Bipolar Biedermania

Joseph Biederman

According to the psychiatrist who writes 1 Boring Old Man, as well as many others on the planet,(including me) Joseph Biederman basically invented juvenile Bipolar disorder.  It appears Biederman did this in order to expand the market for profitable psychiatric drugs used to treat the diagnosis.  Biederman is one of several research psychiatrists who have conducted themselves unethically, and who are responsible for the widespread use of dangerous psychiatric drugs in the pediatric population.  He is one of the worst, and has acted without regard for his patients, or the patients of the professionals who relied on his research; which as it turns out is seriously flawed.  Biedeman's research appears to be more along the lines of pre-marketing work for the drug companies who funded him.  This research psychiatrist helped Johnson&Johnson with it's massive "off-label" marketing fraud of Risperdal.  As  "Key Opinion Leader" he recommended using neuroleptic drugs in spite of there being no valid clinical trial data to support their use.  Risperdal, like all neuroleptic drugs, alters normally functioning neurological, metabolic and endocrine systems causing dysfunction, which can lead to obesity, diabetes, cognitive impairment, disability and death; to name a few of the risks...


via  1Boring Old Man

"Some of this might even make good comedy if it weren’t such a serious topic. This saga actually speaks for the decade and a half it spans. It resulted in the unnecessary medication of lots of kids with potent and potentially toxic medications; it furthered our profession’s reputation as riddled with crooks; it so muddies the water that we have no idea if the resulting library of literature on childhood affective disorder has any meaning at all; and it did little for the prestige of Harvard University. All it really did was jack up the cost of health care and inflate corporate sponsor’s annual reports. There’s nothing to be proud of here…"  (empasis mine)  Read it here.

Parents who have children being given any psychiatric diagnosis need to know that there is much more to question about the psychiatric labels and the drugs used to threat the symptoms associated with them, than there is to be comfortable with.  Professionals may tell you that a diagnostic label bestowed upon your child is due to an underlying 'Brain Disease', 'defect' or 'Chemical Imbalance'---when in fact, none has been identified to date---it is an unproven hypothesis----not substantiated even once; it is not not even a theory; and certainly not a medical fact or certainty!  The story of disease and imbalance is based on the drugs actions once ingested, not on any underlying pathology, genetic defect, or somatic dysfunction identified in your child---or in any child.   

 Demand accurate information, seek it out and know the risks!

A little more from 1 Boring Old Man:

"But the original study by Aman et al in 2002 never mentions the word "bipolar" – ever. Is there any other evidence that the Biederman study might be ghost-written? How about this? At the bottom of the first page of the Biederman et al article, it says, "Printed in the USA. Reproduction in whole or part is not permitted. Copyright © 2006 Excerpta Medica, Inc." Remember Excerptia Medica? It’s the medical information company around the corner from Janssen headquarters in NJ, the one implicated in ghost-writing any number of Janssen articles by theRothman Report [detestable…] [see my post gpp?…].

Several things. This study is about medicating disruptive, low IQ kids for behavior control with Antipsychotics. It was later revived as treating "bipolar" kids. And it looks like the shots were being called from Janssen corporate offices with Biederman and the Harvard group added on for prestige.

I repeat – detestable!…"

Not only is it detestable; it is criminal.  Witnessing what these drugs have done to my son's physical health, and the continued cognitive and intellectual decline, due to neuroleptic and other psychotropic drugs, is an ongoing nightmare.  There is no doubt in my mind that these drugs should NOT be used in the widespread indiscriminate manner they are being prescribed.