Feedback: We'd like to hear your comments and views. Please forward them to the e-mail address above. Contact information is below.

In mid-June of this year, Safe Harbor will be presenting in the Los Angeles area an outstanding 2-day seminar on "Natural Treatment of Mental Disorders." We will announce the exact time and location in our next ezine.

The seminar is designed for healthcare professionals, including physicians, chiropractors, nutritionists, nurses and others in the medical field. Non-medical public are welcome.

Featured speakers will include, among others, holistic psychiatrist and author Dr. Hyla Cass and Professor James Croxton, who teaches one of the very few collegiate level courses on nutrition and mental health in the United States.

The seminar will cover such topics as nutrients and nerve function and the roles of allergies, toxins, metabolic problems and medical ailments in causing severe mental symptoms labeled as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, etc.,

Professional education on natural treatments of mental disorders is virtually non-existent in the United States and Safe Harbor takes great pride in bringing this much-needed knowledge to healthcare professionals in the first of many such seminars we hope to deliver. 

Safe Harbor is launching its annual membership drive!

We are moving into our fourth year and going strong, changing lives every day. Every week thousands come to our Web site for help and information. We are currently working on programs with Los Angeles County and the State of California, including educating doctors on non-drug alternatives. We continue to give well-received workshops to the public on non-drug alternatives. We have received support from the prestigious California Endowment, the Bank of America Foundation, Wells Fargo Foundation, and the Norman Lear Foundation.

Thank you very much for helping us continue changing lives every day!

A groundbreaking food and mood conference is scheduled to take place in London on September 18, 2002. Presented by Pavilion Publishing in association with the Food and Mood Project, it aims to consider the application of nutritional and dietary approaches for improving mental and emotional health in adults.

This national conference will bring together a broad range of expertise and experience to provide a unique opportunity to explore this emerging complementary approach to mental health care.

Researchers and clinicians will report on their findings together with service users and support group leaders who are experts in the self-help approach. The day will offer a valuable learning and networking opportunity for statutory and voluntary sector professionals responsible for the mental health and social care of adults, as well as service users and interested members of the public.

Richard Brook, Mind (a British nonprofit)
Alison Faulkner, Mental Health Foundation
Amanda Geary, The Food and Mood Project
Patrick Holford, The Institute for Optimum Nutrition
Paul Shattock, Autism Research Unit, University of Sunderland
Jan Wallcraft, Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health

For further details please contact Pavilion Publishing on 01273 623222 or visit www.pavpub.com.

International experts say developed countries are using too many prescription drugs. The UN International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) issued the warning in its 2000 report.

The Vienna-based board of international experts oversees the implementation of UN drug treaties, and how countries are complying.

The report criticized the widespread use of mood-altering drugs for social problems, such as unemployment or relationship difficulties. A survey by the INCB found that even patients who were not diagnosed as mentally ill were frequently prescribed mood-altering stimulants.

Benzodiazepines (tranquilizers) are a major problem. In the US, the forms of benzodiazepine used to treat anxiety and obesity disorders are used 10 times as often as in Europe. In Europe, the forms of drug used as a sedative are used three times as often as in the US. Statistics were given to highlight the role of aggressive marketing practices, loose prescription regulations, and unethical prescribing.

INCB president Professor Hamid Ghodse said an oversupply of drugs can be as big a problem as the under-supply of pain-relieving drugs to developing countries, which the previous year's report emphasized.

"Up to 70% of long-term use of psychotropic drugs is irrelevant and often prescribed for social reasons."

He said although an estimated 30% of the populations of developed countries were obese, the use of anti-obesity drugs was due to fashion. "People are too focused on making their shape into what is perceived as attractive."

Policing drugs trading on the internet is a high priority, said the board, which is urging governments to set up regulatory controls for online pharmacies. Thailand-based online pharmacies were a source of illegal drugs for addicts in the US until combined efforts of the two countries shut down the unethical sites.

A recent study by Brown University, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry March 2002, found that as few as 15 percent of patients evaluated in the Rhode Island Hospital Department of Psychiatry outpatient clinic would have met the eligibility requirements of a standard drug trial.

The researchers reviewed the inclusion and exclusion criteria used in 31 antidepressant trials published from 1994 to 1998 in five leading psychiatric journals. Exclusions consisted of patients with psychotic features, a history of manic episodes, suicide risk, unstable medical illnesses, or a history of drug or alcohol abuse. Several also excluded subjects with eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder or panic disorder. Nearly all of the studies excluded patients who fell below a cutoff score on a measure of symptom severity, even though they were diagnosed with major depression.

"Drug companies are concerned that individuals with mild depression will respond just as well to a placebo as they will to antidepressant medication," said Mark Zimmerman, associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior, director of outpatient psychiatry at Rhode Island Hospital, and lead researcher in the study. "However, this represents a sizable number of individuals who are prescribed these medicines, especially by primary care physicians."

The researchers conducted diagnostic evaluations of 346 patients ranging in age from 16 to 65 at the Rhode Island Hospital Department of Psychiatry outpatient practice. They found that two-thirds of the patients had the common exclusion criteria, and patients with anxiety raised this to 85 percent - yet more than 90 percent of the patients in the study for whom prescribing information was available were being treated with antidepressants at the time of the evaluation.

"When you take any medicine you assume it's been found to be effective for your condition," said Zimmerman. "No one knows for sure whether antidepressants are effective for most of the patients we treat."

Some extrapolation of antidepressant studies by clinicians will always be necessary, Zimmerman said. It would be impossible to establish the effectiveness of antidepressant medications in every conceivable population of depressed patients. But the current practice of limiting studies to only "pure" moderate-to-severely ill depressives may skew the findings of drug trials, he added.

Opening antidepressant trials to patients with a wider range of symptoms would allow researchers to learn whether any specific subsets respond or do not respond to a drug. The question now is whether government mandates are necessary to make trials more inclusive, Zimmerman said. There is little motivation for drug companies - whose primary aim is to show that their medication is safe and that it works for some patients - to do this.

"Drug companies have been correct in assuming that if they show their medicine works for a highly select group of depressed patients, physicians will use it for all patients," said Zimmerman.

If antidepressants are, in fact, not effective for some of these large subgroups of depressed individuals, their prescription incurs an unjustifiable exposure of risks and side effects, and alternative treatments need to be considered.

Britain's Alzheimer's Society has received funding for a major research project to search for alternatives to antipsychotic and sedative drugs for dementia patients.

The Alzheimer's Society is concerned that neuroleptic drugs are being used inappropriately and over-prescribed to people with dementia.  In a statement, the society said that neuroleptics are often used to 'control' behavior that people may find difficult to deal with, including aggressive behavior or 'wandering,' rather than attempting to understand or investigate the cause, e.g. distress, feelings of humiliation or fear.

"Once prescription of one of these drugs has been initiated, although this may be reviewed, doctors and care staff are often reluctant to consider stopping the medication in case this results in a worsening of behavior. As a result, patients were often prescribed drugs for months or years even though there was little evidence of long-term benefit, even if the drugs had a positive effect in the short term.

"For most patients the drugs cause severe and unpleasant side effects including excessive sedation, increased confusion, muscle rigidity, tremors and falls. Some research has also suggested that neuroleptic drugs reduce the life expectance of people with dementia."

The four-year research project will be centered in three locations in England, and will test the efficacy and acceptability of alternatives to regular psychotropic prescription for those people with dementia who present the most serious behavioral problems.

A recent report by scientists from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (a component of the U.S. Natl. Institute of Health), has raised some eyebrows regarding the rise in children diagnosed with "ADHD."

Their recent study of over 6,000 parents in a "typical" county in North Carolina found that more than 15 percent of boys in grades one through five have been diagnosed with ADHD, and two-thirds of those diagnosed were taking Ritalin or comparable medication for the condition.

"Treatment rates are usually viewed as abnormally high if they exceed the three to five percent prevalence estimate for ADHD cited in an American Psychiatric Association manual in 1994," the authors said.

The report means that in this typical county one out of every ten school boys is being drugged for a condition which many in the medical field don't even believe exists.  In fact, Dr. Xavier Castellanos of the National Institute of Mental Health, considered the nation's leading expert on ADHD, stated in a Frontline interview in 2001 that he did not even know what ADHD is.

As stated by Jonathan Leo, Ph.D., in the Jan/Feb issue of Social Science and Modern Society in his article "American Preschoolers on Ritalin," "The ADHD experts are quick to point out that ADHD is one of the most thoroughly investigated and well-studied pediatric diseases. It is certainly true that millions of dollars, countless hours, and tremendous resources have all been consumed in an enormous effort to investigate ADHD. Yet, fundamental questions about ADHD are still vigorously debated. There is no proof of any underlying neurobiological deficit, it is not clear what the proper treatment should be, and it is not clear that the label 'ADHD' is even valid. Even the American Psychiatric Press Textbook of Psychiatry, which overwhelmingly supports the idea that ADHD is a biological disease, has statements such as, 'With unclear diagnostic boundaries, it is difficult to define or even conceptualize a unitary concept of ADHD or its etiology (p. 838),' or 'there remains considerable uncertainty about the validity of ADHD as a diagnostic entity (p. 827).'"

The North Carolina study recommends that further investigation be done to determine if there would be similar results in other counties.

Dr. Leo's article focuses on the underlying promotional activity that he feels is being passed off as science by the promoters of Ritalin, and the fact that even three-year-olds are being forced to ingest a stimulant drug that may alter their developing brain without any evidence that it is for their benefit.

Dr. Leo's response to further research? "Handing out more money to investigate the safety of Ritalin ... is exactly the kind of thinking that has created the current mess, and more money will only make more of a mess."

ALTERNATIVEMENTALHEALTH.COM IS THE WORLD'S LARGEST WEB SITE DEVOTED exclusively to alternative mental health treatments. It includes a directory of over 200 physicians, nutritionists, experts, organizations, and facilities around the U.S. that offer or promote safe, alternative treatments for severe mental symptoms. Many of the physicians listed do in-depth examinations to find the physical causes behind mental problems.

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, as well as a Montel Williams video on alternative treatment for children labeled with ADD.

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.