DEAD WRONG - STEPHEN COOKE OF THE SUSSEX NEWSPAPER - HOW PSYCHOTROPIC DRUGS MAY BE KILLING YOUNG PEOPLE IN THE U.K.

Stephen Cook asks 'Are Psychotropic Drugs Killing our Kids?'
Monday, 17 October 2011 00:00 Stephen Cook


There is an issue of utmost urgency, to which I would like to draw your attention and invite you to look into it. It concerns the psychiatric drugging of our children.

Of all the issues I have had occasion to look into over the years, the matter of psychiatry and sectors of the pharmaceutical industry targeting our children is by far the most despicable and the most dangerous for the future of our culture.

I hope to be writing a series of articles on this subject, as exposing this matter is perhaps the best way I know of that I can be of some service to you. Believe me, you need to check this out.

Dead Wrong
 
To kick this off, I recommend that you see a documentary that has been brought to my attention.

It is called Dead Wrong: How Psychiatric Drugs Can Kill Your Child. It is a beautifully made and compelling film produced by award-winning documentary makers for the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), an international psychiatric watchdog group, about which you can learn more at www.cchr.org.

All Fall Down
 
There is a second documentary, produced evidently by CCHR in the UK, called All Fall Down: Psychiatry’s Plague of Drugging Children, which you should also see.

Child Deaths
 
Now I draw your attention to recent cases involving the death of a child in the UK and the US that tragically illustrate the points being made in the aforementioned documentaries.

In the UK we have the case of ten-year-old Harry Hucknall. In March, West Cumbria Coroner Ian Smith found that Harry, the cousin of Simply Red singer Mick Hucknall, had hanged himself while taking an antidepressant fluoxetine (Prozac) and Ritalin.

The post-mortem tests revealed Harry had above the normal therapeutic level of the antidepressant given to adults.

“This was not suicide for one minute,” the coroner determined. “I record that Harry died as a consequence of his own actions without understanding their true consequences.”

Sadly, Harry’s death is not an isolated case, which is why in 2003 the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) ruled that antidepressants should not be prescribed to those younger than 18 years old.

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued the same warning the following year. - a year too late for 17-year-old Matthew Steubing, who had been prescribed Lexapro for the usual teenage angst.  An avid sportsman, Streubing committed suicide eight weeks later.

The Search for the Truth
 
Matthew’s death sparked his mother’s search for the truth about antidepressants in an effort to discover the information that she and her son Matthew had been denied.

This was information, that had Celeste Steubing known, Matthew would be alive today.

Perhaps the same could be said for those who cared for Harry Hucknall. All too often parents and the public at large are not given sufficient information with which to evaluate the dangers that children face when they are embarked upon a course of dangerous psychiatric drugs.

Neither are they given information about alternatives or the true causes of phenomena like so-called ADHD, such as nutritional deficiencies and allergies. The truth would open the door to safe solutions that don’t involve drugging and would  thus deprive the psycho-pharmaceutical industry of sales.

Recent Phenomena
 
The phenomenon of child suicide is a recent one, virtually unheard of prior to the psycho-pharmaceutical industry embarking upon a campaign to persuade parents to drug their children and the same can be said of youngsters who go on school-yard rampages and murder their classmates.

Virtually all such incidents are linked to psychiatric drugs and therein lies the explanation for otherwise inexplicable phenomena.

If you view the documentaries I have suggested, you will get a clearer view of this and understand the reasons why parents can have difficulty getting the facts from a responsible drug company or psychiatrist.

Meanwhile, the drugging of our children and the disabling of the adults of tomorrow continues, with dire consequences for all of us, not to mention our kids, unless we stir ourselves to put a stop to it.
The number of schoolchildren prescribed antidepressants and mind-altering drugs has more than quadrupled in the last decade in the UK. Under-16s were given drugs for “psychiatric” problems more than 631,000 times in 2006, compared to just 146,000 in the mid-Nineties.

The number of schoolchildren prescribed antidepressants and mind-altering drugs  has more than quadrupled in the last decade in the UK.

The use of Ritalin, known as the “chemical cosh,” has doubled in just four years and is nearly 100 times greater than in the early Nineties.

Doctors dispensed 254,000 prescriptions for the drug last year, up from 208,500 in 2001, according to figures from the Prescription Pricing Authority.

Behind all this lie the vast profits being made by the psycho-pharmaceutical industry. Ritalin, for example, costs between £200 and £1,000 per year per child, depending on the dose and follow-up assessments. NHS spending on the drug between 1999 and 2003 alone more than trebled from around £251,000 to £786,000.

It is wonderful that the psycho-pharmaceutical industry is raking in so much cash and providing so much revenue for the government through its taxes. But at the expense of our children?

Of course, there is not really much in it for government because the damage done to the child, the resultant side effects, complications, weakening of the immune system, illnesses, compounding behavioural problems, suicide and so forth probably cost the NHS a lot more than the revenue it makes from the drug companies.

I should point out, however, that this resultant illness and complication enables drug companies to make MORE money from the consequent treatments. One of the “virtues” of getting a human being onto drugs early in life is that one is creating a repeat customer for life.

Brian Daniels, the UK spokesperson for CCHR, said, “Parents deserve to know the truth. The facts in Dead Wrong can help protect children and their families. There are alternatives to mind-altering and potentially lethal drugs and parents need to demand to be informed of these.”

Mrs. Steubing adds, “We hope that by sharing Matthew’s story, other families will be spared the devastating heartbreak we live with every day.”

You can watch Dead Wrong at http://www.cchr.org.uk/videos.html
You can order copies of All Fall Down at  https://secure.cchr.org/en_GB/store/documentaries-and-dvds/all-fall-down.html
Let’s protect our young!

Steve Cook’s blog is at http://stephenwriting.blogspot.com


aa