Few parents are warned that children labelled with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) for which they are customarily prescribed dangerous, potentially addictive drugs, can later be disqualified from joining the armed forces to protect their country. The problem could worsen because of recently released guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) that endorse the psychiatric-invented condition and the cocaine-like drugs prescribed for it.
In the light of the recent terrorist attacks on America, consider that in 1998, the U.S. military discharged more than 3,100 recruits with psychiatric histories. Discharges ranged from recruits with lengthy psychiatric treatment to those who had been diagnosed with ADHD. The drugs prescribed for ADHD are amphetamine-like stimulants. Other psychiatric drugs prescribed children include tranquilizers, antidepressants and, less frequently, amphetamines and barbiturates.
The most serious problem is the potentially volatile mix of people labelled and drugged who are given possession of deadly weapons.
While on a comparatively minor scale to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, in recent years, six teenage shooting sprees linked to psychiatric drugs have led to 19 deaths and 51 wounded. This included 14-year-old Kip Kinkel who killed two and wounded 22 others at his Springfield, Oregon high school, and Eric Harris’s killing rampage at Columbine High School, leaving 13 dead and 23 injured. Both boys were taking prescribed stimulants or antidepressants.
Ms. Jan Eastgate, International President of the psychiatric watchdog group, The Citizens Commission on Human Rights, (CCHR) said, “The country’s future security is potentially being minimized because of a diagnosis that has absolutely no scientific proof to substantiate it and because of drugs that are known to induce violent rages, suicidal behavior and have even been implicated in terrorist training.”
At least 250,000 children worldwide, some as young as seven, have been used by revolutionaries and terrorists for armed combat and in some cases have been trained to kill using psychiatric drugs and cocaine. According to a UNICEF report, many children have been given amphetamines and tranquilizers to enable them to “go on murderous binges for days.”
In 1999, Human Rights Watch reported that under the influence of drugs, “child combatants armed with pistols, rifles and machetes actively participated in killings and massacres, and severed the arms of other children….” Group spokesperson, Corinne Dufka, said, “It seemed to be a very organized strategy of getting the kids, drugging them up, breaking down their defense and memory, and turning them into fighting machines that didn’t have a sense of empathy and feeling for the civilian population.”
Locally, stimulants prescribed for ADHD are like amphetamines and, according to a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, are more potent than cocaine.
The AAP guidelines, influenced by psychiatric, psychological and pharmacological interests, say that stimulants reduce the “core symptoms of ADHD.” Eastgate says, “Hitting a child over the head with a two by four would also reduce his fidgeting, squirming, talking excessively or losing his pencils—all symptoms of ‘ADHD.’ Just because a drug alters behavior doesn’t prove the existence of a disease or that the drug ‘works.’”
Beverly Eakman, author of Cloning of the American Mind, says, “These drugs make children more manageable, not necessarily better. ADHD is a phenomenon, not a ‘brain disease.’ Because the diagnosis of ADHD is fraudulent, it doesn’t matter whether a drug ‘works.’ Children are being forced to take a drug that is stronger than cocaine for a disease that is yet to be proven.”
Pediatric neurologist Fred Baughman, says, “Virtually all professionals of the extended ADHD 'industry' convey to parents and to the public that ADHD is a 'disease' and that, as such, children are 'abnormal.' This is a perversion of the scientific record and a violation of the informed consent rights of all patients, especially parents.”
Critics say that the AAP guidelines give credence to a list of behaviors that
in 1987 were literally voted into existence as a “mental disorder” by a show
of hands at an American Psychiatric Association Committee. Within a year,
500,000 American children were suddenly stricken with this newly invented
“disease.” Today, that figure has reached 6 million, with more than $15 billion
spent annually on the diagnosis, treatment and study of childhood psychiatric
"disorders."
“ADHD is a for-profit disorder at the expense of children’s lives and, it now seems, the expense of our armed services,” Eastgate said.
CTM Comment: Drug-based psychiatry of course does not even pretend to ‘cure’
any mental illness, but merely uses drugs to reduce or dampen symptoms. Many
of these mental disorders, such as ADD/ADHD have their roots in nutritional
deficiency and food allergen causations, as explained in Health
Wars. Psychiatry over the years can be characterised by many criminal
acts perpetrated by its ‘doctors’ with the use of mind-altering drugs and
electro-shock therapies that are a brazen abuse of human rights. An independent
review of all things psychiatric is long overdue and badly needed by a globally
co-ordinated, citizen-appointed independent panel.
