Why are Children on so Many Psychiatric Drugs at a Time?

Pediatric Bipolar Psychiatric Guidelines Exposed
as a drug marketing opportunity and crime against humanity

Find out why so many children are on several psychiatric drugs at a time

By Bev MacPhee

Below is my personal view based upon the vast amount of data below. Psychiatrists, major pharmaceutical companies and a medical journal publisher acted together to create the controversial pediatric Bipolar psychiatric guideline that calls for children, as young as two-years-old, to be dangerously drugged for multiple mental disorders and with several categories of psychiatric drugs at a time Like many, I feel this action and the resultant harm from such severe drugging to be a crime against humanity.

Per the International Criminal Court, “Crimes against humanity" is defined as a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack, and includes: "inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering or serious bodily or mental injury." To me, the scheme to put nearly a million children on antipsychotics, often mixed with a cocktail of other mind-altering drugs, fits the definition.

The data below appears to reveal how Joseph Biederman. a highly-influential psychiatric researcher at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital​, spearheaded a 400% increase in the diagnosis of Pediatric Bipolar Disorder from 1994 to 2003. and then helped to create the psychiatric drugging guideline by way of very questionable research, for this disorder that was officially approved in 2005.

In addition to the 2005 Bipolar Treatment Guidelines were the heavy promotion of pediatric Bipolar in medical journals, continuing medical education courses and in the media. Here is the resultant number of US children and adolescents by age who were being prescribed antipsychotics and other psychotropic as of 2013:

Antipsychotics 0-5 Years 27,343

Breakdown:
0-1 Years 654
2-3 Years 3,760
4-5 Years 24,363

6-12 Years 359,882
13-17 Years 490,272

Grand Total 0-17 Years 830,836 kids on antipsychotics

http://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/children-on-psychiatric-drugs

The following data will also reveal, through court documents and media accounts, the role of a major drug company in funding the research and creating the studies, and a publisher that owns the medical journal [Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry] that publishes child psychiatric guidelines and is known for having a subsidiary company that writes alleged medical research articles while having its paid-off researchers sign on as the study authors.

You will see Biederman's role in creating Pediatric Bipolar Disorder and how it turned the drug, Risperdal, into a gold mine for Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceuticals. He was not the first psychiatrist to label children as Bipolar, as debates about the diagnosis of Bipolar (BP) in children can be traced back to the 1950s. Yet, it was not until early 1994 and 1995 that articles by psychiatrists Joseph Biederman, Barbara Geller and Janet Wozniak seemed to increase the diagnoses.

The rest of the story is below in more detail with documents linked:

With the surge of articles from Biederman et al, as to the diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder in children and adolescents, came the need to set down standards in which to diagnosis it.

“Due to the lack of research of Bipolar Disorder in children and adolescents, in 1994 many of the treatments were drawn from adult literature. At that time, children and adolescents were diagnosed with Bipolar disorder based on the same criteria used for adults as outlined in DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 1994b). The general consensus of the then available data was sufficient to suggest that Bipolar disorder with onset before the age of 18 years is essentially the same disorder as that in adults, but further studies were needed to clarify the long-term course and outcome of the early-onset forms, especially for those with very early onset”. http://www.bpso.org/practice.htm

In 1994, a literature review was done that was used to develop the initial draft of the manuscript for the guidelines . (Practice Parameters for the Assessment and Treatment of Children and Adolescents With Bipolar Disorder).

The National Library of Medicine did the initial search in May 1994, covering the preceding 5-year period. The following topics were reviewed: Bipolar disorder and adolescents (39 articles), Bipolar disorder and children (105 articles), and Bipolar disorder and early onset (21 articles). This search was updated periodically (most recently in December 1995) to identify new articles. . “These practice parameters describe the assessment and treatment of early-onset Bipolar disorder based on scientific evidence regarding diagnosis and effective treatment and on the current state of clinical practice. Biederman was part of the panel of experts where he reviewed and commented on the information in the original draft of the guidelines. His studies on the Child Behavior Checklist in 1995 has been used to distinguish manic children from those with ADHD.”

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8682754/

After review by the Committee on Quality Issues, this draft was then distributed to a panel of experts for comment, which just happened to include Dr Joseph Biederman. What a perfect opportunity for Biederman to push his agenda to get more children on psychiatric drugs via a Bipolar Disorder diagnosis.
http://www.jaacap.com/article/S0890-8567(09)63918-6/abstract

The "Practice Parameters for the Assessment and Treatment of Children and Adolescents With Bipolar Disorder” were published in 1996 with Lithium and Valporic Acid being the drugs of choice to treat it. The treatment focused on:

(1) amelioration (patient improvement) of acute symptoms;

(2) the prevention of relapse;

(3) the reduction of long-term morbidity; (DEFINITION) and

(4) the promotion of long-term growth and development.

Since there were no medical tests that could be done to determine whether or not a child had Bipolar Disorder, the diagnosis was based on symptoms which were often overlapped with other diseases and made it difficult to determine the Bipolar diagnosis. In order to push his agenda that many children were misdiagnosed with a disease other than Bipolar, Drs. Biederman et al. [30] I and Wozniak et] in two JAACAP articles report that 16% of a clinical population of children met the criteria for mania primarily by exhibiting chronically irritable mood and describe their use of the Child Behavior Checklist to confirm their diagnoses of Bipolar in these children.

The above situation led to the establishment of the child psychiatric guidelines in 1996, and was pivotal in ensuring that the 400% increase in the diagnosis of Pediatric Bipolar Disorder, was justified due to the all-inclusive efforts of Dr Joseph Biederman. Biederman had stated that in children, Bipolar Disorder could also be present along with diseases such as ADHD. The development of the guidelines was the first step in promoting that multiple medications could be given simultaneously for the diagnosed disorders. This was the prompt that Biederman and the pharmaceutical companies needed to create the numerous drugs that would eventually flood the market, all promising to effectively treat Bipolar Disease in children and adolescents. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8682754/

In 1995/96, Biederman was searching for a pharmaceutical company that would fund him to do clinical trials to prove that children, as young as 2-years-old, could be Bipolar. His first choice was Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a pharmaceutical subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. Biederman approached Janssen to do a clinical trial to study Risperdal [generic name Risperidone] in children. The research would cost Janssen $280,000.00 that Biederman wanted for a research grant, but Janssen refused which angered Biederman so he took his business elsewhere. (1)

As you will read later in this story, in 2002, at the annual American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry meeting, Biederman gave a presentation, written by Johnson and Johnson, on “Risperdal vs Placebo for the Treatment of Conduct Disorder in Children With Mild, Moderate, or Borderline Mental Retardation”.”

,https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00266552. As a result of this meeting, guidelines were established for the Child Psychiatric Treatment Standards for other psychiatrists and doctors to use on children.

In 1998, Janssen wanted FDA-approval for Risperdal in the treatment of children with disruptive behaviors and who were of sub-average intelligence. (2 )

They finished this trial of Risperdal and submitted it to the FDA but were turned down. Janssen had originally thought they could get Risperidone approved for treating disruptive kids [Disruptive Behavior Disorder, Conduct Disorder] but had given up on that idea and diverted to the more acceptable Bipolar disorder. (3)

In 1999, The Balanced Mind Parent Network, formerly known as The Child & Adolescent Bipolar Foundation (CABF), started with none other than with Dr. Joseph Biederman on its Scientific Advisory Board. In addition to Biederman, the Scientific Advisory Council included psychiatrists, Karen Wagner, Janet Wozniak, Jean Frazier, Robert Kowatch, Barbara Geller and Melissa DelBello. This group, was receiving funding from several pharmaceutical companies, as a means to promote Pediatric Bipolar and the use of antipsychotics on children to treat it to the media, parents and other doctors and psychiatrists. They also pushed for the eventual Pediatric Bipolar Psychiatric Guidelines where Biederman was a WorkGroup Member and Contributor.

http://www.jaacap.com/article/S0890-8567(09)61467-2/abstract

Between 1995 and 2000, Biederman did different studies for Abbott Laboratories, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Cephalon, Inc, and Eli Lilly to name just a few.

In November 1999, Johnson & Johnson marketing executive John Bruins suggested that Biederman had taken business away from Johnson & Johnson after the company turned down the doctor's request for a $280,000 research grant. (4)

To remedy this situation, Biederman got his $280,000.00 research grant from Johnson and Johnson and his hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) got their J&J Center for Pediatric Psychopathology Research Center. Johnson & Johnson spent $700,000, in one year [2002] alone, to fund the MGH Johnson & Johnson Center for Pediatric Psychopathology with Biederman becoming the Center's director. The purpose of the center, according to an internal company e-mail contained in court documents, was to "generate and disseminate data supporting the use of Risperdal in children and adolescents.” (5) However, e-mail messages and internal documents from Johnson & Johnson made public in a court filing reveal that Dr. Biederman pushed the company to finance a research center at Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston, with a goal to “move forward the commercial goals of J.& J.” The documents also show that the company prepared a draft summary of a study that Dr. Biederman was said to have written. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/health/25psych.html?_r=0

Here is important data covered by the Huffington Post:

Annual Report 2002: The Johnson and Johnson Center for Pediatric

. Psychopathology at the Massachusetts General Hospital

Director: Joseph Biederman. MD

An essential feature of the Center is its ability to conduct research satisfying three criteria: a) it will lead to findings that improve the psychiatric care ofchildren; b) it will meet.high levels of scientific quality and c) it will move forward the commercial goals of J&J (17).

When you see that Johnson and Johnson paid both Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)and its child psychiatrist, Joseph Biederman, for a study center at MGH with a major purpose of moving "forward the commercial goals of J&J," it certainly appears as though the hospital and psychiatrist (as Director of the Center) were sub-contracted by the pharmaceutical company to promote its drugs...

For more research beyond what is allowed in a Patch article, see www.childbipolartimeline.wordpress.com