Franco Regime Found “Mental Illness” In Political Orientation

In Russia, it’s a “mental illness” to disagree with the government; in China, it’s a “mental illness” to practice an outlawed religion; and in the USA, it’s a “mental illness” for a child to disobey his or her parents.

The following is an interesting excerpt from an article in the LA Times on the continuing hunt for children stolen from their parents by the regime of General Franco in Spain almost 70 years ago, Spanish families renew search for stolen babies.

Military psychologist Antonio Vallejo-Nagera built the ideological framework for the practice of taking children from their parents. He saw Marxism as a form of mental illness that was polluting the Hispanic race and advocated that children of leftists be removed and re-educated, a process he termed “separating the wheat from the chaff.”

Many of the crimes commited by the Spanish dictatorship have remained largely ignored.

Returning to the USA, one wonders what new absurdity will be listed as a “mental illness” in the next edition of the DSM, the DSM-V, slated for release in 2013.

“Off Label” Prescription Drug Study

The PaloAltoPatch has an informative article on a study conducted by researchers at Stanford and the University of Chicago on “off-label” prescribing. The headline of this article reads, Increasingly Popular Antipsychotic Drugs Aren’t Effective, Study Says.

Of the $6 billion spent, $5.4 billion–91 percent of prescriptions–was spent on off-label medications which may not even be effective as anti-psychotics, according to the study.

I guess this means that only 9 % of these nueroleptic drugs work effectively, but the phrasing is a little confusing.

The highest grossing drugs on the market, atypical anti-psychotics have come to account for nearly 5 percent of all U.S. drug expenditures since they were introduced to the prescription market in 1989.

Atypical neuroleptics are a goldmine to these drug makers, and so, they must be asking themselves, why should we refrain from using these drugs on people who are not psychotic.

The cause of thousands of lawsuits in recent years, atypical anti-psychotics “make up the single largest target of litigation filed under the federal False Claims Act,” according to a Stanford report.

Why, indeed. I should imagine because making a false claim about what your drug can do, when it has not been approved by the FDA to do that something, is fraud.

According to the study, the use of antipsychotics—both typical and atypical—nearly tripled from 6.2 million treatment visits in 1995 to 16.7 million visits in 2008.

The largest change occurred in adults ages 18-64, whose anti-psychotic use (typical and atypical) jumped from 5.1 million treatment visits in 2001 to 11.9 million visits in 2006.

I hate to think of what the long term consequences of this leap in “off label” prescriptions shall be, but what I can tell you is those consequences are not going to be good. We’re talking about drugs that tend to, 1. be ineffective at doing what they have been prescribed for, and 2. that have the potential to do a great deal of physical damage to anyone who takes them for a long length of time.

The most disturbing aspect of this increase in “off label” prescribing is apt to be found among children and adolescents. Where in the past there was little or no evidence of “serious mental illness” among the young, drug manufacturers have carved out a new marketing niche. The chances that many of these troubled youngsters will grow into permanently “disabled” adults are just too great to be ignored.