June 26, 2005
Contact: Marla Filidei or Ben Williams
humanrights@cchr.org
1-800-869-2247

PSYCHIATRIC WATCHDOG SPEAKS OUT ABOUT TOM CRUISE SPEAKING OUT

Group warns about national crisis of child drugging with
"kiddy cocaine" and suicide-inducing antidepressants
Video exposes the hoax of psychiatry's "chemical imbalance" theory

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), a psychiatric watchdog group, said Tom Cruise's remarks on NBC's Today Show (Friday, June 24) represent a growing public awareness about the national crisis of children and adults being prescribed mind-altering drugs. More than 8 million children in the United States now take these drugs; millions more abuse them. Today the group released a White Paper on "Common Psychiatric Drugs and Their Effects" that educates people about the physically and mentally damaging effects of psychotropic drugs that are often prescribed for a "chemical imbalance" medical experts say doesn't exist. Accompanying this is a video documentary on the group's website, www.cchr.org, that includes prominent doctors, neurologists and psychiatrists debunking the hoax of mental disorders being physically based or the result of a chemical imbalance.

"The paper provides information that psychiatrists are not going to tell people, enabling them to make an informed choice," CCHR's international president, Jan Eastgate said. She slammed the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and affiliated mental health organizations that tout false statistics to the media about the number of Americans suffering from "mental illness" which she said is a fraudulent misrepresentation.

Ms. Eastgate said, "The Today Show interview was a warning that people need to study psychiatry and its purported research rather than accepting at face value concepts such as a chemical imbalance in the brain is causing their problems, which can deny them real help. In any media interview with a psychiatrist he should be asked what lab test he uses to determine this. There isn't one."

The "chemical imbalance" theory, popularized by marketing, is "no more than psychiatric wishful thinking," the group's U.S. president, author and former educator, Bruce Wiseman says. "It has been thoroughly discredited by researchers, doctors and scientists. The only reason it exists is that it makes it easier for psychiatrists to drug vulnerable and often desperate individuals. It is driven by more than $23 billion in drug sales each year."

Appearing in CCHR's video is Dr. Julian Whitaker, author and founder of the highly respected Whitaker Wellness Center in California, who says that psychiatry is a pseudoscience. "There's no pathology. There's no blood test. There's no lab test. There's no x-ray. Psychiatrists list out and vote on clusters of behavior and call them a disease. They are giving drugs to millions of people who do not have a defined medical problem."

Also interviewed is New York psychiatrist Ron Leifer who says, "There's no biological imbalance. When people come to me and they say, 'I have a biochemical imbalance,' I say, 'Show me your lab tests.' There are no lab tests. So what's the biochemical imbalance?"

Based on this false theory, millions of people have fallen prey to psychiatric treatment: stimulants and antidepressants have induced teenagers to go on murderous shooting sprees (8 out of 13 school shootings, such as the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, were committed by teens on psychiatric drugs). Mothers on these drugs have killed their children or cut off the arms of their baby while taking these drugs. Electroshock—the firing of up to 460 volts of electricity across the temples—is damaging the brains of over 100,000 Americans every year.

Because of the influence of psychiatry in the nation's schools, hundreds of parents have also been forced to place their children on psychotropic drugs as a requisite for their education, an abuse CCHR and others countered with congressional support last year. The Prohibition of Mandatory Medication amendment now prohibits this practice.

For 14 years, CCHR, which was established by the Church of Scientology, has also worked with parents and concerned groups to expose the violence and suicide-inducing effects of antidepressants. Last October, the Food and Drug Administration ordered a "black box" label for antidepressants that the drugs could cause suicide. But these reforms are not enough to curb what CCHR says is a "national crisis" of child drugging and psychotropic drug abuse.

The International Narcotics Control Board says that 80% of the world's Ritalin consumption is in the United States. This is a drug that medical studies show can predispose children to later cocaine use because Ritalin and cocaine derive from similar chemical properties. A study of 500 children over 26 years by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley found that Ritalin is basically a "gateway drug" to other drugs, in particular cocaine. A recent survey by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America found 10% of teens abuse the stimulants Ritalin and Adderall. Between 1995 and 1999, the use of antidepressants increased 580% in the under-6 population and 151% in the 7-12 age group.

In some communities, 20% of children are taking stimulants, according to Drug Enforcement Administration pharmacologist Gretchen Feussner. "That should be a wake-up call that something isn't right," Feussner said.

"Psychiatrists are society's biggest drug pushers," Wiseman says. "People do suffer from serious mental difficulties or life-crippling problems and their methods of coping with this can fail. Psychiatrists exploit this, marketing drugs for conditions they admit they do not know the cause of or can cure. Fraud involves intentional deception or deliberate misrepresentation to secure money, rights or privilege. Americans are waking up to this psychiatric fraud."

The group's White Paper, "Common Psychiatric Drugs and Their Effects," and other website publications warn people that they should not stop taking psychiatric drugs unless it is under medical advice and supervision. They stress the need to find competent medical (not psychiatric) doctors who can do thorough physical examinations to determine what could be underlying and causing emotional problems.