2. Federal Government Put on Notice

The federal government was put on notice about these restraint deaths and other psychiatric abuse in a complaint filed by CCHR in April 1998 against the government’s Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) under the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) which, CCHR said, had illegally used $200,000 of taxpayers’ dollars to fund a “Walk the Walk” march for “mental illness awareness” in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, May 2. In fact, the march was a promotion for mandated mental health insurance parity. Use of federal funds for lobbying activities is a violation of U.S.C. Title 18, Crimes and Criminal Procedure: Subsection 1913: “Lobbying with appropriated moneys.”

Having used federal money, the “Walk” did nothing to warn people about the violent and lethal treatment that children were being subjected to in mental institutions and that a culture of violence and terrorism exists in mental health facilities, placing anyone being admitted to them at risk.

The complaint was filed to Ms. Donna Shalala, Secretary, Department of Health and Human Services. (A separate complaint which covered general abuses but not specifically restraint deaths was sent to The Honorable John Porter, Chairman, House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education; the House Commerce Oversight & Investigations Subcommittee; House Commerce Committee; House Commerce Subcommittee on Health and Environment; House Government Reform and Oversight Committee; Chairman, House Government Reform and Oversight Subcommittee on Human Resources; Senate Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Health Care.)

HHS did nothing about the complaint. Since then, there have been nine more deaths, including three boys aged 9, 14 and 16 years, and a 17-year-old girl.⁴

Mark Soares, 16, died on April 29, 1998, from causes undetermined. He’d been put in a headlock by a staff member, then physically restrained face down on the floor with a staffer on his back. Laura Hanson, 17, died from asphyxiation on November 19, 1998, after being restrained face down for about 10 minutes. The coroner ruled the death a homicide but no one was arrested. Mark Draheim, 14, died on December 11, 1998, from anoxia (lack of oxygen to the brain); he’d been physically restrained by three staff after he became combative during a counseling session.⁵

On March 11, 1999, 9-year-old Timothy Thomas died by asphyxiation after being restrained in a “basket hold”—the staffer stands behind the child, whose arms are crossed at the chest, and holds onto the child’s wrists. Timothy had been “acting up in class” and was taken to a “time-out” room padded with carpeted walls. Timothy appeared to fall asleep but when the youth-care worker returned to check on him, he was dead.⁶

 

3. Psychiatric Treatment Creates Culture of Violence

The issue of restraint deaths requires a wider review of the psychiatric system that exists and how people, in general, are becoming more violent within it. A person suffering from psychosis can threaten the survival of himself or those around him; he may need to be cared for to protect others from him or to protect him from himself. Some factor in the environment can cause him indiscriminately to commit a violent act—even murder—or commit suicide.

However, the other factor is that the type of drugs that they are prescribed are known to cause and exacerbate aggression and violent behavior. In a hospital environment, the person may be aggressive because of the drugs; he is then restrained because the correct source of the problem—the drugs—is not recognized. While mild tranquilizers might be of benefit in calming a person down so that he rests, the drugs and dosages given patients are like a time-bomb waiting to be triggered.

Since the 1960s, the use of these drugs has been on a massive increase, especially since the introduction of Community Mental Health Centers (CMHCs). The following is a very small sample of studies showing the violence-inducing nature of these powerful psychoactive drugs:

A 1998 British report said that at least five percent of SSRI (Selective Seretonin Reuptake Inhibitors) patients suffered “commonly recognized” side effects which includes agitation, anxiety and nervousness. Other regularly reported effects include confusion, abnormal dreaming and nightmares. Around five percent of the reports also indicate aggression, hallucinations, malaise and depersonalization. SSRIs “can cause a broad spectrum of psychiatric and neurological side effects, resulting in over-stimulation in some cases and sedation in others,” the report stated.⁷

In 1997, The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law published data on how the typical patient in prison is a 19-year-old with a history of substance abuse or a multi-drug habit. All patients in this study had been treated with psychotropic drugs and in this population, there was a “high incidence of expression of aggression.”⁸

A 1995 Nordic conference reported that the new antidepressant drugs, in particular, have a stimulating, amphetamine-like effect and consumers of these drugs can become “aggressive” or “suffer hallucinations and/or suicidal thoughts.”⁹

In 1995, nine Australian psychiatrists urged SSRIs be sold with a warning after patients had slashed themselves or became preoccupied with violence when taking them. The self-destructive harm started after the treatment began or doses increased, and eased or ceased when the drugs were stopped. “I didn’t want to die, I just felt like tearing my flesh to pieces,” one patient told them. Another said, “I got my cane cutters’ knife in my right hand and wanted to cut my left hand off at the wrist.”¹⁰

A 1975 Canadian study researching the effects of psychiatric drugs on prisoners discovered that “violent, aggressive incidents occurred significantly more frequently in inmates who were on psychotropic medication than when these inmates were not on psychotropic drugs.”¹¹

Between 1988 and 1992, there were reports of 90 children and adolescents who had suffered suicidal or violent self-destructive behavior while on the newer antidepressant, Prozac, an SSRI. The Food and Drug Administration’s own Adverse Drug Reactions reports reveal that a 12-year-old suffered hostility, confusion, was violent and became “glassy-eyed” on the drug; an 18-year-old was hospitalized after being on the drug for 270 days and had reportedly sexually assaulted and stabbed a store clerk; one 16-year-old who had been on Prozac for 50 days, reported hostility, psychotic depression and hallucinations when there had been no prior psychiatric history.”¹²

Psychotic episodes and violent behavior are associated with chronic Ritalin abuse. Ritalin is the amphetamine-like drug widely prescribed to children for the contrived mental disease, “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder” (ADHD).¹³ Even Ritalin’s manufacturer warns “frank psychotic episodes can occur” with abusive use.¹⁴

Several examples of teenagers killing while taking psychiatric drugs follows:

September 27,1997: A 16-year-old, Jackson Township, New Jersey boy, Sam Manzie, raped and strangled to death an 11-year-old boy who was selling door-to-door for the local Parents and Teachers Association. Manzie then took a “trophy photo” of the dead boy, the cord from the clock radio still around his neck. Manzie was under psychiatric care at the time and taking “medication.” He reportedly told his mother, “I wasn’t killing that little boy. I was killing (my doctor) because he didn’t listen to me.”¹⁵

May 21,1998: Before going on a wild shooting spree at his Springfield, Oregon high school that left two dead and 22 injured, 14-year-old Kip Kinkel had been attending [psychological] anger control classes and was reportedly taking Prozac and Ritalin. Kinkel also shot and killed his parents.”¹⁶

4. Blaming Patients Stopping Their Medication As A Source of Violence

The fact that these drugs are a recipe for violence is obscured because frequently after a violent crime has been committed, psychiatrists or their allied organizations such as the pharmaceutical company-funded National Alliance for the Mentally III (NAMI), blame the offending person’s violent behavior on his failure to continue his medication, but the truth is, it is most likely the result of withdrawal effects from the drug itself.

In 1995, a Danish medical study reported the following withdrawal symptoms from psychotropic drug dependence: “Emotional changes: fear, terror, panic, fear of insanity, failing self confidence, restlessness, irritability, aggression, an urge to destroy and, in the worst cases, an urge to kill.” (emphasis added)¹⁷

In 1996, the National Preferred Medicines Center, Inc., comprising physicians in New Zealand, issued a report on “Acute drug withdrawal,” saying that withdrawal from psychoactive drugs can cause 1) rebound effects that exacerbate previous symptoms of a “disease,” and 2) new symptoms unrelated to the condition that had not been previously experienced by the patient.¹⁸ With withdrawal from antipsychotics, the person can experience restlessness, anxiety, and agitation; withdrawal from benzodiazepines (minor tranquilizers) can cause “heightened emotional response;” for example, “anxiety” and “insomnia.”¹⁹ The SSRIs can create “agitation, severe depression, hallucinations” and “aggressiveness.”²⁰ Tricyclic antidepressants can cause akathisia which studies show can cause severe restlessness and agitation.²¹

Psychiatric drugs cause violence; they kill. These are facts that psychiatrists and NAMI are not comfortable with. Psychiatrists for obvious reasons—they could and should be held liable for a crime committed by their drugged-out patients—and NAMI because it “is awash in money from drug companies”—$3.2 million per year from nine such companies that manufacture these often crippling drugs that psychiatry demands.²²

5. Recommendations:

The Council of Europe’s Resolution 1235 on Psychiatry and Human Rights, Article (iii) Problems and abuses in psychiatry (c) prohibits the use of mechanical restraints on patients. The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights guarantees individuals the right to be free from “torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Therefore: Laws must be introduced requiring a mandatory reporting system where there has been any injury or death from chemical, mechanical or other restraint in mental health facilities and psychiatric wards; this needs to be reported to an independent body. With no mandatory reporting required for such deaths, children continue to be tortured and killed in psychiatric institutions like prisoners of war.

The use of restraints on children in particular must be banned.

Laws must provide for mental health workers to be criminally culpable where the use of such restraints on adults results in injury or death.

In addition to restraint legislation in order to determine trends in psychiatric-drug associated crime, regulations should be enacted whereby a person charged with a violent offense, should be tested for psychiatric drug use. An independent data base should be established to collect this information to determine which drugs are most indicated in crime. The data and findings should be publicly accessible.

Reject any move to broaden the powers of involuntary commitment laws or to introduce community treatment orders ("assisted treatment"/"outpatient commitment") that enforce people, under threat of hospitalization, to stay on “medication.” This is especially the case when the argument for community treatment orders is based on the misconception that enforcing drug maintenance will prevent violent acts or crime. Workable mental healing must be delivered in a calm atmosphere characterized by tolerance, safety, security and respect for people’s rights.

Endnotes

1 “National Restraint Death Database,” Hartford Courant, Internet URL: http://www.courant.com/news/special/restraint/data.htm, (accessed: 19 October 1998).

2 “For The Record: 11 Months, 23 Dead,” Hartford Courant, 11 Oct. 1998.

3 Hartford Courant, March 24, 1998; New Haven Register, March 24, 1998; News and Record, April 17, 1998; Arizona Daily Star, February 19, 1998.

4 “Legislators take aim at restraint,” Hartford Courant, 31 Jan. 1999.

5 Ibid.

6 Erica Behears, “Report: Boy’s death caused by asphyxiation,” Charlotte Observer, 13 Mar. 1999.

7 Charles Medawar, “Antidepressants: Hooked on the happy drug”, What Doctors Don’t Tell You, Vol. 8: No.11, March 1998, p. 3.

8 Abstract from: J.P. Kemph, R.O. Braley, P.V. Citola, “Description of an outpatient psychiatric population in a youthful offender’s prison,” Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 1997, Vol 25, No. 2, pp. 149-60.

9 “Frygt for misbrugs-epidemi,” Politiken, 13 June 1995, reported in CCHR Denmark’s white paper to the Council of Europe and Danish Government and Parliamentary Committees, entitled, “Denmark’s Law on Deprivation of Liberty and Other Coercive Measures in Psychiatry—Causing Violence,” 16 Oct. 1996.

10 “Violent effects of drugs exposed,” Cairns Post, 20 Apr. 1995; “Warning on side-effects of anti-depressant drugs,” Northern Star-Lisborne, 21 Apr. 1995.

11 D.G. Workman and D.G. Cunningham, “Effects of Psychotropic Drugs on Aggression in a Prison Setting,” Canadian Family Physician, Nov., 1975, pp. 63-66.

12 Summary done of FDA’s Adverse Drug Reaction Reports for Prozac, 1988-1992, obtained through Freedom of Information Act by CCHR.

13 John Merline, “Public Schools: Pushing Drugs?”, Business Daily, 16 Oct. 1997.

14 Physicians Desk Reference^®, (Medical Economics Company, Inc., New Jersey), 1998, p. 1897.

15 AP Wire, “Manzie to plead insane in killing of Jackson Township 11-year-old,” The Boston Globe, 27 Apr. 1998.

16 Maureen Sielaff, “Prozac Implicated in Oregon Shooting,” The Vigo Examiner, Maurren@Vigo-Examiner.com.; 20/20 National TV Show reporting on the Kip Kinkel Oregon Shooting, 22 May 1998, transcript taken from this show.

17 “Kvart Mill danskere er pillenarkomaner,” Ekstra Bladet, 13 February 1995, reported in CCHR Denmark’s white paper to the Council of Europe and Danish Government and Parliamentary Committees, entitled, “Denmark’s Law on Deprivation of Liberty and Other Coercive Measures in Psychiatry-Causing Violence,” 16 Oct. 1996.

18 “Acute drug withdrawal,” PreMec Medicines Information Bulletin, August, 1996, modified 6 Jan. 1997, http://www.premec.org.nz/bulletins/53.htm (accessed 18 Mar., 1999).

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid.

22 Greg Birnbaum, “Patients group getting $3M a year from firms,” New York Post, 28 Feb. 1999, p.18.