This past weekend, Novus was asked to present a program on how to do a successful medical detox from drugs and alcohol at the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology. This group is composed of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and other interested parties. ICSPP members strongly disagree with the ?medical model? vigorously advocated by the drug companies and many in the medical community for the treatment of depression and troubled children.



The following is from the ICSPP website:

?Today, ICSPP members focus on several issues, including:

?The pharmaceutical industry's stranglehold (by means of money) on the mental health professions, on mental health research, and on mental health policy-making;

?The establishment of drug-free residential treatment centers for severe emotional distress;

?The abolition of coercive or involuntary treatments and interventions;

?The impact of biological psychiatry on children, notably the use of behavior-altering drugs such as stimulants to control behavior and boost rote educational performance.

In a field where nearly all of the professional organizations, research institutes, and lay organizations are underwritten by money from the pharmaceutical industry, we are proud to remain a loud and independent voice in favor of humane values in the mental health field.?

The ICSPP was formed in 1971 by Dr. Peter Breggin. Dr. Breggin, the author of a large number of books and articles, believes that feeling depressed is a frequent emotion in humans and can be addressed by the person becoming involved in religion or other activities and not with a drug.

Dr. Breggin was recently interviewed on a Tampa television station and was asked if the use of psychoactive drugs was indicated for the treatment of any disease. Dr. Breggin's answer was, ?Never.? Dr. Breggin believes that these drugs are toxic and cause damaging changes in the brain. He states that anti-psychotic drugs like Zyprexa actually give a person a chemical lobotomy (the severing of nerves in the brain).

In response to people that say they feel better when they take these psychoactive drugs, Dr. Breggin says that this is almost entirely attributable to the ?numbing? effect of the drugs. The drug doesn't ?cure? anything but simply covers up the symptoms of depression or anxiety.

Dr. Breggin has also testified as an expert witness in a number of cases where people committed crimes under the influence of these mind-altering drugs.

Another speaker was Robert Whitaker, author of MAD IN AMERICA, reviewed in last week's newsletter. Mr. Whitaker discussed his next book which is scheduled to come out in 2010. Mr. Whitaker explained that he has been reviewing medical literature and studies on psychoactive drugs. A few of the items for which Mr. Whitaker stated that there is overwhelming evidence are:

?ADHD drugs like Ritalin and Adderall stunt growth and actually cause children's brains to remain smaller than children not taking the drugs;

?If you combine all the studies on antidepressants, not just the ones presented to the FDA, antidepressants were ineffective at treating depression;

?There is increasing evidence that placing young children on anti-psychotics, ADHD drugs, and antidepressants may very well be reducing their life expectancy from 78 years to between 35-40 years.

Then Dr. Toby Tyler Watson presented an extensive review of the medical literature discussing psychoactive drugs. Dr. Watson stated:

?In 1998, the National Institutes of Health reported ??there are no data to indicate that ADHD is due to brain malfunction.? And ??the same can be said for

?most psychiatric disorders, including disabling diseases such as schizophrenia.?

?"The strong, clear, and direct causal relationship implied by the concept of ?a gene for ?? does not exist for psychiatric disorders. Although we may wish it to be true, we do not have and are not likely to ever discover ?genes for? psychiatric illness."

(Kendler, K. S. American Journal of Psychiatry, 2005)

??Absolutely No pathophysiological evidence for any so called mental illness.?

pathophysiological means...?the mechanism by which a disease arises and continues to progress.? (Dr. Andreasen, Brave New Brain 2004)

?Neuroscientists at Open University in the United Kingdom concluded that 5HT (serotonin) levels in clinically depressed psychiatric patients do not differ from the nursing staff members. (Rose, The Future of the Brain: The Promise and Perils of

Tomorrow's Neuroscience 2005)

?Eli Lilly, the manufacturer, claims that thousands of people received Prozac in controlled clinical trials. In actuality, because of the huge number of patients that were unable or unwilling to complete the study due to negative side effects, there were far fewer. FDA material, derived via the Freedom of Information Act, shows that up to 50 percent of the patients dropped out of the studies because of serious side effects. Dr. Breggin reports and has testified that in the final analysis, only 286 people were used as a basis for Prozac's approval. Eli Lilly has never challenged this.

??We have been lying to everyone for 40 years concerning the chemical imbalance model.? (Wirshing, Lecture entitled The schizophrenic patient: profiles, diagnosis and treatment presented at Loma Linda University, Loma Linda CA 1999)

?Since the causes of long-term mental illness are not known, there is no effective prevention and thus, no cures at this time. (National Association for the Mentally Ill-Orange County Family Resource Handbook. p. 4 (2001).

Dr. Watson concluded that traditional psychiatry is saying, ?We believe mental illness is a biological disease. But we have absolutely no true evidence by which we can tell how it arises

and continues to progress, nor can we perform any biological test that can identify if someone has the disease.?

There were a number of other speakers who proceeded to analyze and methodically destroy the ?take a drug? mentality that is ruining so many lives.

CONCLUSION

As Winston Churchill said, ?The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.? There is a growing group of medical professionals who have seen the ineffectiveness of treating symptoms with drugs. Particularly when they see patients still complaining of their symptoms but, in addition, experiencing the side effects that are set forth on the drug labels.

These are medical professionals who are unwilling to take the ?medical advice? of the drug sales force or of doctors being secretly paid by drug companies or of researchers whose studies conclude that the drug manufactured by the drug company paying for the research is ?effective.? Instead, they are actually reading the medical studies and seeing that even when the researcher is trying to prove that a drug is effective, the study results seldom support the conclusion sought by the drug company. These medical professionals place their patients before profit.

At Novus Medical Detox Center, we will continue helping people safely through from problems with drugs like Xanax, OxyContin, Vicodin, and Percocet. We'll help them with alcohol detox, methadone detox, and heroin detox. However, the time is coming when many of the people coming to Novus will be reimbursed for the costs of their medical detox not by insurance but by the drug companies and the doctors who mindlessly serve the drug companies and not their patients.