Psychiatrists Advised FDA 14 Years Ago Not to Act on Suicide and Homicidal Antidepressant Risks

While two FDA Advisory Committees recommended antidepressants carry a "Black Box" warning of suicide risks for children and adolescents, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), an international psychiatric watchdog group, said psychiatrists had sufficient evidence 14 years ago to recommend such a warning pointing out that the blood of children, who had violently ended their lives while taking antidepressants, was on FDA officials' hands. However, CCHR says the failure to stem the flow of blood rests with a panel of psychiatrists in 1991.

In 1989, CCHR used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain FDA Adverse Reaction Reports on the first Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) marketed. The documents revealed that over 500 deaths had been linked to the drug and that 83 children between the ages of 4 and 18 had attempted suicide. Two children aged 5 had committed suicide and 77 experienced hostility, agitation and intentional injury. CCHR, along with medical experts, presented evidence of homicidal and suicidal drug reactions to the FDA's Psychopharmacological Drugs Advisory Committee in 1991. The panel comprised nine psychiatrists and a psychologist who ignored parents and family members' testimony about the violent and suicidal effects of the drugs.

Bruce Wiseman, CCHR's National President said. "The FDA may be accountable for failing to warn the public, but psychiatrists were their advisors with a vested interest in maintaining a multi billion dollar child drugging industry. Now, in the wake of international controversy over the antidepressant drugs' great risk to children's lives, psychiatrists claim they were unaware of the potential harm to children. This is a lie and they should be held accountable," he stated.

During what CCHR executives call "more than a decade of battling" to obtain the right for people to be fully informed about drug risks, the group filed complaints with FDA officials, The Inspector General of Health and Human Services, Health Canada and the U.S. Attorney General's office, among others. The questionable psychiatric diagnoses for which the SSRI antidepressants were being approved were the underlying concern for CCHR.

CCHR says that labeling children with "depression" and other childhood problems as "mental disorders" has become a cash-cow—a multi billion dollar child drugging industry, fueled by the American Psychiatric Association's billing bible, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM).

The manual contains 374 mental "disorders," including mathematics, reading and written expression disorders, "oppositional defiant disorder" if a child argues with his parents and "conduct disorder" if he is too rambunctious.

Tana Dineen, Ph.D., author of Manufacturing Victims, says, "Unlike medical diagnoses that convey a probable cause, appropriate treatment and likely prognosis, the disorders listed in DSM-IV are terms arrived at through peer consensus"—a vote by APA committee members. In other words, there is no objective science to them.

Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse says, "There is no blood or other biological test to ascertain the presence or absence of a mental illness, as there is for most bodily diseases."

Brian Beaumont, President of the Vancouver chapter of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights says, "There is no science to childhood psychiatric disorders. Any child who is so labeled is on a one-way ticket to drug dependence or suicide. As for the children who have committed suicide or died while taking an antidepressant in the last 14 years, their blood is caked on psychiatry's hands. Psychiatrists should be held accountable for both the lack of 'science' behind their diagnostic criteria and for any lethal consequences of their drug practices."

With psychiatrists negating the evidence, the number of children prescribed the drugs has escalated. Children aged 1 to 17 now account for 7% of the antidepressants sold in today's $12 billion a year market. Of the 11 million prescriptions for children in 2002, 2.7 million were for those aged 12 and under.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was established by the Church of Scientology in 1969 to expose and eradicate psychiatric violations of human rights.