Matthew was a very loved child.
He was an 18-year-old American boy
like everybody else in this country is.
Normal boy.
When he was born he was just the
cutest little baby with big brown eyes.
He was a handsome little boy and
he was very happy all the time.
He was such a free spirit. He was so happy
all the time and he had a smile to die for.
I remember Matt's smile,
boy, I'll tell ya somethin'.
He was a charmer, yeah, those eyes of his
could probably get him in a lot of trouble.
He was always involved, you know.
He liked to be involved in sports...
We used to play basketball, paintball.
He was always a scrapper.
That's one thing we liked about him, if
you picked on him, he'd pick on you back.
Someone to always talk to, personal
relationships, someone you could depend on.
He was a great person, lots of fun.
I miss him.
I miss him every day of my life.
We called him Matthew,
we called him Matt.
The kids, the girls a lot called him
Matty, you know, but he was my Matt.
And he loved to fool around with
the kids and wrestle with the boys.
And he and Annie were very, very close
because they were the closest in age.
Those two, they were
like two peas in a pod.
But, unfortunately, apparently he was having
trouble sleeping and he was having bad dreams
and waking up and starting
to have like panic attacks.
That's when I said to him, "You
know Matt, maybe it would be helpful"
"if you talked to somebody outside of
the family. Would you want to do that?"
So, I made an appointment with him.
So we go in there and she sits down
with us and after no more than 15 minutes
of talking with Matthew and asking some
questions, she gives us samples of Lexapro.
So I said, "What about,
what about side effects?"
I said, "You know, what should we
expect from something like this?"
And she says, "Well, you know,
they're very well tolerated."
And she said, "You know, you either
could have like headache or nausea"
"or maybe some insomnia."
So we went home with our
sample pack of Lexapro and
at that point he
stopped wanting to talk.
He seemed to be withdrawing more.
This was weird behavior for him.
Well, a lot was happening at this time,
also, and he was graduating from high school.
Of course, the big plan, the kids
always, they go to Senior Beach Week.
He didn't want to go. He
wanted to go visit his brother.
And off he went.
The day that he was supposed to be
coming home it was around one o'clock,
I hadn't heard from him yet. He was
supposed to call me when he finally left.
Later on, I guess it was after I got
off work, I called and he didn't answer.
But a little while later he
called me back and he said,
he might have said he was
almost to North Carolina.
It was about 11:30 and I called. He
said, "I'm fine, I just passed Roanoke."
I woke up at around 2:30, kind
of jumped up, looked at the clock
and realized he should
have been home an hour ago.
So I called the cellphone.
It went straight to voicemail.
I kept calling and calling. I'm like,
"Matthew, answer the friggin' phone!"
I was like so upset. I fell asleep, woke up
again, it was about six o'clock in the morning.
I started getting ready
for work, went to work.
I could hardly function. I went
and told my boss I have to go home.
Get in the door, phone's ringing...
...and there's this man on
the other end and he said,
"I'm looking for the
family of Matthew Steubing."
I said, "This is his
mother, who's this?"
And he said, "I'm calling
about the jumping."
Our world blew apart.
We couldn't imagine
that this had happened.
We couldn't understand, 'cause this,
this just wasn't Matthew.
None of this was Matthew,
I mean, it was like,
made no sense, it made no sense.
That was the beginning of my story.
As a mother, I needed to make sense
of what had happened to my child.
There were so many
questions. What had we missed?
The first answer came six
months after Matthew's death
when my husband found a magazine article
that linked psychiatric drugs to suicide.
I was horrified.
And yet, I knew we had found the
answer to the biggest question of all,
"How could this have happened?"
The article answered some questions
but made me think of so many more.
I had to find out for
myself. I had to do something.
This is for you, Matthew.
Before, all I had ever
heard about psychiatric drugs
from the media, at schools,
in the doctor's office,
was how safe and effective they were.
You know, you feel sad and that means you
have a chemical imbalance in the brain.
Just take a pill and that will
help even you out, no problem.
But this certainly didn't
happen in Matthew's case.
Something was wrong with that
story and I needed to find out what.
But were there any professionals who
could tell me what's really going on?
Dr. David Stein, a psychologist who
has written many books and articles
against the use of psychiatric drugs
on children, agreed to talk with me.
So I made the three-hour
drive to see him.
Hi, how are you doing? Good to see you.
- I'm Celeste.
- I'm Dave Stein. Good to see you. Hi folks.
Tell me, what brought you to
drive all the way down here?
- Well, we went to a doctor,
a psychologist... - Okay.
...and my son was
diagnosed with depression
and we were told that it was being
caused by a chemical imbalance.
Is there such a thing as a
chemical imbalance in the brain
that can cause psychological problems?
No, actually that's one of the misstatements
of disinformation or misinformation
that's coming out, and unfortunately
I think your psychologist believes
there's a chemical imbalance
and a lot of people do, the
psychologists, educators.
The psychiatrists certainly accept it
and now pediatricians are accepting it.
It is not caused by a chemical imbalance
and what makes me angry is so many of
the doctors are just buying into that.
It's just not true.
And there is no test or anything that could
have been done to determine that. Am I right?
They claim that they've found this chemical
imbalance or that anatomical problem
or anomaly with the
brain or nervous system
and yet if you were to send your child
to a lab to have the chemical tests done
on his blood or urine, they would look at you
like you're insane because it can't be done.
So what they claim is an imbalance
cannot be measured by any laboratory
or urine tests or PE scans or CAT scans.
None of it can be replicated
at the clinical level
and there are about a thousand
claims that come out every year
where they think they've found the cause
of depression or ADD or bipolar disorder.
None of it is true.
- Does that answer your question, Celeste?
- Yes. I think so.
I feel that if I had known better, if I'd had
the information in front of me to make a decision,
he would never have been on that drug, to be
honest, he never would have been on that drug
and I believe we would
have worked it through,
so I feel, I feel to blame.
- You feel guilty.
- I do. I think I'll always feel that way.
You did not let your son down.
You were an honest parent,
honestly seeking help for your
son who was having some trouble.
And if you went to the bookstore,
the books would say the same thing.
The same garbage would be inundated
through all the bookshelves,
so you'd pull one book after
another book, after another book,
and all you would get is "chemical imbalance"
or "neurological disorder" and all this.
And "They need the drugs and the drugs and
therapy, the combination is the way to go."
You would have gotten it from
everywhere you would have looked.
Except the very few scholars around the
nation and the world that are fighting this.
And we're a rare breed. We
read deep into literature.
You're not at fault, Celeste.
I think your attitude
will change. But right now
the prevailing and pervasive
attitude is what you walked into.
It makes me angry.
I feel anger at hearing your story.
Doctor Stein, thank you so much.
- God bless you and I'll help
you any way I can. - Appreciate it.
What Dr. Stein said shocked me.
Why hadn't I heard this before?
Why hadn't anyone told me this?
Was the mental health
industry knowingly lying to me?
And if they had lied to me, surely
I wasn't the only one they lied to.
I found out I was not alone,
there were a lot of other mothers
who had been through similar
experiences and were speaking out.
Meeting these women was an opportunity to
hear about what had happened to their children
and come to terms with what
had happened to Matthew.
Thank you all very much
for being here today.
I think this is... really important
things we have to talk about.
And I've met so many wonderful
people through this ordeal,
for all the wrong reasons and
one heartbreak after another.
So I know there are so many
stories just right here in this room
and I want people to know what this
can do to families and to children.
So thank you for being
here today and helping me.
- Thank you.
- Thank you.
You know, they let you think
that one doesn't matter.
You know, they expect that a certain percentage
are going to suffer these side effects
and that's okay with them.
- One child's dying is too many.
- But it's not okay for me, it's not okay.
- No, no.
- And there's one and there's one
and there's one and then there's a
hundred and then there's a thousand
and then there's ten thousand.
And it's not just one.
And one is too many but
it just goes on and on.
When I took Matthew to the doctor, he
was diagnosed with a clinical depression.
And they said it was because
of a chemical imbalance.
What happened to you
when you took Candace?
We took Candace because she was
exhibiting anxiety at school.
She had started blocking on tests.
And I had a couple of teachers say,
"You know, Candace needs
to study for these tests,"
when I would know that she had
'cause I used to study with her
and she'd always make
note cards and everything.
But she would get to the test and she would
freeze or else her writing was so horrific
that she might have had the right
answer but the teacher couldn't read it,
so she'd get it wrong anyway.
And I took Candace to a highly
recommended child psychiatrist
and he talked to her for
about 15 minutes and said,
"Well, she has a generalized
anxiety disorder."
The only way that this anxiety was
manifesting itself was in tests.
There were no other areas of anxiety.
They're not telling you that it's entirely
psychologically based and subjective.
They're just saying, "Oh, well, based on
these symptoms you have a chemical imbalance."
And then with a chemical imbalance it's
like, where did they come up with that?
What chemicals? I love that. Like,
where's the test? Don't we get a test?
Where are the tests and... You can draw
somebody's blood and see if they have cancer.
You can... those are
real medical diagnoses.
If somebody tells you that your child
has ADHD, ask them to draw their blood
and show you the chemical
imbalance causing this.
And they can't do it because they haven't proven
the chemical imbalance that's causing this.
It's completely arbitrary and
subjective and it is their opinion
that that's what's going on with your
child who you are actually the expert on.
They always hide behind that... I say "they,"
the psychiatrists and the psychologists.
They always hide behind "We're doing
this in the best interests of your child,"
and that's really hard
to get around as a mom.
You're out there and you're like, I want
to do what's in the best interest of my kid.
- Of course, they're
playing on the guilt again. - Yeah!
"If you loved your child you'd
drug them for their own well-being."
And you want to do what is right for
your child so you bow to the pressure
because you think that they know
because they have an educational history.
They've gone to college,
they're more powerful, they know.
You know your child better
than anybody. Tune 'em out.
You do what your heart tells
you. You don't listen to 'em.
These women were strong, knowledgeable
and determined to spread the word
that what had happened to their
children could happen to anyone's.
Because when it comes to diagnosing
kids with psychiatric disorders,
no one really knows what they're doing,
as a group of high
school students found out
when they interviewed psychiatrists
at a recent psychiatric convention.
Matthew's doctor never informed me about
the unscientific nature of her diagnosis
or the serious possible consequences of
taking the psychiatric drugs to treat it.
So I went to see the well-known
physician and author Dr. Doris Rapp
to find out what I
should have been told.
My son was put on the drug Lexapro
and we were told that the side effects were
very benign: headache, dry mouth, nausea.
What serious side effects
should I have been warned of?
Well, drugs such as that
can cause depression,
it can cause dizziness, and
there are many isolated reports
of almost any area of the
body being affected by those.
These are the ones that cause the
depression, the suicidal thoughts,
the heart disease,
the metabolic defects.
And I think that obviously lung
function and cardiac function
need to be monitored on children
if they are finding enlarged hearts
and the children are having
heart attacks and strokes
and increased blood pressure
and irregular heartbeats.
And it was found that many times when you
stop these drugs the symptoms don't disappear.
You think the shaking is gonna
go away. It may not go away.
And there's nothing more
devastating to a young child
than to twitch and have these jerks
in their body that they can't control.
You should have been told to watch
for any change in how your son feels or
acts or behaves, any
change in his appetite.
- Is he dizzy, does he have
problems with his coordination? - Right.
- Did they tell you to contact them
if there was any change? - No.
- Did they, they didn't give you a sheet
with side effects? - No. There was no sheet.
You should have received a sheet that said
these are the things you might look for
and if you notice any of these,
but I think most people would be scared silly
because it might be a whole page of side effects
and you might not even know the
terms. But you get out a dictionary...
- Or it's in print that's so small
you can't even... - That's right.
You get a magnifying glass.
And I say that you shouldn't
have to be the doctor
but in today's day and
age with so much going on
...that shouldn't be happening...
- I've learned that the hard way.
...I'd say parents, go check on
what your children are taking.
Don't assume that it's
normal to have a reaction.
If you're seeing one, call your doctor
up and complain. Get a second opinion.
But you've got to, you've
got to cover yourself
in every way that you can
possibly cover yourself.
I think you can't drug healthy bodies
and make them unhealthy in so many ways
and expect those
individuals to grow up to be
functional, creative
persons in the society.
They simply won't be able
to reach their full potential
because the drugs change them.
- It wasn't worth the risk.
- I think that what is going on is a sin.
God must be standing up there saying,
"What are you doing down there?"
"What are you doing?"
- I agree. Thank you so much.
- You're gonna make me cry.
Thank you very much.
These are, these are dangerous
drugs that don't cure anything
and the diagnosis of ADHD is,
it's just epidemic right now.
It's so easy to do, to
label a child that way
and then that label follows your
child all the way through life.
Well, Shaina was diagnosed
as early as first grade.
So the school psychologist sent
us a letter and stated that Shaina
had all the characteristics of
ADHD and needed to go to a doctor.
So I took the letter from
the school psychologist
to the psychiatrist with me,
45 minutes later walked out
with a definite diagnosis of
ADHD and a prescription in hand.
They judged her whole entire
life on that subjective checklist
and put her on drugs right away.
Progressively she would revert back
to where she'd fidget in her seat
and the school would call and say,
"Shaina's not paying attention
again, she's out of her seat."
- Up the dose.
- Up the dose, up the dose.
February 26th 2001, I
received a phone call
from the school nurse
at exactly ten o'clock
and said Shaina had taken
a fall in the library
and immediately went
to school to get her.
Took her to the doctor. I was
only a few feet away from her,
signed her name on a
clipboard. I turned back
and she's having a grand mal seizure.
I picked her up in my arms and I screamed
for the doctor and the doctor said,
"Vicky, lay her on the floor."
I immediately laid her on the floor
but I kept her head right here and
I kept massaging her head and said,
"Mommy's right here, Sissie,"
"I'm not gonna leave you."
And I looked into her deep brown eyes
and the last vision I
see was my daughter dying
and there was nothing that
I could do to help her.
And I didn't know at the time,
does she know I didn't know?
Did she know that I couldn't help her?
What was going through her mind
while I'm watching her die?
And I have no idea, the
answers will never be there.
But I keep looking back and thinking,
I did what was best,
what I thought was best at the time,
even though it turned out to be deadly.
And I buried my child. I'm not to blame.
A week before Shaina died
I took her with agitation, low
urinary output and weight gain,
which were three red signs.
And I took them to the psychiatrist
and I said, "This is what's happening."
And he told me that I was an
overprotective, paranoid mother
and what I was seeing
were not side effects.
And I look back now and that whole
week she was dying and we didn't know.
And they told us that even if they
would have done something different
we still couldn't have saved her.
She had too much in her system
and she was dying little by little.
So when, when I say even if
you would have noticed anything,
they wouldn't have paid attention.
They chose just to ignore me.
The psychiatrist, the
pharmaceutical industry,
they're the people that I need to blame
and hold accountable for what happened.
And I look at it now and I just wish
I could turn back the hands of time
and never put her on the medication,
never believed in the professionals,
did everything in my life differently.
But I can't do that.
All I can do is go forth
now and talk to people,
express the concern,
reach my hand out and touch every
life and hope it makes a difference.
I had no idea that psychiatric drugs
could create so many horrible
side effects in so many people.
An estimated 42,000 deaths every year,
whether by homicide, suicide or
overdose, are linked to psychiatric drugs.
There was one thing I just
didn't understand, though.
How could a drug, especially
one that was supposed to help,
cause a person to take the extreme step
of deciding to kill himself or others?
Matthew would never
have taken his own life.
It must have been the drug. But how?
I asked this of Pamela Seefeld,
a pharmacist and an expert
on the adverse effects of
psychiatric drugs on the human body.
It's very nice to meet you. Thank you for
having, taking the time to speak with me.
My son was only on the one but he started
off at one dose and did not do well.
And it was after that that his
demeanor really started to change.
He became very anxious, very withdrawn,
more withdrawn than he had been,
because at least before that
he was still talking to us.
And within nine weeks of starting
the medication Matthew was, was gone.
The symptoms that you're describing,
the description of these symptoms,
it's very classic of drug-induced
psychosis because he couldn't metabolize.
You have to understand it wasn't
his depression that got him;
it was the medicine at a toxic level
in his brain that made him psychotic
and that's what it comes down to.
I'm telling you the drug metabolism
issues are killing a lot of people.
If they're only offering you
medicines and the medicines have this
possibility of causing psychosis,
that's what's really happening.
The person's drug level
gets toxic in the brain.
These medicines like Lexapro, Paxil,
Zoloft, they have to work in the brain.
That's what they do, they
pass through the brain
and they work on those
receptors in the brain.
If you think about it,
if you have a normal dose of a drug
and people don't do really well with it,
if the increase in the
concentration is five times,
think about what that
does to the person.
Five times the normal
amount of drug in the brain.
People always become psychotic on it
and they call it
drug-induced psychosis.
Well, I feel very strongly
that's what happened to my son.
I'm sure of it.
When your son was given those medicines
- he can't metabolize those,
he had a toxic level in the bloodstream
and in his brain and as a
result of that he took his life.
And what has happened is that
they're not looking at the real facts.
- The drugs are very dangerous.
- And, and they know.
- Oh, yes.
- They know that this is happening.
And nothing's being done, let me
tell you that. Nothing's being done.
And so if I can bring you a science
reason, it's not obscure like
"drugs are bad," "medicines
are bad." It's not that.
I'm telling you there's science
behind what we're discussing here
and I'm just really glad I could be
the pharmacist to tell you
what's really happening.
I want to share this
with a lot of people.
- Well, and I appreciate it so much.
- Thank you so much.
Thank you.
It doesn't take much looking to
find some pretty horrible examples
of children who became extremely violent
after being put on psychiatric drugs.
Kip Kinkel, for example, shot his
parents, then went to his high school
and killed 2 and wounded 23 more
while withdrawing from Prozac.
Christopher Pittman was taking Zoloft
when he shot both his grandparents
and burned down their house.
And Eric Harris, who killed 13 people at
Columbine then committed suicide, was on Luvox.
Nine of the last 13 school shooters
were either on or withdrawing
from psychiatric drugs
and the medical records of the others are
sealed, so we may never find out the truth.
But instead of warning us,
psychiatrists and drug companies
are playing down the most serious
side effects and ignoring the rest.
Matthew loved his
family, loved us so much
that before... when he jumped from
the bridge he was wearing a life vest.
The reason, and he wrote it on
a note that he left in his truck,
and it said that he was wearing a
life vest so that he could be found
so that his parents
wouldn't have to worry
about where he was.
Now is this a child who
wants to hurt his family?
He wouldn't hurt us for the world.
Sorry Annie. But this is what happened.
This is what this drug did to my son.
It made him someone he wasn't.
Mathy, she knows also because she had a
sweet little girl who was only 12 years old.
You know, you know what I'm saying.
I do know what you're
saying and I still think
back to being in that doctor's office
and saying, "I don't want her on this,"
and his casualness, his,
"What are you worried about?"
and not knowing any different.
We've all talked about the
fact we just didn't know
but the guilt that comes from watching
people give your child medication
or giving it to them yourself,
making sure they take it 'cause they
tell you, "Don't let him miss a day."
And it ends up killing them.
I think about the warning signs that we
had, that we didn't know were warning signs.
I remember sitting there
watching Candace go like this
and I said, "Candace,
what's wrong?" And she said,
"I don't know, I'm just itchy,"
and not realizing it that it was that
feeling of needles, of burning under her skin
and she was trying to get rid of it but she
was 12 years old and she couldn't tell me.
And I'm thinking...
Matthew was shaking, showing
me how his hands were shaking.
- Yeah, and I... same thing... - Telling
me that his heart was beating fast.
...Candace was shaking and I remember thinking
I really should take her to a neurologist
because her hand is shaky and sometimes
it would be hard to hold something.
But not knowing that that
was a sign that the severity
of the amount of medication in her
system, I just assumed it was dry skin.
And I think about her curled up
in her father's arms laughing.
And that's my last time
I saw my child alive.
Who would ever assume that this happy
child that is embraced in her father's love,
with her sister right there,
would walk up to her room and hang
herself from the valance of her bed?
And nobody knew it. They were there.
Nobody knew it because we had no signs.
I think about days when I
thought I was gonna die myself
because my pain was so intense
that nobody, nobody could live through
the breaking heart that I was suffering.
I remember being in a fetal position on
my laundry room floor, thinking I was dying
and calling my therapist to
say, "I don't think I can live."
"I can't catch my breath. I can't live."
And what did keep me living was the
fact that I had a surviving child
who needed me and I needed...
I needed to be there for her
because I don't know
if I could have done it.
And I remember, Candace had
drawn a little heart on her hand
and in the heart she had written "911."
And then she had covered
it with a bumblebee sticker.
She didn't know she was gonna die.
She thought she was gonna be saved.
She didn't know she was doing this.
Twelve years old.
There's Matt. Matthew's sick, but
he went to basketball practice.
Matthew had 22 points the
other night, he was awesome.
Matthew's personality was infectious.
His love of life was infectious.
Everybody wanted a part of it.
He was just a breath of
fresh air, like sunshine.
And people loved being around him.
He was outgoing and always smiling
and funny and, you know, playful.
Matthew was a friend to everybody.
He'd play with anybody:
young or old or this or that.
My first memory of Matt was in the
third grade, we had the same teacher.
We really became friends in third
grade when we had a class together.
The first time I had ever met him actually
was at a high school football game.
And we hit it off instantly. One of the first
things I remember about Matt and the Steubings,
I remember coming home and telling my
Dad that they're all a bunch of angels.
He was so much fun. He
taught me how to skip school.
He was always supportive like, if there was
anything wrong he knew how to pick you up.
We were on a basketball team together.
We played basketball together
all the time growing up.
We spent hours next to each
other, ribbing each other
and by the end I was just
proud as I could be to finally,
at least in one of the games I beat him.
I mean it was very easy to stand on the
side and just, you know, just grin ear-to-ear
because the kid was absolutely cool
and in my life he is still cool.
The more I learned just how much our kids
are being drugged, the more outraged I became.
But I was truly horrified at the
extent of psychiatric drugging
that is forced on children who don't
even have a parent to protect them.
No one knows this better than foster
child counselor Sonya Muhammad,
who works with the
county of Los Angeles,
dealing every day with children diagnosed
and forced to take psychiatric drugs.
My personal experience has been that
these drugs are very, very dangerous.
We don't see any evidence of them
doing or accomplishing the things
that the parents are being told
that they're supposed to accomplish.
And unfortunately, there are many stories
like yours, which is so unfortunate.
My heart is with you and your family
that you had to experience this,
because no one is really listening to
any type of alternative
conversation regarding this.
It seems that foster children are
much more likely to be medicated
than, say, other children. Why is that?
Several reasons: the main reason being
is, "We don't have time to deal with you."
That's my take on it. "So, what we'll do
is shut you up and we'll shut you down."
That's basically it.
Most of the kids that are placed by the
Department of Children and Family Services,
they're there because they were removed
from their homes because of abuse,
whether it be emotional abuse, physical
abuse, sexual abuse, a combination thereof.
It doesn't seem to occur to the
system that this kid is scared.
This kid, if they are a victim
already of abuse of some form,
that they already are traumatized.
And so, many of the kids
are immediately in some cases
referred to the local psychologist
and diagnosed with something
and then as a consequence
then the drugs are recommended.
What I have mentioned
to some people before
is that I have been in homes where I saw
the kids' files piled up in a worker's arms,
the files taken to the local psychiatrist,
the psychiatrist write a diagnosis,
write prescriptions and they've
never even seen the child.
Based on what they've read in the file.
Based on absolutely nothing, because
there was nothing but the manager's
or whomever case worker's word
that this kid is acting out.
So we don't even really sometimes
have anything in writing other than,
"They are not cooperating with the
program. They are crying too much at night."
"They refuse to go to school in the
morning," and that sort of thing,
just verbal information, not even any notes
that the psychiatrist can actually follow.
What type of diagnosis are they
giving? Are they calling them ADHD?
Well, always ADHD. Everybody is
ADHD, that's the beginning one.
And then bipolar. And
then manic-depressive.
For foster kids, it's
disastrous because many of them,
they're bouncing from home to home,
school to school, and they're not learning.
And so, of course, they're
learning-disordered.
And all of them are emotionally
disturbed. And all of them are ADHD.
And I would probably say
in Los Angeles County alone,
we have probably about
50,000 kids in the system.
- And I would be willing to say...
- In the foster care system?
Yes, in Los Angeles County alone.
We're not talking Orange County,
any of the counties up north...
What percentage of those
do you think are on drugs?
I would be willing to say
from experience, well over,
somewhere between 50
percent and 75 percent.
That's astounding.
Thank you so much for everything.
Our children came from loving homes. And
we've still experienced these problems,
but as far as foster care children go,
they've all had issues and reasons that
they've been taken from their homes.
And I understand that they
are automatically put on drugs.
Certainly they have to go
through psychiatric evaluations.
So, I know you have
experience with that.
Right, yeah, actually, I
remember seeing a study that
children in foster care are three times
more likely to be on a psychiatric medication
than other children
who were on Medicaid.
The foster parents don't
know. They don't know.
When you go into the foster classes,
they're told that medication is the answer.
"When your child is having
these issues, get him in."
"Get him in," those are the exact words,
"Get him in fast, so that you can
get their medication adjusted."
And then the issues continue or
the child just kind of goes numb.
- Or the children die.
- Or the children die.
When I got my little boy, he was on eight
50-milligram pills a day of Seroquel,
the antipsychotic, which for a child
under 50 pounds is really incredible.
That was on top of his ADHD medication.
He was so drugged and so violent,
I was actually afraid of him
and we would hide our knives
at night, our kitchen knives,
when we'd go to bed as a
family, because we were afraid
that he would get up in
the night and harm someone.
He became so bad that he actually
in one of his foster homes
slaughtered their family
pets with a kitchen knife.
The foster mother came
home and she sees this
and she thought a burglar
had gotten into the house.
She was just distraught, "Oh my
gosh, who could have done this?"
It never even crossed her mind
that the preschooler did it.
And she figured it out that it was him.
He had gotten so violent on these medications
that he had killed her little family pets.
It was decided that he should
go to the state hospital.
And I left there and I
decided that I would try.
They said I had two
weeks to turn him around.
And then the state hospital was
still there if I couldn't do anything.
And so, I brought him into my home and the
first thing we did is tons of nutrition,
food in its most natural form, tons
of raw food, tons of whole grains.
That's what we did,
lots of real nutrition
and then we started taking
him off of his medications.
And he turned around so much
that I became known in the case
worker's office as the miracle worker.
He just made such a turnaround
and today, he's just incredible.
He skipped a grade and he still
tops out, you know, nationally,
he tests out so high, even
the grade that he's in.
He plays a couple instruments.
He's fabulous at school.
This is an exceptional child and...
And he's not showing violence toward
his sister or your family pets or?
Oh, no, oh, no. He's very
sweet with all of our pets.
We have five dogs, three
cats, and he's wonderful.
And it's just incredible to me
how many children out there are in
his exact shoes and will never...
And there aren't enough
people like you to, to care.
- No, well... - And the doctor
can just blame it on trauma.
And, or you know, if a child
commits suicide, so often it's just,
"We didn't get to them soon enough."
That's, that's what it is.
"We didn't get to them soon enough."
Because that, that takes the
blame off of them completely.
Or like my son's psychiatrist
said when her patient shot himself,
"Where'd he get a gun?"
No, looking introspectively,
"Where'd he get the will?"
So, it's just "somebody else's fault," it's
never "the medications that I prescribed."
Or, like "it was an everyday occurrence"
and I was just sitting there flabbergasted
and thinking to myself when she said,
when she was finally... had said that he
was okay to come off all his medications,
and with his Seroquel, she said,
"Wow, I am just so glad to see
that he can still imagine and play"
"because so many children who are on
this medication for any length of time"
"lose that ability to play anymore."
And I was just shocked and thought,
"How do you sleep at night?"
I can't imagine taking somebody's
creative ability from them.
What could possibly be worse
than making somebody into somebody that
- they're permanently scarred.
- Like a zombie.
- Yes, yes, they're a permanent zombie.
What could be worse than that?
Tell me a disease that you
would rather have than that.
The situation with foster
care is truly horrible.
As I soon found out, not only are
thousands of children drugged every year,
but sometimes, the results are fatal.
I flew to Florida to meet with
Michael Freedland, an attorney
who represents foster kids
damaged by psychiatric drugs,
including 16-year-old
Emilio Villamar.
Good morning, Celeste. It's very nice to
meet you. I'm glad you were able to make it.
- Nice to meet you, Michael.
- Thank you.
- Thank you for having me here.
- My pleasure.
How common is the use of psychiatric
drugs in the foster care system?
The drugging of children in foster care
I understand is way too common occurrence
because it's a simple fix.
Foster mom or foster dad or
social worker says we have a child
who won't sleep through the night or a
child who's waking up with night terrors
or a child who's misbehaving or redirecting
their frustration on another child
or using their hands to hurt not help.
And instead of sitting down
and working with that child,
taking the time to say, "What's
causing them to act out?"
"No. We're not going to worry about
that, we have a fix. Give them this pill."
They're using these poor children
who are coming from incredibly
difficult environments as guinea pigs.
With no one to protect them.
With absolutely no one to protect them.
And that's why they prey on them
because there's not a mom
or dad there that can say,
"Hey no, no, no, no, no. I'm not going to let you
test this untested, unproven drug on my child."
So let's test it on children that
don't have someone to be their voice.
Oh my goodness.
You represent the mother of Emilio Villamar.
Can you tell us something about his story?
Just like your son, Emilio
was a vibrant 16-year-old boy,
he played water polo, excelled
at school, had lots of friends,
came from a great family,
everything was wonderful in his life.
And he had a bad
situation at school one day
and Mom got worried because he
wasn't acting like himself and
Mom, being a very concerned
mom, took him to see a doctor.
And the doctor, without really any kind
of diligence or any kind of thought,
put him a on varying combination of different
incredibly powerful antipsychotic drugs
over the next 12 months leading to a
cardiac event that led to his death.
My goodness. How many drugs was he on?
Over the 12 months that
this physician treated him
he was on 17 different
drugs at different times
and different dosages and
in different combinations.
Oh my goodness.
- And those drugs killed him.
- Right.
I believe that. I believe
that's what happened to Matthew.
Not knowing all the
facts of Matthew's story
there's no question in my mind
that the drugs played a role.
I mean these drugs are dangerous,
they're dangerous for
adults, let alone children,
and they're being prescribed recklessly,
they're being administered recklessly,
they're being promoted even more recklessly.
Michael, thank you so
much for what you're doing
and for letting me come in
here and speak with you today.
It's my pleasure. Again, sorry
for what you had to go through.
I can only hope that what you're doing
saves other families from having
to go through that same tragedy.
I hope so.
Matthew's got you now.
- Hey, hey, look.
- Helloooo. Say hi.
When he started taking that medication
it was like something dark came over him.
There was definitely a difference within a month
there of kind of just, just a huge wall went up.
He wasn't really talking a
lot, kind of tight-lipped.
Just becoming more detached. He became
more isolated, wasn't at school a whole lot.
He was skipping school a lot more.
He was losing a lot of weight.
He spent way too much time downstairs
in the basement, you know, watching TV.
Doesn't want to do anything.
We had come up to the door and asked
him if he wanted to go to a movie
or go out to lunch or do
something to get out of the house
and he was very, just very short
and didn't want to do anything.
He told me to get out of his room and close
his door and he'd never said that to me before.
But it's like, he wasn't
comfortable in his own skin.
It was like he had 50 cups of coffee
and he was starting to get spooked
about "Who's here?" and "Am I
safe?" and all of these things that
were almost like playing mind
games on him, if you will.
He just didn't feel like he
was in his right mind anymore.
He didn't understand what was happening,
he thought this medication
was supposed to be helping him.
And I remember seeing, recognizing the
look on his face as, it's hard to describe,
that nothing is okay, you
know, there is no future.
Just complete despair
and sadness in his eyes.
In the last few weeks,
I've had to face the fact
that all this drugging of children
isn't happening by accident.
The drug advertising is
everywhere and it's obvious.
But the real surprise was to see
how heavily psychiatric treatment
is being pushed in our schools,
right under parents' noses.
This wasn't the case
for Matthew obviously,
but I do know that they are
starting to screen children in school
for mental problems or things that they
perceive to be mental problems anyway.
Sheila, you have experience
with that, don't you?
My son was seven and he was in school
and I was getting a lot of phone calls
from the school about his behavior.
So they did this checklist on him and I
didn't know anything about this checklist
but I, I took it home and I had to fill
it out and it was all on his behavior.
"Does your son get sad? Does your
son?" just simple little questions
that any child would
do, any child would do.
So based on that checklist that I
filled out on my son and they filled out,
they diagnosed him off of a
checklist that he had ADHD.
And I was devastated, I was like
"Oh my god, my, what does this mean?"
"My son's mentally
ill? He's only seven."
You had no experience with
that beforehand, right?
No, no. My son was very talkative,
he started talking at ten months
and he was all personality.
And I could remember sending him
off for his first day of school.
I have the pictures. He was
so excited to go to school.
but then all of a sudden, when they
got him on this behavioral chart,
he hated going to school.
And he came home and he was upset and
he just didn't like school, he hated it.
And at seven years old, to hate
school, that's a crime actually.
And then they said, "You really
need to try him on ADHD medication."
And I was like, "I don't want
to do that, I'm not doing it."
You know, the bottom line is, I had no
idea how subjective that checklist was.
If I had known, if somebody had said,
"This is just our opinion, it's
not really a medical diagnosis,"
I never, I never would have filled
it out on my own son at seven.
Do the parents know that this
is being done in the school?
Are they given, do they
have to give permission
for their child to be screened or
are they automatically being screened?
The way they do it where I live
is really pretty backhanded.
What they do is they come in
and talk to kids in high school.
"So, are you feeling kind of anxious?"
"Have you broken up with a
boyfriend and it's made you sad?"
"Why don't you take this screening and
we'll see what the underlying problem..."
They're teenagers. So the
kids have to bring a form home.
It does have to be signed by
the parents. But the parents say,
"Okay honey, if it would make you
feel better go ahead and have it done."
I had a friend whose
daughter went through this.
This screening gave her a diagnosis.
Now, this is from a computer "check the box"
screening, gave her a diagnosis of depression.
So then she took home a paper,
"Look, Mom and Dad, I'm depressed."
And they said, "No,
you're not depressed."
So then they took her to another doctor who
then "thoroughly" evaluated her and said,
"Oh, she's not depressed, she has ADHD,"
and they put her on medication for ADHD.
And the mom said to me, "But I'm
so glad she had the screening"
"because now we know
she's not depressed."
- They treated it the same way.
- They did treat it the same way, they did.
What they do in my son's school
is they do "pretzel breaks."
They come in... the school
psychologist comes into the classroom
and "We're gonna talk
about how you feel."
And it could be in Science,
it could be in Math,
it could be in any class, so
you have a captive audience.
Your child is just there
and has no ability to say
"I wanna opt out of this," you know.
And then they give out pretzels
to the class and it was like,
"How are you doing? How's
things going at home?"
"Have you ever felt like
killing yourself? Have you ever?"
And all of a sudden they're in
the classrooms in Math and Science.
And that's what I have
found in my school.
And, you know, the bottom line is
it's like they're taking a big net
and they're just gathering up the
children with these "questionnaires."
And then when they get the
kids in there, they drug them.
And that's not the kind of
society we want to build.
I couldn't believe this was
happening, and in our own schools.
From a single ten-minute,
multiple-choice computer test,
they can judge you "at risk" for
suicide and send you to a psychiatrist.
And one well-known study said that 91 percent
of all children going to a child psychiatrist
leave with a prescription.
The only problem is, the psychiatrist
who wrote the questionnaire
for the largest children's mental
health screening program in the country,
has admitted that 84 percent
of the time, the test is wrong.
But by then, the damage is done, as
I learned from educator Cathy Brown.
- Hi Cathy
- Hi Celeste.
- Thank you so much for having me here today.
- Oh, you're very welcome. - Appreciate it.
I don't understand how these young children,
especially that are being put on for ADHD
and bipolar and whatever else
they're being labeled with,
how do these children learn?
How can they function in school?
My observation is that
they just don't. They can't.
Basically, what I see is they can't
concentrate and they, as you said, fall asleep.
They have stomach upsets, they have,
you know, out of the maybe 300
side effects on one of those drugs,
they'll have 4 or 5.
It makes it difficult to study. It makes
it difficult to study if you can't sleep.
It just frightens me and makes me wonder
what's going to happen to the next generation.
What's happening to these children
that are all being drugged right now?
Where's our society going with this?
That is an excellent
observation, because the children
who are active, curious,
interested children
are the ones who are most
likely to act out in school.
The very brightest get bored.
They finish and everybody else
is still working on something
and now they have nothing to do.
So, hmm. They look around, "What
can I do? Who can I talk to?"
Albert Einstein, if he were a child now,
he was extremely bright,
as everybody knows Einstein.
He had difficulties with learning
the way that teachers taught.
His mother took him out of
school and home-schooled him.
Didn't they actually think he
was retarded for a while or?
They did. That's exactly right. If he
were in school now, he would be drugged.
We are taking our brightest
children and drugging them.
I mean, that to me is just, it's
appalling and it's frightening.
- It is.
- When's it, where's it going to stop?
I don't see it stopping unless we do
something about the drugging of these kids.
If somebody had come in from
some other country and said,
"I'd like to have all of your
brightest children please."
"I'd like to put them all on drugs."
"And we'll make it more difficult for
them to learn and we'll make it so that"
"they're not so interested in things"
"and we'll make it so that they have
difficulty sleeping." What would we have said?
No, we would have
said, "Get out of here."
But instead, we're doing it
ourselves. And it's very, very sad.
Well, it's frightening to think what
we have to look forward to right now.
It is. So we just need
to do something about it.
What Cathy told me about
Albert Einstein made me curious.
She was right. Einstein was very
quiet, didn't do well in school
and didn't even speak his own
language fluently until he was nine.
His parents thought there might
be something mentally wrong,
but they didn't do anything to him.
And look how he turned out.
Now we're told that famous people like
Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln,
Sir Isaac Newton, Mozart and
Beethoven had mental disorders.
What if they had been
drugged like Matthew?
Eight million young people are currently
on some type of ADHD medication,
which experts say is chemically
very similar to cocaine,
comes with some pretty scary side
effects, and is very addictive.
Makes you wonder how many geniuses
are being destroyed every day.
This is Matthew's school of
fitness. He's gonna pump me up.
- Run in place.
- Ready?
You want the illustrated version?
- Okay, do some, throw some jabs in there.
- Yah, yah, yah!
When I heard the news of my brother's
death, I couldn't be more shocked.
I was at home, I think
it was a Saturday night.
I was hanging out with a friend.
Friday night is when I found out.
I was on my way back from
vacation when I found out.
The phone rang at
about 4 in the morning.
My roommate waking me up at
5:30 in the morning on Friday
telling me the police were there.
I didn't believe it. I thought
it was the worst joke ever.
I just didn't believe it. I said,
"That can't be him. It's a mistake."
I said, "Dad, that's, it's
a rumor. That's crazy."
It's... it made me speechless.
It was one of the worst days of my life.
I never imagined Matt
would commit suicide.
He did not want to end his life.
He loved life, he had a good life.
We all knew Matthew
wasn't capable of this.
A boy doesn't smile like
that for 17, 1/2 years
and then 6 months later go
and do this without any help.
In just these past few months,
I have found that we are
in the middle of an epidemic
of the psychiatric
drugging of our children.
Across the world, there are 20 million
children on some type of psychiatric drug,
20 million!
And as shocking as it might seem,
psychiatrists at a recent conference
even admitted that they are diagnosing
children at younger and younger ages.
It's disgusting that anyone would even
think of giving a mind-altering drug
to a young child with
a developing brain.
But what about the children
drugged before they are even born?
Another way that we're being
drugged is through pregnant women.
If they were to go in and have any
type of problem with their mood -
as if any pregnant woman doesn't -
they're putting them on
these drugs. And Christian,
...you've had firsthand experience with this
and a terrible tragedy as well. - Right.
I'd been on antidepressants
for eight years
and so I have had two
pregnancies on antidepressants.
And so when Indi, when we
wanted to get pregnant with Indi,
I asked my new physician
if that is something that
he recommends is that I'd get back onto
Zoloft, because I was on, on Effexor.
In fact, I was on 300
mgs of the XR every day.
And he recommended that I stay on
it, that there was no testing to show
that there was any problem, that it doesn't
get to the baby, that I would be fine.
And so I took that as you know what you're
talking about and I decided to stay on it.
And then went into
labor two months early.
They stopped the labor.
The doctor came over and said, and
was shocked that my OB hadn't said
that Effexor was
dangerous during pregnancy
and that he had immediately called down
to the NICU [Neonatal Intensive Care Unit]
and said that we have an Effexor baby
and to be ready. And they were there...
That must have terrified you.
It did terrify me because I didn't know
what we were up against at this point
but it was too late, you know, that was,
it was too late, we were, it was happening.
And so when she was born she
wasn't breathing and she wasn't...
she wasn't responding to anything.
And at that point, when they
finally did get her to come around
it was almost like that part of
the damage that I had done was over,
that it was okay, "Oh my gosh, she's
safe, she's okay, she's breathing."
And no doctor told me that
through the breast milk
could she be getting any
kind of the medication.
We were in and out of the hospital because
she had severe problems with jaundice.
She had severe problems with vomiting,
she was lethargic and she would
eat maybe five to ten minutes
and then fall completely asleep,
to the point where we would have to
joggle her over and over and over again
just to get her to be coherent
enough to eat again or want to eat.
She wasn't gaining weight.
We came up... well, the pediatrician
wanted to put her on medication.
And... I told them no
because she was a baby,
and the whole time I was giving her
medication through the breast milk and,
and okay with that. I just...
She didn't even have a voice. She
couldn't tell me that anything was wrong.
You know, I should have seen,
I should have seen and I should have
put it together but I didn't. I didn't.
That was the role of the professionals.
The doctors, and there
were plenty of them around
to be able to tell you that
this could affect your baby.
Well, and you think about it,
you don't drink, you don't smoke,
you don't drink caffeine, you watch
what you, you take good vitamins,
why would you drug yourself?
It goes right to the baby.
And that just didn't...
They call it a medicine so it seems
like a good thing you're supposed to,
it's going to do
nothing but good for you,
and that's not what it does.
It's as bad as all those
other things or worse.
Well, that's what I've
said to my, to some people,
is what's the difference between going
to the guy on the corner selling heroin
and going to my doctor because
it's gonna do the same thing.
I did the same thing. I breastfed
for four months on Zoloft
and the whole time they told me it was safe and
the only problem was, "Watch out for sedation."
But they never said, "Because
sedation could kill your baby."
"Your baby might not ever wake up."
No child should be lost that way
and especially with breast milk,
mixing all these drugs in it, is
just a recipe for death, it really is.
If you think about it, you
wouldn't go to the store
and buy a bottle or can of formula that
says, "With Zoloft. Give this to your baby."
Yeah, so I think of, and what
I think of is all those babies
that have been, you know, claimed
SIDS [Sudden Infant Death Syndrome],
how many of those mothers have been on
medications and just don't know any better.
I know they're out there.
Of course they are. Of course they are.
And there'll be more, there'll be
a lot more unless they are informed.
It's hard to think of a
story sadder than Christian's.
And what's even more outrageous
is that pregnant women are increasingly
being targeted by screening campaigns
that can get them
onto psychiatric drugs.
One in six pregnant women today is
diagnosed with a depressive disorder
and most are put on antidepressants, which
means over half a million babies every year,
born and unborn, are
exposed to chemical toxins.
And now psychiatric researchers
are trying ultrasound
to supposedly diagnose bipolar disorder
in babies still in their mother's womb.
The problem with drugging pregnant
mothers with antidepressants like Paxil
is it dramatically increases
the risk of pre-term delivery
and doubles the chance of birth
defects such as heart malformations.
If I hadn't seen for myself what was
going on, I would never have believed it.
Psychiatric drugs are obviously not the
answer and yet they are practically everywhere.
But if drugs aren't
the solution, what is?
After all, Matthew was having trouble.
His problems were very real.
What should I have done for him?
For this, I flew to Minnesota to
ask Dr. Gary Kohls, a medical doctor
and an authority on the
dangers of psychiatric drugs.
Doctor Kohls, if I had brought my son
Matthew to you, what would you have done?
Well, he surely would never
have been on a drug, you know.
I would have spent an hour
and a half with him at first
to try to find out what
the root causes were,
make sure he didn't have some
physical problem for sure,
hypothyroidism for instance, or...
So you would have done some basic
blood work and physical exam.
Sure. Because there's so many things
as far as nutrition are concerned and
that can lead to sadness.
Or social situations, what kind
of stress was he under, etc?
What kind of diet he was under.
If we're well nourished, then being jilted by
a girlfriend or something might not affect us.
But if we're malnourished, that might
make us angry or depressed or aggressive.
Yeah. So, I would have
taken an extended history.
That would have been
the most important thing.
And then probably, if he
hadn't had any laboratory tests,
I would do some sort of laboratory
testing to make sure he wasn't anemic,
make sure he didn't have
electrolyte abnormalities,
make sure that he didn't have any
urinary or kidney problems, etc.,
make sure he didn't have a brain
tumor. All those sorts of things.
So many things that could and should have
been done before he was put on a drug.
- In my practice in the last ten years,
I never had to put a person on a drug. - Right.
Doctor, are there any other underlying
causes that you can think of,
that could have been at the
root of Matthew's problem,
or other people that go
in with these symptoms?
Even though it's most likely some combination
of the things we've talked about already,
there are certainly physical illnesses,
infectious diseases that can contribute.
Allergies?
Sure, it could be allergies,
bacterial infections,
mercury in the vaccines,
aluminum in the vaccines.
Matthew's room was in the
basement, it's a finished basement.
Now, there were windows in his room,
but still it gets musty down there.
- Okay, mold is, sure.
- Are there things that could have...
Toxic fumes, of course. Carpets will
have all sorts of toxins in them.
Funguses and things like that, mold and mildew
are toxic to the body and probably the brain.
So, there's a list, I'm sure, of
hundreds of physical bacterial illnesses
that maybe can contribute to a chronic
fatigue or sadness, perhaps, or lack of energy.
So, there's a lot of holistic approaches
to physical health, mental health,
spiritual health, everything.
And drugs just alter the
brain, they never cure anything.
And then they make
you permanent patients,
which is great for business
and bad for patients.
And suicide, completed suicide is just
one of the thousands of adverse effects
that the industry
refuses to acknowledge.
So our brain nutrition is extremely
important in mental ill health.
Getting people off the
drugs, good nutrition,
that's the way to cure. And then
you have lost a patient for life.
- But that's what doctors are supposed to do.
- That's what your goal is supposed to be.
We're supposed to cure people
and not make them chronically ill
and requiring monthly visits
for the two-minute prescription.
Thank you so much for sharing
everything that you know with us
and it was really wonderful to meet you.
- You're welcome.
- What are you doing?
- Say hi to the camera.
- Hi. - Say
hi. - Hi.
I have a million number one things that I
miss about Matthew that can't go on a list.
I miss the camaraderie, I miss him at the
kitchen table. I miss him at Christmas.
I miss the things that we did together.
Everything. His presence.
I just wish he was still here. I
know how much fun he'd be having.
I know he would love
to see Ryan's little boy
and my niece and be there
for his family and us.
Next week when I see my other two brothers,
as much as everybody's going to be there
we're still going to be one man down.
You know, a part of us all went with him and
that part is sorely missed. It is achingly missed.
I don't like that all the people closest to
me have got a huge hole and a huge ache that,
that doesn't go away.
Their amazing love for each
other was just tore all apart
for some drug company's bottom line.
My friends get to visit
their brothers at college
and they have their little
brothers on speed dial
and I have to visit mine in the cemetery
because someone made a decision that this
information wasn't going to make them money,
is what it came down to.
Or it wouldn't get their drug approved.
So I visit my brother in a cemetery on his
birthday and on my birthday and on Christmas
and any random day of
the week I go there.
But I won't see him get married
and I won't see him have kids
and he won't be there for me when I
do those things, because he's not here.
We've talked a lot about
the devastating side effects
and... of these psychotropic drugs, what
they've done to us and to our families,
how we've had to live
with the effects of them.
But there are other alternatives
to taking those drugs
and I just wanted to talk a
little bit about what they are
and what experience you
might have with them.
Sheila, you didn't
put your son on drugs.
You elected not to do that.
What did you do to help him
to get through his situation?
I did tutoring. And basically
I took my son there twice a week
and they worked on educational
issues such as sequencing.
What I found out was that he had
a real problem with his language.
So it was like a very positive approach
to his behavioral issues because there
were underlying educational issues
that were not being
addressed in the classroom.
He needed more one-on-one,
which he wasn't getting.
So it was probably making
him feel inferior, or
this way this has helped to boost his
confidence and made him do better in school.
He did much better in school and
it really helped his self-esteem
and I saw a big improvement. So I did
a lot of the educational resources.
And I was just going to add that some
students, like in this way the classrooms are,
they don't necessarily fit in well
and a lot of parents are
now doing home schooling
because their children don't have the
pressure of what the school system wants.
And I think that for some people
that's a really great solution.
They say exercising is a wonderful
way to relieve the stress and to...
There is a study that I found one time
that was talking about how
great exercise is for you.
And when I looked into the study I found out
that they had had a group with medication,
and a group with exercise and medication
and then just an exercise group,
the exercise groups did the best.
But it's promoted as
though they're equal.
And it's very deceptive
because they're not equal.
The exercise worked and the study on the
medication did not, it made them worse.
Why not take the kid out onto the
playground and let them play for 5 minutes?
This may be a child who is just wired to
need a little bit more physical activity,
like your daughter.
Run around with a ball or
climb on the monkey bars.
Let them go do that for 5 minutes and
then return to the learning activity.
It doesn't have to be a fight
to make our children learn,
for our children to
function in everyday society.
If that's what that child needs, then
let's find a way to give it to them,
let everybody be right so
that we can all function here.
There's so much we can do.
It's nutrition, it's exercise.
It's stuff that our
grandparents would have used.
That is exactly true because
that's what I did with my son,
started putting a lot of vitamins,
all the B vitamins and nothing else,
no medication, nothing. And he
healed so fast, unbelievable.
Well, that's another thing,
you know, we need to look at
blood tests, we need to check for,
like you said, medical reasons first.
We need to look at what alternatives
we can use and not go with medication.
There's so many things we can do.
We've brought up so many points here,
none of them involving medication.
- Matthew's got the ball.
- Go get Annie!
He's gonna take him to the
hole! He's gonna smoke him!
Yayyy! And the crowd goes wild!
And little Steub buries
his brother! 22-20!
He was my little brother.
I remember the day that he became,
not so much cooler, but just my equal.
Like, I remember the day where,
everything flows downhill,
you start beating up your little
brother, but I remember the day
that he actually looked
at me and said, "No more."
And we started looking
at each other as equals.
"You want to go on vacation?"
"You want to do this together,
you want to do that together?"
And just... and he started
becoming my best friend.
And he shouldn't have been, he
shouldn't have been so on these pills
that it just, it... him up.
I mean, like one day he's way happy and then
the next day he's just way out of his mind, sad.
And I'm just, "What's
wrong, man? What's going on?"
And he's just, one
day we're best friends
and the next day he just doesn't
even know who he is anymore.
I... I didn't know what to do
so I'd just leave him alone.
I tell him all the
time I just, I miss him.
I miss him. I wish he was here. I wish
we didn't have to do this... for him.
Like this sucks, man.
I don't like it. I don't like it.
I don't like what it's made me.
I don't like what it's made my
family. It's, it's destroyed us, man.
Like in a, in a sense it's
grown us tighter as a family,
but in a sense it's
just... everything up, man.
It's just ruined everything. Oh...
...Oh, hi sweetheart. You doing okay?
Oh, thank you. - Big guy!
- Thank you!
- Thank you.
Every April 25th we get together
to celebrate Matthew's birthday.
We make a cake, share fond memories
and remind ourselves of how
lucky we are to have known him.
We love him, we miss him and we
are so grateful for all of you
who have supported us through this.
You could say it's our way of healing.
But the pain never really goes away.
Of course, we aren't the only ones.
There are all the brave women I
had met who continue to speak out
in spite of the emotional
hurt it must bring them.
They were all so moving.
Sheila, who fought her entire school district
for the right to leave her child unmedicated.
Irma, who got her son out
of a psychiatric hospital,
where he was involuntarily incarcerated
after a mix-up of medications
gave him hallucinations.
Mathy, whose daughter killed
herself while on psychiatric drugs
given to her only because
she was nervous before tests.
Vicky, whose poor, sweet
little girl died in her arms.
Amy, whose violent drug reaction toward
her own baby should frighten any new mom.
Christian, who was assured she could
take psychiatric drugs while pregnant
and whose baby, Indiana,
paid the ultimate price.
Karen, bringing her foster children back
from the depths of psychiatric drug toxicity.
And of course, my daughter Annie,
Matthew's sister and best friend,
without whom I couldn't have
made it through this process.
These are my friends.
And if there's one lesson I have
learned from them, it's that as parents,
we are the last line of
defense for our children.
Because when something goes wrong,
the mental health professionals
are never around to pick up the pieces.
Our children need us and yet, in a strange
sort of way, we need them even more.
All of us have one thing in common
and that's that we love our children.
What's so great about your kids?
What do you love about them the most?
I love that they're unconditional.
They unconditionally love.
Doesn't matter if I have
a bad day or a good day,
they're always there to make
me, make everything better.
They're so innocent. They come to
you. They hug you, they kiss you,
no matter what's going
on around the world.
And as a parent, you know, that's the
most beautiful thing we can receive,
a hug from our children.
I think they're
trusting. They trust you.
They're innocent.
And they, they think you
hung the moon, I don't know.
Until some day it turns around and you
know it's actually they that hung the moon.
My niece and my nephews are the most fun
and they, it's like they make you feel
alive more than you feel on your own,
more than you feel when
you're with a bunch of adults.
They bring out the kid
in you all over again
and you can laugh with
kids and have fun with kids.
I like how they're never
worried about anything.
They're just always
laughing and playing and...
Wait till they get a little bit older
because I don't know how many times I've
said to Caroline, "Honey, just breathe."
My kids are my reason for living
and I thank God every day for Caroline
because she was the driving
force to help me move forward
and for teaching me to be strong
because if I needed Caroline to be strong I
had to be that example of strength for her.
That's the way with my sons too. They
gave me the strength to be a better person,
be a better parent and to,
you know, just the smiles...
I mean I think our children come and
they have lessons to teach us and I don't,
I'm so, I'm such a different
person now than I was before.
They teach us a lot of good
values in life, they really do.
I kept thinking back to my children, and
what the other mothers had said about theirs,
their smiles, their imagination and
creativity, and their boundless energy.
My name is Tyler
Milford and I am eleven.
My age? Is eight.
I'm seven years old, actually
just make that seven and a half.
I'm eight years old and I want to
be a chef at a five-star restaurant.
I'm going to be an orthopedic surgeon.
When I grow up I want to be a geologist.
I would like to become a
professional basketball player.
Professional clothes designer.
I want to be a musician.
An actress.
A director.
A teacher.
Dancer and a singer.
I'd go for speed skating if I
wanted to, I'm really good.
I just want to keep practicing and
practicing until I know I'm perfect at it
and then do something big.
Yes, I plan to get an Oscar.
I was hoping that it would be like the
funnest thing that I would do in my life.
Losing a child is the worst thing
that could ever happen to a parent.
Children are not just another
market segment for psychiatry.
They need protection, they
need guidance, they need love.
They don't need psychiatric drugs.
And I'm going to tell that
to as many people as I can.