When Colleges Go On Suicide Watch

[Guest guest]

FYI

A feature article in the current issue of TIME Magazine, " When Colleges Go

On Suicide Watch " is a blatant example of an " infomercial " that extends

pharmaceutical compay advertising pages into the news pages in TIME

magazine. The article is passed off as a news report with the byline of two

TIME reporters- Raw and Kathleen Kingsbury--but the misinformation and

slant is clearly a transcription of psychotropic drug company advertising

copy.

TIME reports that " student suicides total some 1,100 a year nationwide,

making suicide the second leading cause of death among college students,

after motor-vehicle accidents. " [No source is provided for this statistic.]

But according to a 10-year research study examining suicide rates at 12

Midwestern campuses, " Big Ten Student Suicide Study " (Silverman et al.,

1997) found " College students are far less likely to kill themselves than

are nonstudent peers, according to a 10-year research study examining

suicide rates at 12 Midwestern campuses. " The " overall student suicide rate

of 7.5 per 100,000, compared to the national average of 15 per 100,000 in a

sample matched for age, race and gender. " College students are far less

likely to kill themselves than are nonstudent peers, . "

See, Psychiatric Times http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/p021001a.html

TIME further reports, " the number of students diagnosed as mentally fragile

appears to be rising. The 2005 National Survey of Counseling Directors,

conducted by the University of Pittsburgh, found that 95% of directors

reported an increase in the number of freshmen who arrive on campus already

taking psychiatric medicines. "

These TIME reporters apparently followed the pharmaceutical industry script:

like industry, they failed to mention in their " news report " the very

crucial fact that antidepressants-whose widespread use by teens is matter of

concern and dismay-carry the strongest FDA-mandated black box warnings

disclosing that evidence shows that these drugs increase the risk of

suicide.

The article quotes Joanna Locke, a program officer at the Jed Foundation, as

if she were an objective, medical authority: " A lot of students who may not

have gone to college five years ago are able to attend today because their

illness has been recognized earlier and they are on medication. "

Readers are told that " the Jed Foundation is a New York City--based college

suicide-prevention and outreach program. " By the way, the suicide rate,

1,1000 a year, that TIME cites is the first claim on the Jed Foundation

website.

What TIME readers are NOT told is that the Jed Foundation, established in

2000, is a pharmaceutical industry front.

Its co-founder, Philip Satow who " has more than 30 years of sales and

marketing experience in pharmaceuticals at Forest Laboratories, Inc. and

Pfizer, Inc. " " He is both the former President of Forest Pharmaceuticals,

Inc. and Executive Vice President of Forest Laboratories, Inc., its parent.

He is currently a Director of Forest Laboratories and a Director of Crucell,

Inc., a publicly traded Dutch biotech company. Phil is a past President of

the Columbia College Alumni Association and a member of the Board of

Visitors. "

See: http://jedfoundation.org/articles/PhilSatow.pdf

In 2003, Satow founded JDS Pharmaceuticals whose portfolio now

includes LITHOBIDR, the leading brand of sustained release lithium.

" JDS sought to enter the central nervous system market with a proven

product, and thus approached Solvay Pharmaceuticals to purchase LITHOBIDR.

Solvay Pharmaceuticals believed the transfer of LITHOBIDR to JDS

Pharmaceuticals offered the best solution to healthcare providers and

patients who continue to seek LITHOBIDR.

See:

http://salesandmarketingnetwork.com/news_release.php?ID=2001859 & key=Pfizer

JED serves as a marketing launching pad for psychotropic drug

manufacturers-all of whom serve on JED's Business Council-for " Suicide

prevention " campaigns in America's colleges and universities: " Since its

inception in 2000, The Jed Foundation has become the leading organization

focusing exclusively on college student mental health and suicide

prevention. "

The JED board of directors and medical advisory board include leaders in

academic psychiatry who are financially intertwined with this industry.

These are the promoters of mental screening and the increased use of

psychotropic drugs.

Although there is absolutely no evidence that suicide can be prevented by

mental health professionals who rely almost exclusively on drugs whose

adverse effects-whether prescribed for depression, anxiety (personal or

social), panic attacks, mood swings, or for non-psychiatric off-label uses,

have consistently shown that they are more likely to increase the risk of

suicide than placebo. And there is little evidence that the drugs offer any

clinically significant benefit.

The latest acknowledgment about the increased risk of drug-induced suicide

attempts was by Glaxo Kline, makers of the antidepressant, Paxil

(paroxetine):

In a letter to doctors GSK acknowledged: " patients on the drug may

experience " persistently worse " depression, or may " experience emergent

suicidality or symptoms that might be precursors to worsening depression or

suicidality " and " these symptoms " may be " severe, abrupt in onset, or were

not part of the patient's presenting symptoms. "

GSK advises doctors: " " Consideration should be given to changing the

therapeutic regimen, including possibly discontinuing the medication. "

See: http://www.gsk.com/media/paroxetine/adult_hcp_letter.pdf . For an

analysis of the import of GSK's acknowledgement, see :

http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/166/28/

The lack of credibility of the information posted on the JED website is

demonstrated by its failure to refer to any of the documented evidence

showing the medication-induced suicide risk. In fact, the JED website

misleads parents and individuals seeking accurate information by linking to

an out dated booklet published by the National Institute of Mental Health in

2000, BEFORE the black box warnings on antidepressant labels were mandated.

The central figure in the TIME story is a 20-year old student at Cornell

University who " struggled with depression and anorexia since the sixth

grade. " We are not informed whether she had been prescribed any drugs. We

are told she enrolled in a " double major in German and neurobiology. "

Clearly such a load of school work put her under a great deal of unnecessary

stress. Not surprisingly, the young woman couldn't take the pressure: " the

stress was so bad that I knew if I stayed at Cornell one more week, I would

kill myself. "

The pharmaceutical industry has used Jed Satow's suicide to penetrate

college campuses for the purpose of expanding psychotropic drug sales. Who,

other than pharmaceutical executives would consider exploiting the suicide

of a son for commercial purposes?

JED actively engages in " disease mongering " through its online information

" resource center " ULifeline.

" Since its inception, ULifeline and The Jed Foundation have reached millions

of parents, students, administrators...The Jed Foundation provides ULifeline

to all colleges and universities free of charge, regardless of the size or

type of institution. Currently, more than 530 colleges and universities

participate in the ULifeline Network. "

A small note acknowledges: " The Initiative is made possible through

educational grants from AstraZeneca, Bristol-Meyers Squibb Company, The

E.H.A. Foundation, Eli Lilly and Company, Forest Laboratories, Inc.,

GlaxoKline, Pfizer Inc, and Wyeth. "

See: http://www.ulifeline.org/page/main/Home.html

TIME magazine failed to reveal ANY of those Pharma connections.

We list the JED Business Council; its Board of Directors; ULifeline Board;

and Medical Advisory Board after the TIME story.

See: http://www.jedfoundation.org/documents/2005AnnualReport.pdf

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav

veracare@...

http://www.time.com/time

TIME MAGAZINE

Sunday, May 14, 2006

When Colleges Go On Suicide Watch

Schools are getting sued for doing too little--and too much--to help

mentally fragile students

By JULIE RAWE, KATHLEEN KINGSBURY

Anne Giedinghagen wanted desperately to stay in school. Having struggled

with depression and anorexia since the sixth grade, the rail-thin Cornell

junior was meeting regularly with a therapist at the university's counseling

center in Ithaca, N.Y. But late last fall, when she told her therapist about

her increasingly strong urge to kill herself, Giedinghagen received an

ultimatum from the school she loved so much: she had to get better or she

would have to leave. So she did what any crafty 20-year-old would do. She

tried to carve out a third option--feigning improvement by, as she put it,

acting " as normal as I could. " When she agreed to spend her winter break at

a psychiatric hospital, the university stopped threatening to kick her out.

But afterward, says Giedinghagen, " I felt like I had to hide how I was doing

from my doctor, my counselor, my nutritionist, so that I could stay. "

Giedinghagen is one of thousands of troubled college students who each year

are forced to make such stark choices. With two recent court rulings holding

that college administrators may be held partly responsible for student

suicides--which total some 1,100 a year nationwide, making suicide the

second leading cause of death among college students, after motor-vehicle

accidents--many universities have hastily adopted mandatory-leave policies

in an effort to reduce the risk of self-inflicted, on-campus deaths. But a

tragic result, say psychiatrists and student advocates, is that emotionally

distressed students may be less willing to come forward and get the

professional help they need.

Another unintended consequence: hypervigilant colleges are getting sued by

students who allege they are being discriminated against for being mentally

unstable. The U.S. Department of Education last year warned at least a

handful of schools that receive federal aid that the Americans with

Disabilities Act protects people with mental problems. Several students who

were suspended after threatening to commit suicide are in the process of

suing their schools; others have been offered settlements before their cases

reached the courts. In a sign of just how flummoxed the world of higher

education has become over the issue of suicide, United Educators, which

insures more than 1,100 colleges and secondary schools, issued a bulletin

last month noting that when dealing with emotionally distressed students,

schools are left " with the quandary of being sued no matter what they do. "

That is particularly alarming since the number of students diagnosed as

mentally fragile appears to be rising. The 2005 National Survey of

Counseling Directors, conducted by the University of Pittsburgh, found that

95% of directors reported an increase in the number of freshmen who arrive

on campus already taking psychiatric medicines. " A lot of students who may

not have gone to college five years ago are able to attend today because

their illness has been recognized earlier and they are on medication, " says

Joanna Locke, a program officer at the Jed Foundation, a New York

City--based college suicide-prevention and outreach program.

The pressure to inoculate schools from legal liability has sometimes led

them to come across as shockingly insensitive. In a case study of apparent

hamhandedness, Jordan Nott had spent less than 48 hours in the psychiatric

ward he checked himself into, in October 2004, when he received a terse

letter from Washington University informing the sophomore that he had

been suspended for being a danger to himself and others. " It was a huge slap

in the face, " says Nott, 20. " They don't hand out this letter that says, 'We

want you to get help.' What it says is, 'You've been suspended; you've been

barred from campus.' " The letter went on to explain that if he returned to

campus, he would be arrested. Rather than contest the suspension, he

switched schools and is now suing for compensatory damages. A spokeswoman

for G.W.U. says that because Nott's suspension fell within the school's

disciplinary system, the wording of that letter may have seemed impersonal.

However, she stresses, " the goal here was to protect a life. "

But how, exactly, does yanking a kid out of college count as protection? " A

lot of suicidal people don't just kill themselves, " says Lake, a

higher-education law professor at Stetson University in Deland, Fla. " They

also can hurt others, even if it's unintentionally. " Schools steadfastly

reserve the right not to let one person's disturbing behavior disrupt anyone

else's educational experience. And they argue that their mandatory-leave

policy can force emotionally distressed students to get the best possible

help. Pavela, a judicial-policy expert at the University of land

and author of a book on student suicide, says the approach is designed for

" getting rid of troubled kids, getting them into the hands of others, as

soon as possible. "

Litigious parents are also to blame for the tough line. After Shin

died in 2000 in a dorm-room fire at M.I.T. within hours of threatening to

kill herself, the sophomore's parents filed a $27 million lawsuit against

her psychiatrists, as well as her house master and a dean of student life,

for failing to take adequate precautions. (They had scheduled an appointment

to see her the following day.) When a judge last year refused to throw out

the suit, alarm bells went off in administrative offices across the country.

" To hold a university liable for simply trying to help a student is

extraordinary, " says Roth, Cornell's deputy university counsel,

explaining why the school joined six others in supporting M.I.T. in the

case. Shin's death was a tragedy, Roth says, " but not every tragedy warrants

a lawsuit. "

Although the Shins settled last month for an undisclosed amount--and

publicly admitted that their daughter's death appeared to be accidental--the

case has had a chilling effect on student-services professionals and has led

to more frequent use of emergency-leave policies. But after several students

complained about getting summarily booted, the Department of Education's

Office for Civil Rights started informing schools that a person should be

considered a direct threat only when there is " a high probability of

substantial harm and not just a slightly increased, speculative or remote

risk. " In other words, there needs to be a detailed evaluation and at least

some opportunity for students to make a case for why they should be allowed

to stay.

Many schools are trying to emulate the University of Illinois, which

requires students who express suicidal thoughts to see a counselor for four

sessions if they want to remain in school. More than 1,800 students have

gone through the program since it was launched in the early '80s, and none

have committed suicide. Only one participant was forced to leave.

While Illinois rarely advocates taking time off from school, Cornell pushes

a hundred or so of its students each year to take a voluntary medical leave

that allows them not only to get help but also to de-stress. In

Giedinghagen's case, it didn't take long for her to realize her

fake-it-till-you-make-it strategy wasn't working. By April, she says, " the

stress was so bad that I knew if I stayed at Cornell one more week, I would

kill myself. " After lengthy discussions with her therapists, the double

major in German and neurobiology agreed to head home last month to Kansas

City, Mo., with plans to enter a psychiatric hospital. Five weeks later,

she's disappointed that Cornell hasn't made any follow-up calls to see how

she's doing.

But Cornell's deputy counsel Roth has an explanation: " Once the student is

gone or goes home, the individual becomes the responsibility of parents. Our

obligation ends. "

@Copyright Time, Inc

See: http://www.jedfoundation.org/documents/2005AnnualReport.pdf

The JED Foundation Business Council

Bartenbach

Associate Product Manager, Bifeprunox

Neuroscience US Marketing

Solvay Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Trey Benson

Senior Product Manager, Depokote

Neuroscience Marketing

Abbott Laboratories

Caulfield

Chairman

The Chickering Group

Meg Columbia-Walsh

Managing Director

Faith Popcorn's BrainReserve

F. Foy, Jr.

Public Affairs Liaison

Eli Lilly and Company

Theresa Frangiosa

Director, Global Commercial Leader

& , Pharmaceuticals Group Strategic Marketing

Mark Friedlander

National Associate Medical Director

Aetna Behavioral Health

Goodman

Sales Manager, Connecticut

Pfizer Inc.

Grimes

Associate Director - Integrated Health

Bristol-Myers Squibb

Heffernan

President

Collegium Pharmaceutical, Inc.

Dennis Langer, MD, JD

President

Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, Inc.

MacPhee

Vice President, Branded Sales and Marketing

Par Pharmaceutical

Rielly-Gauvin

VP Marketing

Janssen Pharmaceutica

Gerard Schmitt

Product Director, Effexor XR Marketing Team

Wyeth Pharmaceuticals

Toalson, R.Ph., BCPP

Senior Neuroscience Medical Associations Liaison

Eli Lilly & Company

Suneet Varma

Vice President & Global Business Manager

Wyeth Pharmaceuticals

Vorrius

Senior Director, CNS & Specialty Marketing

Organon Pharmaceuticals. USA, Inc.

Lynn O'Connor Vos

CEO and President

Grey Healthcare Group, Inc.

Young

Senior Director, Neuroscience Marketing

Bristol-Myers Squibb

JED FOUNDATION Board of Directors

Cole, PhD

Mason Professor of the University, Provost and

Dean of Faculties, Emeritus, Columbia University

Ron Gibori

Director, ULifelineT

The Jed Foundation

B. Keller, MD

Chairman, Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior

Brown University, Hospital

Larry Lieberman

Chief Marketing Officer

Virgin Comics, LLC

Conrad Lung

President

Sunnex, Inc.

Marc Mazur

Business & Financial Consultant

S. Pechter

Chairman (retired)

son, Lufkin, Jenrette Financial Services Group

* S. Satow

Chief Operating Officer

*JDS Pharmaceuticals, LLC

* M. Satow

Co-founder

The Jed Foundation

Lynn O'Connor Vos

Chief Executive Officer

Grey Healthcare Group

Medical Advisory Board

Brent, MD

Academic Chief, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic

Cole, PhD

Mason Professor of the University, Provost and

Dean of Faculties, Emeritus, Columbia University

B. Keller, MD

Chairman, Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior

Brown University, Hospital

C. Kessler, PhD

Professor of Health Care Policy

Harvard Medical School

Ranga K. Krishnan, MD

Chairman, Department of Psychiatry

Duke University Medical Center

Jane Pearson, PhD

Chair, Suicide Research Consortium

National Institute of Mental Health

Shaffer, MD

Irving Professor of Child Psychiatry

Director, Department of Child Psychiatry

Columbia University/New York State Psychiatric Institute

Morton Silverman, MD

Senior Advisor

National Suicide Prevention Technical Resource Center

ULifeline Board

Greg Eells

Director

Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS)

Cornell University

Dan L. , Ph.D.

Counseling and Psychological Services Center

Appalachian State University

Amy Katzenberg

VP, Client Services

Avenue-e Health Strategies

Ben Locke, Ph.D.

Assistant Director, Research and Technology

Center for Counseling and Psychological Services

Penn State University

Jon McCarus

VP, Business Development

Grey Alliance

Glenn

Chief of Operations

Interactive Factory

Jon

Chief Technology Officer

Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions

Regards,

" Human beings, who are almost unique in having

the ability to learn from the experience of others,

are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination

to do so. "

--