Woman Says Psychiatric Practices Killed her Father

On July 6, 2006, Ms. Carol Petrunia’s father committed suicide by hanging himself with a belt while being “treated” at the Country Squire Mental Health Facility in Osoyoos, British Columbia. He had previously been “treated" at the Penticton Regional Hospital Psychiatric Ward where he had been prescribed and was using one of the many psychiatric drugs known to precipitate suicidal feelings, Remeron.

Prior to his being involuntarily committed to the Penticton psychiatric ward and subsequent to his admission to the Country Squire, Ms. Petrunia’s father was having much difficulty being able to eat and had lost an extreme amount of weight. This was due to an undiagnosed health related issue. He needed competent medical attention to correct this problem, not a psychiatric misdiagnosis and dangerous mind altering drugs.

Ms. Petrunia has filed a complaint with the with the Southern Interior Health Region saying that her father became severely agitated while taking the drug Remeron but the prescribing psychiatrist did nothing. She is also claiming that she is convinced that her father would never have committed suicide if psychiatrists had not been meddling with his mind and if he had not been taking any of psychiatry’s drugs, particularly the anti-depressant Remeron.

On May 26, 2004 Remeron came under fire when Heath Canada issued a stronger warning for SSRIs and other newer anti-depressants, including Remeron, regarding the potential for behavioral and emotional changes, including risk of self-harm. Heath Canada reported that there are clinical trial and post-marketing reports with SSRIs and other newer antidepressants, in both pediatrics and adults, of severe agitation-type adverse events coupled with self-harm or harm to others. The agitation-type events include: akathisia, agitation, disinhibition, emotional lability, hostility, aggression, depersonalization. In some cases, the events occurred within several weeks of starting treatment.

Research, conducted by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a psychiatric watchdog group established by the Church of Scientology, showed that in only the past two years 18 government warnings by five different countries including Switzerland, England, Canada, the US and Europe have been issued on the previously undisclosed dangers of psychiatric drugs citing side effects of drug dependence, addiction, mania, hostility, aggression, psychosis, suicide and violence.

Brian Beaumont, President of the Vancouver chapter of CCHR said, “Never have incidents of psychiatric injustice been more evident than in the mental health field where laws have empowered psychiatrists to seize people and, without trial, not only deprive them of their liberty, but drug them against their will and commit abusive acts upon them. Committed by anyone else in society, these acts would result in charges of false imprisonment, assault and even rape. People need to know their rights when faced with abuse such as this and CCHR is here to help them”.

Beaumont concluded, “There are no blood tests, X-rays, brain scans or any scientific/medical means by which psychiatry’s diagnoses can be verified. Subsequently millions of men women and children have been wrongly diagnosed as mentally ill, and prescribed dangerous and potentially lethal psychiatric drugs”.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was established in 1969 by the Church of Scientology to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights.

For more information and a complete list of recent government inquiries go to http://www.cchr.org and to view the Health Canada warning go to Important drug safety information for REMERON RDTM/REMERON