On Monday, March 22, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a public health advisory putting doctors on notice and to be vigilant for signs of suicidality or worsening depression with the use of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant drugs use. Patients, families and other caregivers are also warned. The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), an international psychiatric watchdog group, says the warning does not go far enough—the potential for antidepressants to cause suicidal and self-injurious behavior has been established—the drugs should not be prescribed to children at all.
More than a decade ago in the U.S., CCHR presented evidence of SSRIs causing violent and suicidal behavior to the FDA, forcing it to hold an inquiry. Based on biased psychiatrists' report and pharmaceutical interests, the FDA exonerated the drugs. Since then, thousands of SSRI adverse reactions and deaths have been reported to the FDA.
CCHR says psychiatrists and the FDA knew about the violent and suicidal inducing effects of the drugs, but didn't want to bite the hand that feeds them—the pharmaceutical industry. In 2002, international sales of antidepressant drugs reached $12 billion. CCHR charges that psychiatrists created the market for drugging children by fabricating mental disorders for inclusion in its billing bible, The Diagnostic & Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM) and then convincing people that these are medical diseases, which is fraud. There are no tests to scientifically substantiate any DSM psychiatric disorder as a "disease" or "illness."
CCHR warns that despite yesterday's FDA warning, parents can still be forced through schools to administer the same suicidal-inducing drugs to their children. Until the FDA universally prohibits these drugs from use in children, federal protections against forced psychiatric drugging in public schools are necessary. The group is urging Congress to pass the Child Medication Safety Act, which the U.S. House of Representatives passed last June in a landslide vote of 425 - 1. While introduced into the Senate, the bill, which would stop school personnel coercing parents into drugging a child as a requisite for educational services, has not moved since July. The FDA warning must serve to alert the public and Congress that federal protections must be enacted against coerced psychiatric drugging in schools. Children's lives are at risk.
Published: March 23, 2004
Author: Marla Filidei
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights is an international psychiatric watchdog group co-founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus, to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights. Contact CCHR's Media Department at 800-869-2247 or humanrights@cchr.org.
