From the March 2006 Idaho Observer:

Psychiatric drugs: Prescription for madness

The Associated Press reported that a newly released study by Dr. William Cooper of Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital found that two and half million children in the U.S. are being prescribed antipsychotics annually. That’s 40 out of every 1,000 children are being exposed to highly toxic drugs that have never been approved for use in children. The drugs damage the central nervous system, the metabolic system, trigger hyperglycemia, acute weight gain, diabetes, cardiac arrest, cognitive impairment, and are linked to insulin suppression in children. The drugs carry black box warnings—but that does not seem to deter psychiatry from prescribing these drugs anyway.

Regulators’ approval of ever more toxic drugs and drug patches—without regard for the long-term consequences the drugs are likely to cause—has resulted in catastrophic drug-induced harm.

The review found almost 1,000 reports of psychosis or mania possibly linked to the drugs—which included Adderall, Concerta, Ritalin and Strattera—from Jan. 1, 2000, through June 30, 2005. The reports were pulled from the FDA’s database and from the drug companies themselves. Executive Summaries of the reports submitted by FDA medical safety officers of their analysis of adverse event reports in clinical trials and in post-marketing reports follow the AP report about the abusive prescribing of antipsychotic drugs for children.

"The most important finding of this review is that signs and symptoms of psychosis or mania, particularly hallucinations, can occur in some patients with no identifiable risk factors, at usual doses of any of the drugs currently used to treat ADHD."

"A substantial proportion of psychosis-related cases were reported to occur in children age ten years or less, a population in which hallucinations are not common. The occurrence of such symptoms in young children may be particularly traumatic and undesirable, both to the child and the parents. The predominance in young children of hallucinations, both visual and tactile, involving insects, snakes and worms is striking, and deserves further evaluation. Positive rechallenge (i.e., recurrence of symptoms when drug is re-introduced) is considered a hallmark for causality assessment of adverse events. Cases of psychosis related events which included a positive rechallenge were identified in this review for each of the drugs included in this analysis."

The astounding evidence provided for the first time to an FDA Advisory Committee underscores the fact that ADHD is both a gateway to prescribed psychoactive drugs, but also a gateway for major mental illness induced by those very drugs.

The evidence also appears to support our observation that the underlying cause that has led a US. diagnostic aberration­ "the Bipolar Child"—(not witnessed anywhere else in the world) is an effect of the drugs millions of children are being prescribed recklessly. Amphetamines and psychostimulants, SSRI antidepressants, and the most toxic of all the psychoactive drugs, antipsychotics, all may induce mania, psychosis, hostility, aggression, suicidal and homicidal behavior. ~From the Alliance for Human Research Protection, www.ahrp.org