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Also included on the site is an array of articles on topics ranging from the medical causes of schizophrenia to the effects of toxic metals on mental health.

Special AlternativeMentalHealth.com T-shirts and bumper stickers are available at our online store.

A bookstore page lists top books that cover many areas of alternative treatments with titles like Natural Healing for Schizophrenia and Other Common Mental Disorders and No More Ritalin.

AlternativeMentalHealth.com has been created to educate the public, practitioners, and government officials on the medical conditions that create "mental illness" and the many safe resources available for addressing and often curing severe mental symptoms.

I want to take a moment to give my deepest thanks the many, many people who have volunteered to help Safe Harbor get out its message of hope and recovery to the world.

I won't try to name them all as I would surely leave someone out and so many are helping these days in so many places that, frankly, I don't know who many of them are.

I want to particularly extend my gratitude to Alan Graham, our assistant editor. Alan does the bulk of the writing and organizing of our monthly ezine, the Alternative Mental Health News, one of our most popular services. He is a big factor in giving it such a professional look. He has a keen intellect, makes deadlines despite the pressures of a busy life, and is simply one heck of a writer whose work needs little editing.

Many of our volunteers are in Los Angeles, our home base, but some are in other cities, such as Margo Duesterhaus who monitors our Integrative Psychiatry list from the state of Maryland.

These days we have volunteers helping to create chapters in other cities in Boston, New York, and Germany. Others are seeking to create chapters in New Mexico, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Chicago.

Still others are working on translating our Web site into other languages. With AlternativeMentalHealth.com currently in English and German, we have offers to translate it now into Russian and Spanish.

My background is in the corporate world, where people usually do things for money. It has been a wonderful experience to step into this world of volunteer work, where people help out of their own kindness or out of their deepest convictions.

On October 9, 2003, in Los Angeles, Safe Harbor will honor Bernard Rimland, Ph.D. by presenting him with our 2003 Lighthouse Award. This award is given annually to honor individuals who have made outstanding contributions to humanity by forwarding the use of truly safe and effective mental health treatments.

Since the 1960s, Dr. Rimland, founder of the Autism Research Institute, has been a pioneer in autism treatment research, and is more responsible than anyone in causing research to be directed toward dietary and nutritional therapies. He has spearheaded the DAN! conferences (Defeat Autism Now !) which have created flocks of physicians around the world armed with natural treatment protocols for autism.

Also honored for a lifetime of achievement will be Professor James Croxton of Santa Monica College. Prof. Croxton has not only been a longtime teacher and advocate of "physiological psychology" and nutritional treatments for mental health, he also watched his own daughter recover from schizophrenia by these same treatments.

On July 9, 2003, psychiatrist Stuart Shipko, M.D., will speak at the Safe Harbor Support Group meeting on Pharmaceuticals: Reducing them Safely. The meeting will be held from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm at the Safe Harbor office located at 1718 Colorado Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90041.

We will have a support group meeting from 7 PM to 8 PM and the talk and a question-and-answer period will last from 8 PM to 9 PM. The talk is free and all are invited.

The lecture will be at the Safe Harbor office at 1718 Colorado Blvd. in the Eagle Rock section of Los Angeles.

NAMI Natural is a newly-formed subsidiary of NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill) of Chino Hills, California, that educates on non-drug alternatives for mental health.

They are seeking a volunteer webmaster to help them create and run a web site. The person does not need to live in California or even the United States. Anyone interested may contact NAMI Natural president Pam Greider at pq21@juno.com or 909 606 9959. 

Jackie Kali of Kentucky is putting together a book which will be a compilation of stories of people who have recovered from mental health problems holistically. She is very interested in interviewing people who have so recovered.

As a result of groundbreaking accountability legislation we reported on last year, the Mental Health, Chemical Abuse and Dependency Services Division of King County, Washington, is required to submit an annual report on the effectiveness of its mental health services. King County is home to the city of Seattle.

As we covered in Issue 28, the recovery rate reported for the year 2001 was 0.05% -- four recoveries out of 7,831 patients. The recently-released 2002 report shows the exact same recovery rate - 0.05% again!

Overall, of the 9,304 consumers treated:

• 561 (6%) regressed
• 8,163 (88%) remained unchanged
• 580 (6%) progressed, including 5 (.05%) who recovered.

This despite the fact that "recovered" does not necessarily mean "functioning independently in society."

An individual may be living in supported housing and receiving "infrequent maintenance services" and still be considered "recovered" as long as he or she "is engaged in volunteer work, or pursuing educational or vocational activities, or employed full or part-time, or engaged in other culturally appropriate activities."

The report cited reduced funding from the last two legislative sessions as an obstacle to providing effective care. Despite budget cuts, the county's recovery rate works out to about $16 million per recovery achieved.

"In the 1950's Drs. Abram Hoffer and Harvey Osmond developed orthomolecular treatments for mental illness based on vitamins and other natural substances. Claims that double-blind clinical trials document the success of this approach are ignored by many clinicians, but adherents work to ensure that thorough physical diagnosis and access to alternative treatments are available to clients concerned about the long-term use of medications."

"...Access to alternative providers and the freedom to make our own choices about health care are things we value deeply, but we are hesitant to offer similar options to clients in the public mental health system."

"In 1970 I read about Dr. Abram Hoffer's work and at that time was approached by a friend who had just been stopped from suiciding in a gas oven by her husband. She had her head in there and the gas on. She had also just begun a new drug, for bipolar (manic depression it was named then). She used to be admitted to the local Mental Hospital regularly every year at Spring Time.

"I began her on hi-dose B3, magnesium, Vit C and zinc. Today she is 90 and as bright as a button, very keen mind. In the subsequent 33 years she has only been in Mental wards once, and that was when she thought she was cured and didn't have to take her vitamin/mineral formula anymore. At that time we were also approached by a young man who had attempted suicide on same drug.

"The same result we obtained for him. And this was only a small Western cattle and sheep town of 16,000 people.

Major depression has been ranked as the fourth most disabling medical disorder by disability-adjusted life-years, a measure of burden. By 2010 major depression will be ranked second unless meaningful improvements occur in prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.

Long-term use of antidepressant drugs may increase biochemical vulnerability to depression and worsen the long-term outcome and symptomatic expression of the illness, decreasing both the likelihood of subsequent response to pharmacologic treatment and the duration of symptom-free periods.

...The occurrence of mania in depressed patients upon treatment with antidepressant drugs is a relatively old clinical observation, even with the use of "mood stabilizers." Antidepressants may double the incidence of a switch into mania (50% in some cases) compared with placebo (25% of cases).

Antidepressant-induced mania is not simply a temporary and reversible phenomenon, but a complex biochemical mechanism of illness deterioration.

The return of depressive symptoms during maintenance antidepressant treatment was found to occur in 9% to 57% of patients in published trials. Possibilities include pharmacologic tolerance, loss of placebo effect, increase in disease severity, change in disease pathogenesis, accumulation of a detrimental metabolite, unrecognized rapid cycling and prophylactic inefficacy.

Antidepressant drugs may yield changes in connections or sensitivity to neurotransmitters indirectly related to the specific actions.

The use of antidepressants drugs is so prevalent that it is difficult to recruit clinical populations who have never been exposed to them.

Patients with past antidepressant treatment had more episodes of depression and a longer duration of illness.

Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis) has antiviral properties. A cream containing an extract of Melissa officinalis has been shown in German research to shorten the healing time of blisters and prevent recurrence of the cold sores.

"Finally, after faced with public pressure from the recent action by U.K. regulators, the FDA has agreed to review reports of increased risk of suicide caused by Paxil," stated attorney Karen Barth, of the Los Angeles-based law firm Baum, Hedlund, Aristei, Guilford & Schiavo. She was responding to a June 19 statement by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommending that the antidepressant Paxil not be used in children or adolescents for the treatment of depression.

The data revealed that Paxil can triple the risk of suicidal behavior in minors. "Of course, because Paxil can cause serious withdrawal symptoms, including severe dizziness, nausea, 'electric zap' sensations, ... crying, mood fluctuations, self-harm, suicidal thoughts and attempted suicide, the FDA has put an advisory in all capital letters and in a box at the top of its statement that it is 'essential' that Paxil not be stopped suddenly. (It took the FDA a decade before it forced GSK to change its warning about Paxil withdrawal.) In other words, kids are damned if they do and damned if they don't," stated Barth.

Baum Hedlund represents victims of both the suicide side effects caused by the SSRI drugs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) and the withdrawal side effects caused by two of the SSRIs, Paxil and Zoloft. The firm represents thousands of Paxil victims and has been litigating failure-to-warn cases against the manufacturers of these antidepressants for 12 years.

Attorney Karen Barth added: "I hope I am wrong in my skepticism about the FDA and that it does not white-wash the suicide risk as it has done in the past. But the FDA's recent actions cause me concern. The FDA this past year joined forces with Pfizer, the manufacturer of Zoloft, by submitting an amicus ('friend of the court') brief in one of our Zoloft suicide cases, stating that it would not allow Pfizer to place a suicide warning in the label for Zoloft even if Pfizer sought to include one because, to do so, according to FDA attorneys, would misbrand the drug."

Baum Hedlund later learned that the FDA's intervention in the case was the result of a telephone call between the FDA's newly-appointed Chief Counsel, Daniel Troy, and Pfizer's national counsel. Baum Hedlund also learned that Mr. Troy worked for Pfizer while the case was pending. "The FDA is violating its own mandate to act in the interests of the American consuming public by taking sides with the pharmaceutical companies it is supposed to police," Barth stated.

After hearing the news of the FDA's intervention in these cases, numerous law professors and attorneys have contacted the Baum Hedlund firm about the impropriety of the FDA's involvement in private litigation on behalf of drug companies. The current regulatory administration, including not only Daniel Troy, but also Alexander Azar, the General Counsel of the Department of Health & Human Services, has continued its public campaign unfazed, according to Baum Hedlund's press release, giving speeches at industry seminars and recruiting pharmaceutical defense attorneys to support its position. The FDA also intervened to prevent a U.S. District Court judge in California from forcing Paxil's manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, to stop airing television commercials that proclaimed Paxil to be "non-habit forming."

Barth further stated: "The FDA is already sanitizing its action with numerous statements that Paxil is okay for adults, whereas the U.K. regulators said they will 'examine urgently' these data with regard to the use of SSRIs in adults. I fear the FDA, under its current administration, lacks the ability to do a truly objective analysis. In one of our suicide cases, the FDA's position is based upon inconclusive and biased reviews done over ten years ago. Does that mean on a child's 18th birthday this risk suddenly disappears? For example, one of our client's children killed himself at age 19. Perhaps we need to remind the FDA of the 8-million-dollar verdict a Wyoming jury awarded in 2000 against GSK in a case where a man taking Paxil killed his wife, his daughter, his granddaughter and then committed suicide.

"The manufacturers of the SSRIs, including GSK, have continuously and adamantly denied even the possibility of a causal connection between the SSRIs and suicide, and, instead, have blamed the victim and the 'disease.' This is notwithstanding clear evidence very early on in the clinical trials of these drugs that they can cause these problems. We have documents obtained through discovery in our litigation showing that there was an awareness of the problem as far back as the late 1970s, long before the first SSRI (Prozac) was approved for marketing in this country. In fact, the German equivalent to the FDA (the 'BGA') initially refused to license Prozac for distribution in that country due to the disproportionate number of suicides in the clinical trials. Germany eventually allowed the drug on the market, however, only with a stronger suicide warning. The reality is that all of the SSRIs, Paxil, Zoloft and Prozac, share the same side effect profile regarding suicide and the safety of these drugs needs to be re-examined, objectively."

According to a study released on June 1, 2003, in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry: "SSRIs have become the most rapidly increasing psychotropic used to treat children and adolescents in the United States."

"It probably seems odd to see a section in a book on drumstick spinning written by a doctor who spends his days chasing down lesions in the brain," Kuhn writes. "Imagine then how it was for Steve who got an e-mail from me telling him how his book was the best thing since sliced bread for kids with ADD/ADHD and other learning disorders.

"First I'd like to tell you about a little girl who was a patient of mine. She could light up a room with her smile. No kidding, it's a thousand watt smile. She came from a good home and even though her mother was a teacher, and even though she spent the time and worked hard, she had difficulty with math. She had never tested at her own grade level in math.

"Her problem was on the opposite side of the brain compared to a young man who was also a patient of mine. He was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). He also was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder and a few other things that can make it hard on an adolescent in high school.

"While the symptoms were unique to each individual, the origin of the problem in both cases was the brain. The brain is like a muscle, you use it or you lose it. In both cases developmentally these kids skipped a step in their brain's development. Although it was not the same part of the brain affected, it happened for the same reason. It happened because the brain didn't get the input it needed from the environment to cause normal health, growth and development.

"What's that got to do with Drumstick Spinology(^tm)? Simple. It was one of the therapies we used to rehabilitate these kids towards their potential. How well did it work? Excellent! For the first time that little girl tested at her grade level in math. And that young man will be listed in Who's Who in American High School Students. I believe they both can look forward to a whole new way of life.

"Why does drumstick spinning work so well with these kids? The science aside, because the kids take the time do it because its fun! Of all the home care that I have prescribed, this is the one that gets done. You see, it's important to have these kids constantly increase the input to their nervous system in a way that exercises the weak neurological pathways. And after all, what kid doesn't want to be a rock star?

"This is why you can look forward to more variations of spin material. Dr. Stix (alias Steve Stockmal) is working with me to give kids a chance to have a level playing field in school."
 

For more information on the book Drumstick Spinology(tm), see www.drstix.com or contact SMG Publications, Mariella Kallona, email: kallona@verizon.net, 805-967-7779. Dr. Kuhn can be reached at kurtkuhn@mchsi.com.