His 1906 Flexner Report helped persuade U.S. lawmakers to enact legislation that would license only those physicians trained in patented, chemical based pharmacology and surgery.      The AMA began a campaign of ridiculing any non-allopathic medical practices as “quackery” and soon our country’s natural remedy doctors were mostly out of business.       No more “Take two vitamin C and call me in the morning” from an American doctor.      Meanwhile the FDA had been evolving from the earlier Bureau of Chemistry, and it inherited from that agency the proviso that there was a “plausible deniability” for any legal culpability for harmful effects of the chemicals they monitored. That legal protection against pharmaceutical companies’ lawsuits remained in place until recently.      By 1916 Rockefeller had became the world’s first billionaire.      In 1930 Rockefeller expanded into psychiatry his influence over American medical practices when he established the Yale School of Psychiatry with a ten year grant totaling $1,000,000.      The 1930’s were already turning out to be a heyday for psychiatrics as they began conducting their experimentation with electroconvulsive shocks and trans-orbital lobotomies … all hidden from the public by using subjects from within their own psychiatric hospitals.      Kind of like the psychiatrists’ own little concentration camps.      In the 1930s Yale Medical School Professor C.E.A. Winslow worked to publicize and popularize America’s growing “mental hygiene movement,” and he helped position mental health treatment next to physical health treatment. Doing so helped usher in the age of massive public psychotropic prescriptions which began in the 1950’s after the brutality of psychiatrists covertly administering electroshock and lobotomy “treatments” had been publicly exposed.      Ironically, almost ninety-nine percent of all these psychotropic  pharmaceuticals contain petrochemicals, and so the Rockefeller family is still deriving its fortune from oil, even if today some of John D’s descendents do donate philanthropically to humanitarian non-profits.      However, we can still thank John D. alone for gifting us with what is now the medical mafia: Big Pharma, the FDA, and psychiatry.

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Big Pharma Push for FDA Approval of Psychedelic-based Antidepressants

Gold Rush Mentality Surrounds Big Pharma Push for FDA Approval of Psychedelic-based Antidepressants      By Robert Carter/December 8, 2024      Even some psychiatrists have acknowledged that the last fifty years of their medicating those diagnosed with schizophrenia – the umbrella term for most mental illnesses – has not beenparticularly successful. Big Pharma is on board with that assessment and is now investing millions in research into “breakthrough therapy” psychedelic-based medication to treat any number of mental disorders.      LSD, psilocybin and MDMA are all being tested in preparation for the first FDA approved clinical trials for these hallucinogens to be used to treat depression and anxiety as well as other mental “disorders.”Never mind that all three drugs have been classified as illegal Schedule 1 drugs that have a “high potential for abuse” and are without any “currently accepted medical use in treatment”.      Even the United States Drug Enforcement Administration has reported that the use of LSD in psychotherapy largely has been debunked, and “drug studies have confirmed that the powerful hallucinogenic effects of this drug can produce profound adverse reactions, such as acute panic reactions, psychotic crises, and “flashbacks”, especially in users ill-equipped to deal with such trauma.”      In the 1950s psychiatrists used LSD research to try to replicate the effects of mental illness, and their infamous MKUltra experiments used LSD covertly on often unsuspecting subjects to develop workable mind control techniques.      So why are so many dollars now pouring into what should be questionable psychedelic research?      Because the psychedelic therapeutics market has been valued at $2 billion in 2023 and it is expected to grow to $7 billion by 2031.      Nonprofits like the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) — now valued at $97 million in assets, all through donations — are cashing in on this psychedelics research gold rush. They have even donated over $20 million themselves to other organizations studying the use of psychedelics for therapeutic applications.      Just who are these new gold rush carpetbaggers?      MAPS therapists were videoed in 2022 spooning and pinning down a Phase 2 clinical trial participant in one study for the use of MDMA for PTSD therapy, as reported by New York Magazine. After that session one of the therapists sexually coerced the patient and the patient moved in with the therapists for the next two years.      MAPS lists Vicky Dulai as one of its three member Board of Directors. She “advises philanthropists and foundations about emerging opportunities in psychedelic research, treatment, and therapist training.” Vicky is their (very successful) fundraiser.      In May, 2021 Vicky was alleged in a civil lawsuit of exploiting multi-millionaire venture capitalist George Sarlo, then in his eighties, to extract more than $4 million from him while acting as his “psychedelic therapist” and feeding him ayahuasca, MDMA, and Ketamine.      The two of them had started a romantic relationship before he had had his first psychedelic  experience.      Sarlo gifted her $1.4 million for a house that she, her husband and children, had moved into. He “loaned” $190,000 to her husband for a business investment and he gave her a $65,000 Porsche.      Vicky used $30,000 of Sarlo’s philanthropic funds for private schooling for her children, received a $5150 monthly salary as director of his charitable foundation, and in just the first quarter of 2021 withdreaw more than $300,000 from Sarlo’s personal checking account to fly with her family and Sarlo to Hawaii on a private jet that itself cost $75,000.      The civil case against Vicky was settled out of court and no criminal charges were ever filed. She and Sarlo often participated together in psychedelic fundraising and networking events, and after Sarlo made a $1 million donation to MAPS, Vicky was given her seat on the board of directors.      That’s who these carpetbaggers are.       Back in 1998, a United Nations report estimated that the illegal synthetic drug market at that time, which included psychedelics, was $60 million.      Today’s unscrupulous opportunists like Vicky Dalai are doing their best to ensure this new, legal psychedelic drug market is not far behind.

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LSD and Mini-ECT For Kids

LSD and Mini-ECT: Psychiatry Says They’re Just What Your Kid Needs      By Robert Carter/December 6, 2024      On October 30 th the Child Mind Institute held its annual On the Shoulders of Giants Symposium. The theme of the virtual event was promoted as “a celebration of scientific achievement in child and adolescent psychiatry” and two “breakthrough” treatments for childhood mental disorders were touted as next generation innovative therapies.      The two treatments?      Deep brain stimulation and an LSD derivative medication.      Just what your kid needs, eh?      Deep brain stimulation is a sort of street legal  variation of electroconvulsive shock. It’s used to fend off the legal restrictions looming on the horizon for banning the use of ECT’s horrific voltage being applied to youngsters. Four states have already passed legislation against its use on minors and more state legislatures will probably follow suit.      To treat a child with deep brain stimulation, a small electrode is surgically and permanently placed in the brain to deliver an electrical impulse that is supposed to regulate a child’s moods. The shocks are emitted twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.      The FDA has only  approved deep brain  stimulation for such  physical disorders as  Parkinson’s Disease and dystonia, both chronic diseases of the brain. The National Institute of Health notes that “it is not  understood precisely how DBS affects the  dopaminergic networks within the brain” and that “DBS is not entirely without risk, and complications such as infection, hemorrhage, and even mortality have been noted.”      Nice, huh?      The other “breakthrough” treatment of the Child Mind Institute symposium is the proposal for an LSD derivative medication to treat child anxiety.      LSD was classified as an illegal Schedule 1 drug in the 1960s because it has a "high potential for abuse" and is without any "currently accepted medical use in treatment." In fact, in the 1950s psychiatrists used LSD research to try to replicate the effects of mental illness, and their infamous MKUltra  experiments used LSD on often unsuspecting subjects to help develop workable mind control techniques.      The United States Drug Enforcement Administration has reported that the use of LSD in psychotherapy largely has been debunked” and “drug studies have confirmed that the powerful hallucinogenic effects of this drug can produce profound adverse reactions, such as acute panic reactions, psychotic crises, and ‘flashbacks’ especially in users ill-equipped to deal with such trauma.”      Like young children.      Although the symposium literature lists these two treatments as  “breakthrough,” that term is actually only a designation used by the FDA – “breakthrough therapy” — to expedite the development and review of drugs that might demonstrate improvement over available therapy. It’s a fast track to clinical trials so that potentially more dangerous medications can be brought to market more quickly through clinical trials.     Go, Big Pharma. Their funding of seventy-five percent of the FDA’s pharmaceutical department budget will have been a small price to pay for the profits possible when these two “breakthrough” therapies are FDA approved for public consumption.          With approval, Big Pharma’s huge marketing budget can then be directed toward convincing you that a little LSD and a little electroshock really is just what your kid needs. (A thank you to Barbie Rivera of Hollywood Education and Literacy Project, Miami for alerting us about this in her recent newsletter).

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How to Sue a Shrink

How to Sue a Shrink      By Robert Carter/November 3, 2024      We are not advocating here the willy-nilly suing of a psychiatrist. In this increasingly litigious society there are already far too many frivolous lawsuits.      However, if one suspects a psychiatrist has strayed from professional, legal or ethical standards of practice, one can report the individual to the state licensing board. There are also a number of websites with standard report forms to submit which list the specifics of the suspected transgression. CCHR and PsychSearch are two such reputable websites, and they immediately forward these reports to the appropriate authorities.      One can, of course, also sue a psychiatrist for malpractice, if the facts warrant it.      State laws do vary, but generally speaking, any time a medical professional’s actions no longer adhere to a standard of care used by the majority of responsible health care providers, a psychiatrist may be subject to a lawsuit as well as to discipline by a state medical board.      Here are the two most common categories of legal transgressions by a psychiatrist which show a level of negligence that would support a malpractice suit.      More practically, this list can also be used to assess for non-standard practices that should be reported to medical authorities, regardless if there are grounds for a successful lawsuit or not.      General unethical conduct: Having a sexual relationship with a patient Verbal or physical abuse Planting false memories in a patient. Trading medical treatment for other goods or services Failing to keep a patient’s medical information confidentialMedical malpractice:Failure to adequately deliver and have a signed Informed Consent procedure Not carrying out a thorough neurological evaluation when the condition calls for it Failure to adequately test and monitor a patient’s response to medication Any other significant p rescription medication errors Misdiagnosing a patient’s condition Failing to adequately monitor a patient, especially one with a risk of suicide Improper record keeping, including falsification of medical records      Should you sue a shrink?      Yes…if there are obvious grounds for it. Apparently, there often are.      The website PsychSearch offers a list of psychiatrists – state by state and country by country – who have either been disciplined by their medical boards or have been successfully prosecuted for medical and ethical “sins.”      It is not a short list.      In fact, according to a 2020 article in Clinical Psychiatry News, “Forty-one percent of U.S. psychiatrists have been sued for malpractice at least once.”      That’s close to a fifty/fifty chance you have that the psychiatrist you see has a practice…or that he has a malpractice.

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Chairman of Arkansas State Medical Board Hit with Medical Fraud

Psychiatrist and Chairman of Arkansas State Medical Board Hit with Medical Fraud Criminal Charges and over 100 Lawsuits      By Robert Carter/November 3, 2024      The trial of psychiatrist Brian Wyatt has recently been postponed to next spring because of his attorneys’ full schedule. Wyatt was arrested last year for two criminal charges of “large scale medical fraud” for billing Medicaid for appointments he never had with patients.      In early 2023 a confidential informant had reported Hyatt to the Arkansas medical authorities as director of Northwest Medical’s Behavioral Health in Springdale for “significant growth in the unit and likewise in the claims and billings submitted to Medicaid, Medicare, and private insurance” under his time at the helm. Hyatt was arrested eight months later for two counts of large scale Medicaid fraud.      Since then more than 100 of Hyatt’s ex-patients have filed lawsuits against him for “unlawfully coercing, abusing and holding patients against their will” within the Springdale, Arkansas, Behavioral Unit in order to receive greater reimbursement from Medicare between 2018 and 2022.      One patient was charged over $14,000 for a five day stay at the unit, for example, but he never once saw Dr. Hyatt himself. In fact, Hyatt is reported to have issued orders to his staff to mark out his name on his patients’ wristbands so they would not know his name.      William VanWhy, one of the patients filing a lawsuit against Hyatt through the Odom Law Firm, reported that “I stayed there for about five days under Dr. Hyatt’s care. I have never seen him in my life. I’ve never met him, even though I was under his care. I asked to leave every day for the last three days and they wouldn’t let me leave.”      VanWhy’s insurance was then billed for two in-person visits during his stay, per reports, with his total charges in the tens of thousands of dollars.      Matt Lindsay of the Odom Law Firm also reported that many of his clients were chemically restrained, but never got any help in the unit. “Beyond not getting help, they got much worse, and they are still every day living with the effects of what they went through at that facility,” Lindsay said.      The initial informant about Hyatt had also reported that the psychiatrist was only on the floor for a few minutes each day and that he had no contact with patients.       Hyatt has pleaded not guilty to the two Medicaid criminal fraud charges.      One can’t help but wonder how much the spectacular – if utterly fraudulent – growth of the Springdale Behavioral Health Unit under his tenure was a factor in Hyatt achieving the position of Chairman of the Arkansas State Medical Board.      Certainly the psychiatrist did not arrive in that position because of his extraordinary and selfless care for his patients.

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