Citizens Commission on Human Rights of Florida (CCHR Florida)

Leading mental health experts are concerned the new psychiatric bible scheduled for release sometime in 2013 will expose their fraud and bring into the light of day psychiatry’s practice of labeling normal behavior as mental illness and kill once and for all their Big Pharma cash cow.

A recent article exposes there are factions within the psychiatric community of educated experts who have somehow escaped party line brainwashing and refuse to go lock-stepped over a professional cliff but rather have filed formal protests strongly questioning whether psychiatry as a whole has lost its collective mind. (more…)

Miami Herald
OUR OPINION

Foster kids lose

Still subject to over use of psycho-tropic drugs

May 1st, 2010

State Sen. Rhonda Storms, a Valrico Republican, put up a Herculean fight on behalf of Florida’s foster kids this week, but a powerful bloc of doctors and psychiatrists defeated her in the Florida House.

The House leadership could have prevented this travesty. Instead, it caved to Florida’s powerful medical lobby and sacrificed some of the state’s most vulnerable residents.

The battle was over use of psycho-tropic drugs on youth in state care. After the 2009 suicide of 7-year-old foster child Gabriel Myers in Margate, the Department of Children & Families hired former Florida Department of Law Enforcement Deputy Commissioner Jim Sewell to investigate how drugs are used to control unruly foster kids. (more…)

 Please urge the below House Representatives on the Health Care Services Policy Committee to schedule the Gabriel Myers Bill – House Bill 1567 and vote YES.

Senator Ronda Storm

State Sen. Ronda Storms objects to “chemical straitjackets.”

 
Comments can be made here:
http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/civil/in-wake-of-childs-suicide-legislature-moves-to-limit-foster-cares-reliance/1080996

St. Petersburg Times
In wake of child’s suicide, Legislature moves to limit foster care’s reliance on psychiatric drugs
 

By Cristina Silva, Times Staff Writer 
Friday, March 19, 2010  

TALLAHASSEE – A year after a 7-year-old boy heavily medicated on powerful psychiatric drugs hanged himself in his Margate foster home, lawmakers are pushing to reform state medical requirements for foster children. (more…)

Comments on the below article can be made here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/02/1507445/regulations-sought-for-foster.html

Miami Herald
FLORIDA LEGISLATURE
Regulations sought for foster kids prescribed psychiatric drugs
March 2, 2010

In the wake of a Broward child’s death, state lawmakers will consider a bill designed to make it harder for child welfare workers to use mental health drugs to control foster kids.

BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER

Florida lawmakers will once again consider a measure to rein in the use of psychiatric drugs among foster children in the wake of last year’s death of a 7-year-old Broward boy who was on a cocktail of mood-altering drugs. (more…)

BY JOHN DORSCHNER

November 5, 2009

Comments can be made here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking-news/story/1318257.html (short registration required)

Bernard Carroll, former head of psychiatry at Duke University and once Nemeroff’s boss, said parts of Nemeroff’s work involved Paxil …  “Basically, he was doing basic science pimping for Paxil to produce talking points,” Carroll told The Herald in an e-mail Thursday. “All he ever produced was speculation but that was enough to satisfy Glaxo marketing. . . . I have been exposing his shenanigans for some years.”

University of Miami hires controversial expert

The UM medical school hired a psychiatrist who has been criticized for taking millions of dollars from drugmakers.

Charles Nemeroff, Psychiatrist

Charles Nemeroff, an Atlanta psychiatrist who was the subject of a Senate investigation concerning huge sums he received from drug companies, is being named chair of the psychiatry department at the University of Miami medical school.

Last year Nemeroff, as chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Emory University, was the intense focus of an investigation by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who said he was concerned about the money the psychiatrist received from drug companies while conducting supposedly unbiased research for the National Institutes of Health on drugs made by the companies he was receiving money from. (more…)

Florida Times Union
Consent for foster kids’ psychiatric drugs on rise
More parents, courts approve medication; some fear they aren’t informed decisions.
By Brandon Larrabee
Jul. 6, 2009

TALLAHASSEE – As a task force examining the use of psychiatric drugs by foster children draws nearer to issuing its report, caseworkers across the state are working to get parents or courts to approve the use of the medications to treat hundreds of children.

And while the number of foster children reported to be taking the medicines has risen from 2,669 in early June to 3,100 in numbers released Thursday, the proportion doing so without consent has dropped steeply, from 16.2 percent to 6.1 percent. (more…)

The Department of Children & Families’ (DCF) study about the lackadaisical use of medication for children shows the agency is taking seriously its mission to protect kids. It should follow through with hefty sanctions for those who ignored the law.

Miami Herald
“Don’t bend the law when giving foster kids drugsOUR OPINION: A new DCF study shows 2005 law ignored, endangering kids

Gabriel Myers was a 7-year-old boy whose world was collapsing when he hanged himself in a foster home in Margate. He was among 268 children between the ages of 6 and 7 medicated while in state care.

A new state study looking at whether these children were treated according to the law points to a total disregard of the law by a majority of case workers and medical professionals making life-and-death decisions. The irony is case workers now are employed by private firms under contract with the state. Weren’t they supposed to do better by Florida’s children than the old system of state workers? (more…)

Sun Sentinel
Florida Agency for Persons with Disabilities has its own psychotropic drug problem
July 1, 2009
By: Howard M. Talenfeld and Maria E. Abate

The use of dangerous prescription medications for children and adults in residential and group home facilities licensed by the Florida Agency for Persons with Disabilities (APD) is an alarming situation.

Two years before the suicide of Gabriel Myers, a foster child who was prescribed a “cocktail” of powerful psychotropic drugs, 12-year-old group-home resident Denis Maltez succumbed to serotonin syndrome after being given similar drugs. (more…)

Florida Times Union
More parents, courts approve medication; some fear they aren’t informed decisions.

TALLAHASSEE – As a task force examining the use of psychiatric drugs by foster children draws nearer to issuing its report, caseworkers across the state are working to get parents or courts to approve the use of the medications to treat hundreds of children.

And while the number of foster children reported to be taking the medicines has risen from 2,669 in early June to 3,100 in numbers released Thursday, the proportion doing so without consent has dropped steeply, from 16.2 percent to 6.1 percent. (more…)

Miami Herald
07.07.09

A new state study found that child-welfare doctors and case workers aren’t following the rules when it comes to the drugging of 6- and 7-year-olds in state care.

BY MARC CAPUTO

Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau