Newsweek Magazine Ran An Article On Teen Depression

The following are 2 letters to the editor.

To the Editor:

It is hard to tell where the Big Pharma, 24-page, "special advertising supplement" leaves off and the feature article "Teen Depression" begins. As with all of your articles on "biological" psychiatry, this one too, is replete with brain pictures and medical allusions despite the scientific fact of the matter, that it is all about the mind and not at all about the brain. This is a point you should assign a true science writer to but, instead you join psychiatry, long since, bought- and-paid-for by Big Pharma, spinning of illusions of brain diseases and chemical imbalances, where none exist, for which to sell "chemical balancers"-pills. Under "Trouble spots" we read "Scientists aren't sure if brain changes during adolescence lead to depression, but they've identified possible sources for the moodiness and rash behaviors that can become patholological". Psychiatrist, Madelyne Gould of Columbia, posits: "Parents often think their kid is just being a kid-that all teenagers are moody, oppositional and irritable all the time." What she is saying is that they are no longer just kids; they are abnormal/diseased. Psychiatrist, Harold Koplewicz of my alma mater, NYU, turns the word on its head: "Depression [is] such a misused term. We're not talking about demoralization or about being dispirited. We're talking about a real illness that has neurobiological underpinning and that parents have to take as seriously as diabetes." Koplewicz is fully 'out of the closet' with his claim of psychiatric diseases. As I testified to the Committee on Education and the Workforce, hearing, "Behavioral Drugs in Schools," September 29, 2000: "For any physician to say that any psychiatric condition is an actual disease is a fraud."

Truly yours,
Fred A. Baughman Jr. MD
Fellow, American Academy of Neurology
1303 Hidden Mountain Drive
El Cajon, CA 92019

Letter to the Editor

I will never purchase, nor look at another copy of Newsweek again. Unless this letter to the editor is published.

The cover story on Teen Depression, ("Young and Depressed," Oct 7th) was an out of control vehicle for the pharmaceutical industry to keep drugging our children. Young and depressed? About what? America is the alleged envy of the world, but for some reason we support a 12.5 billion dollar antidepressant industry. Teen Depression is a myth and the unscientific labeling of children as "depressed" is merely child abuse. And parents who agree to their children being drugged with Ritalin or Paxil or whatever because they won't give them enough attention - should be jailed. Young and depressed? Come on, make teens get some "exercise" and demand of themselves normal self worth for crying out loud.

Sincerely,
Tony Zizza
1326 Waterton Trail
Douglasville, GA 30134

NEWSWEEK Tuesday 10/8/02