My Reply to Pete Earley: Do I Have Blood On My Hands?

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From the letter Pete Earley ‘wanted to share’ with his audience:

‘ when we practiced “tough love” and told him he couldn’t live with us unless he got treatment, he walked out and disappeared.

Only a parent who has a child who has disappeared on the streets can tell you how horrible it is to go to bed at night not knowing where your son or daughter might be.

So the son didn’t just ‘go missing’, he was threatened with homelessness, threatened with eviction from the family home, by his parents, if he refused to be coerced into opening up his never-proven-diseased body to psychiatric drugging. The mother laments going to bed at night, not knowing where her son is. She’s also made clear that if her son’s sleeping body was safe in his bed at home, such a body, if it didn’t have psychiatric drugs coursing through its bloodstream, was unwelcome in her home. These tactics are sadly something that millions of people who have had psychiatric labels slapped on them have to face, told they are unacceptable, unwelcome both at home and even in free society, if they aren’t wearing their chemical leash.

If the son saw a documentary on youtube she’d probably demand it be taken down. The pro forced drugging, pro ‘brain disease theory’ indoctrinated audience of Pete Earley’s forced drugging lobbyist blog, has got a problem with Whitaker’s freedom of speech. Has got a problem with the person labeled “ill” having the right to listen. Even Early says he’d rather his own son didn’t see Whitaker’s speech. They’ve also got a problem with innocent human beings owning their own body, that’s why they seek to increase use of state sanctioned forced drugging social control techniques. Techniques the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture has repeatedly condemned.

The forced drugging lobbyists have shown time and again the underhanded smear tactics they will engage in. Earley, Jaffe, Torrey, have all shown they will throw enough mud and hope some sticks, hence the fact Earley has opened himself up as the go-to blog to publish ‘blood on hands’ diatribes from mothers who view their sons as ‘diseased brains’ needing to be flooded with major tranquilizer drugs. This really shows their inner anxiety that they are now facing strong resistance to their anti-human rights pro forced drugging agenda.

MindFreedom founder David Oaks released a statement on Mr. Earley’s forced drugging lobbying activities some time ago. In 2010, Pete Earley lobbied against federal funding of the Alternatives Conference for the thought-crime of having Whitaker, David Oaks, and Will Hall in attendance. Earley said:

‘But what did trouble me was how this conference was bankrolled. MindFreedom didn’t pick up the tab, nor Robert Whitaker or Will Hall.

Yep, the conference was paid for by the United States Department of Health and Human Services: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Mental Health Services, commonly called SAMHSA.’

He went on to lament that SAMHSA dollars weren’t being used in the push to rip away more human rights:

‘Nor do I believe SAMHSA financially supports or endorses my belief that involuntary commitment laws need to focus on criteria other than “immediate dangerousness” – to make treatment available to persons who are clearly delusional but are not dangerous’

Note the classic, banal, forced drugging lobby trick, when he says make treatment available. Yes, forced drugging is simply making treatment available, like it wasn’t in the Yellow Pages, nobody knew where to get it, until goons armed with a syringe forcibly stripped them naked and stabbed them with a needle. This is the disingenuous, hot/cold passive/aggressive kind of way the forced drugging lobby plays things. We can see the same tactics with Earley headlining the ‘blood on his hands’ smear, followed a day later by a coy, disingenuous defense of Whitaker’s free speech and Earley adopting some pose of journalistic neutrality. Earley is an active forced drugging policy lobbyist, he couldn’t be less objective if he tried. He wants to use force, the terrible power of the state, to make sure there is nowhere to run from a forced needle in all of America for anyone with a psychiatric label. Note that while he laments the use of SAMHSA funds to promote alternatives to psychiatric drugging, he has no problem lobbying for the use of taxpayers money to fund the forced drugging policies he advocates. Taxpayers have shelled out billions over the last couple of hundred years to pay the government psychiatrists, government psychiatric facilities and psychiatric ‘treatments’ that have seen millions of people lose the right to own their own bodies at the hands of forced psychiatry.

The forced drugging lobby’s position is simple. They believe in psychiatric drugging, they have taken the leap of faith that unusual behavior is a ‘brain disease’, therefore every man, woman and child in the land should only enjoy the right to own their own body only at the pleasure of their local forced government psychiatrist. They believe that actual physical violence should be used against people who refuse to consent to psychiatric drugging, forced government injections. Your heartfelt, well considered, well-evidenced, deeply held position of informed refusal of consent, and your human rights, are just an irrelevant barrier to be overcome by a court order, a pack of armed goons, and a forced needle. Your lifelong trauma after being treated like a subhuman object, terrorized by the government psychiatric goons? Well that’s shoved to the side just like they shove the side effects to the side.

The re-traumatization, stigmatization, and scapegoating that the forced drugging lobbyists engage in, is so hurtful to recovery, so destructive of hard-won self esteem in those labeled ‘mentally ill’, so terrifying, that I cannot even fathom how they are still part of polite society. I pity any family member of these people. Can you imagine having a father who makes it his mission to extend the tentacles of government power by force INTO THE NEURONS! of perfect strangers. This is pure fanaticism on display folks. Scary stuff.

See what David Oaks had to say of Pete Earley:

“Thank the universe and all the Gods and Godesses and stars in the sky…. that you were never my father. ”

http://www.mindfreedom.org/mfi-blog/pete-earley

Harsh words, for a harsh opponent of our human rights. I second David Oaks’ statement and say I am so thankful that I don’t have pro forced drugging ideologues for parents, for if I did, I’d run away too. The forced drugging lobby wants to rip away equality and choice, and make their spurious pseudoscience based beliefs the law of the land, only unlike Iran, they don’t merely want to force young women to wear a veil, they want psychiatric goons to be on hand to forcibly pull down the jeans of 19 year old women, hold them down, ignore their screams for mercy, and stab needles full of brain disabling drugs into their naked buttocks when they are at their weakest. This is the proverbial ‘kicking someone when they are down’. Where they have succeeded, lives have been destroyed by their forced drugging policies. That all the likes of Earley, Jaffe and Torrey can talk about is what the proponents of choice, dignity, and critical appraisal of psychiatric drugging are saying and doing, shows they are on the back foot. May it long continue. I pledge to do my best to ensure it continues long after the increasingly irrelevant forced drugging lobbyists are gone. They are on the wrong side of history.

Researchers, writers, critical thinkers like Robert Whitaker, like the dozens of authors who write for this website, like the many, many people speaking and thinking critically about the status quo in ‘mental health’, are helping people help themselves. If a young man tries to help himself a bit too rashly, impulsively, like the son in the letter, that’s not Whitaker’s fault. And I’m sure being threatened with homelessness by his mother if he didn’t drug himself played a large part in that bed in the family home laying empty too. Evasions, flights from responsibility, smears, cries of ‘Aids denier’, ‘blood on his hands’, ‘scientologist!’ from the forced drugging lobbyist/parent peanut gallery, is the thanks Whitaker gets for giving people information, that adults can use judiciously to reorganize their lives after un-indocrinating themselves from psychiatry’s false assertions.

Earley says on his blog that he resents those he is lobbying against saying they are glad he isn’t their father. People positing that they are glad of this fact, is mere speech. He can choose not to listen to this free speech. What I resent, is Mr. Earley and his collaborators seeking to use the state to institute policies that see us live in fear, policies that strip us of our right to own and control our own bodies. Mere speech, versus actual state sanctioned force. You decide who is more entitled to be resentful. Who is doing something more invasive. Speech, versus the forced government alteration of never-proven-diseased conscious brains of innocent strangers. It’s an absolute horror what this guy is advocating. Far from blood being on the hands of Whitaker, we ought to look at the fact those who carry out the violent forced drugging policies Mr. Earley lobbies for more of, always put latex gloves on their own hands before they pick up their forced needles. Why are they wearing rubber gloves? Could it be they don’t want to get blood on their hands when they are stabbing needles into the forcibly held down bodies of those they have decided don’t deserve the right to say no?

We deserve the right to say no Mr. Earley. And while you may believe the violent hands of state force are the best tool to get what you want (put in others’ bodies), we will use nonviolent persuasion to win our human rights.

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Bob,

A young man is “missing,” and we all hope he finds safe shelter, food and support – but that has nothing to do with your making a presentation on scientific research behind neuroleptics.

The scientific facts have been hidden for years, and you tried to bring them out. That’s a good thing.

The two things are not connected. You did nothing wrong. I hope the “lost” man finds support. I also think the reaction should be a wake-up call in regard to the politics behind maintaining the status quo.

This is why I’m in no rush to join hands and sing ‘Kumbaya’ with these folks. They will stop at *nothing* – including saying a journalist has “blood on his hands”…

Duane

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Entrenched power systems (and their dupes and minions) have always responded to their critics in this fashion…particularly their most brilliant and effective critics. Sorry to hear of this ugly affair, but it is clearly a sign of Robert Whitakers effectiveness in his challenge to status quo psychiatry. “Demonize, Trivialize and ignore“ are the standard techniques of the power mongers and par for the course…Carry on Robert Whitaker and thank you for all of your efforts.

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I preach personal responsibility. Part of what we are fighting for is the right to make our own decisions and either reap the benefits, suffer the consequences, or live with a neutral outcome.

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Keep spreading the message. I was given Zyprexa after my complaint of insomnia and took it for a wile. When I tried to stop taking it cause I didn’t like the way I felt from it, the withdrawal reactions CREATED a scary psychosis, something I never ever had before. That’s how I know these drugs are causing much of the chronicity in many disorders.

These emotional side shows won’t change the facts.

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What interests me about the NAMI reaction to Bob’s talk, is not so much the reaction itself, but the fact that he was invited in the first place. I am sure the complaints about Bob are as nothing compared to the flak that the more enlightened members of the NAMI board are getting right now.

I’m dying to know that inside story, and I’m sure someone knows it.

I also want to say that I have changed my mind somewhat about the effectiveness of talking with NAMI. I have always known there are some sincere family members there, who drug their children because they don’t know that there are other choices. But I felt the possibilities of real change were so small that spending energy on NAMI was a waste of time.

But I am starting to feel that it’s possible that enough people within NAMI could change to the extent that NAMI would have to change. Of course, if that point is ever reached, the drug companies who make up most of their funding will take it away. Whatever would happen after that will be very interesting.

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Dear Bob,

As I was reading your post, I started to feel very angry at those who had a negative reaction to your presentation at the NAMI convention. And then I remembered something. Your book took my own journey in a new direction that is very literally saving my life – not in an easy or predictable way, or even a way without lots of risks, but a very authentic and fulfilling way. Your book and discussions around it are saving the life of the friend who introduced me to the book. Your willingness to have my story published on your website has educated my closest family members and friends about what I have been through, and has increased their compassion for those suffering in the current mental health system. The discussions I am having about your work with friends, clients, other parents, and other therapists have been enlightening. I am mindful to discuss these sensitive issues only as I feel inspired, and with every effort to be responsible and free of an agenda that would lead to harm. I try my best not to bring the topic up in a heated or impulsive manner, and the results are extremely positive from my perspective. I am sad for the parents who took out their frustrations with their own experiences in the mental health system (and what they report of their sons’ experiences) on you. My experience in the mental health system over the past twenty years – as a patient, a client, a parent, a volunteer (with NAMI), a peer counselor, and now as a mental health counselor – has consistently confirmed what you have discovered in your research. It has been extremely validating to finally have written evidence of what I already felt to be true.

Your courage to reveal research evidence that is contrary to what we often hear in the psychiatric system is a monumental catalyst for real change. I can’t thank you enough for what you are doing. I fully agree with what you said in this part of your post:

“I am now thinking about the mother’s adult son. I do believe that we, as a society, failed him. And I say that—that as a society we failed him—because psychiatry is an institution that is part of our society, and for the past 50 years, psychiatry has not communicated research results that question the merits of psychiatric drugs freely to the public. Furthermore, the public has not insisted that psychiatry freely discuss such information. You can see that impulse to suppress such information on display here: Pete Earley, with this headline, is saying that it was grossly irresponsible of me to have presented such research findings in that forum. I have “blood on my hands.”

What has been the result of that suppression of information? We, as a society, have not developed a system of care that provides support to someone who might want to taper from his medications, and help that person try to do so in a safe manner, even though we know that it can lead to a good outcome for many. And the absence of such support may put a person—such as this mother’s adult son—into a perilous place when they do, in fact, learn of such information.”

With Gratitude,
Mary Anne

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Never let a good tragedy go to waste right ? This guy has hopefully just had a hiccup though.

“Patients” getting lied to, knowing they have to do something about it, but then not really having anywhere to go or knowledge on how to play it smart. There’s the problem.

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It’s good to hear that the young man is – well, perhaps ‘safe’ isn’t the right word given what we know about the things that can go on in psychiatric hospitals, but certainly alive.

Of course you don’t have ‘blood on your hands’ and would not have done so even if the outcome had been a tragic loss of life. Did you stand up in front of NAMI and say ‘By the way, I advise everyone here who is on medication to stop it immediately and run away from home?’ I don’t think so! But the worrying underlying message seems to be that people who are psychiatrically labelled should not be informed about the evidence on neuroleptics. This is not a defensible position – either scientifically, professionally or ethically.

What this incident does expose is the depth of the resistance to challenging the psychiatric orthodoxy, the enormously strong feelings that are stirred up – such that rational debate can get entirely lost – and the tactics that some people are prepared to use to silence critics. It’s not pleasant.

There are, of course, people and organisations with ‘blood on their hands’ for the enormous harm caused by psychiatric medications – but this is a classic case of ‘blame the messenger’ not the perpetrators.

Keep up the good work!

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I had a staff member of a day centre refuse to put up a demo for Speak Out Against Psychiatry. She said people might come off thier drugs and she did not want that.

The leaflet did not say, “Come off your drugs.” It did say that they cause more harm than good. So it might have prompted some unwise withdrawals but it could also have prompted some useful conversations which staff could have facilitated.

For a long time I said the service needed a, “making sense of psychiatric medication,” group becuase the members of the day centre were so distessed and confused about thier drugs. It never happened.

I’m sure Bob’s experience of being blamed, and possibly scapegoated, will not be the first and he will not be the only person who will experience this.

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I’m glad to read in the update that this man is all right. “All right” is, of course, a relative term here since he has been hospitalized. What will happen to him while he is hospitalized? What kind of help will he receive?

If one puts aside the manipulative use Pete Earley makes of the letter (David’s “Assassination of Marat”? Oh, please), the letter itself is worth reading. My first reaction is to wonder why this man’s “voice was telling him we [his parents] were devils, our house was haunted by evil spirits and we were  trying to poison him. He said God was commanding him to not live with us anymore”. I know very well that this will be dismissed as the meaningless delusions of a diseased brain, random neuronal misfiring. And indeed the mother tellingly describes his son’s words, his desperate attempt at communication, as “nonsense”. What a sad, heartbreaking story indeed.

I wish this man the very best, I really do. And precisely because I do, I hope Robert Whitaker never stops doing what he is doing, but that he does more of it, and that more people do it. I also hope that this anonymous “schizophrenic” eventually finds someone who listens to what he has to say.

With that in mind, I would invite anyone reading this (Mr Earley? Broken Hearted and Angry Mum?) to read Chaya Grossberg’s recent post in MIA, “Many Ears Make Light Listening” and to really think about what she says there.

http://www.madinamerica.com/2013/07/many-ears-make-light-listening/

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I managed to get in several comments on the mother’s post, before comments were closed. I was quite dismissive of the mother’s story because she was blaming anybody but herself as to what went wrong. Tough love is not love in these particular circumstances and shows no understanding of the pain the person is going through. I’m glad that her son was found, but where was he located? In a homeless shelter. He chose a homeless shelter probably because he knew he wasn’t welcome at home. I sincerely hope this mother learns about what it means to “work together” as they go down the road to recovery. Yet, a lot of NAMI members, mothers in particular, are scared to death of being “blamed” in any way for their child’s problems. That’s why NAMI got started in the first place. Mothers were sick and tired of being caste as refrigerator mothers. We have since suffered the consequences of their refusal to even go down the road of self-examination in order to develop a more nurturing environment. I know enough of these types of mothers from their blogs, and they are almost uniformly hostile to recovery programs, like Practice Recovery, that teach empathy, non-judgment, and healing oneself, too. These mothers insistently and erroneously believe that the agenda of these kinds of courses is to part the “loved one” from their medication. Bob is quite correct when he writes that we as a society have failed the young man because of refusal to provide programs and information about supporting the person through medication reduction, but the larger picture includes teaching families to lovingly support their family member. This mother hasn’t a clue. If she is truly interesting in helping her son, let’s hope she puts pride aside and stops blaming her son and others. It’s a losing game.

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I wonder Bob if the adult son hearing the scientific evidence presented at the NAMI conference was sickened by the confirmation of evidence coupled by the knowledge the meds he has taken have created havoc in his body?
My son knew and ultimately stopped after four months the neuroleptics, mood stabilizers, benzodiazepines forced upon him during the ten days of hell he endured in a locked psych unit that we,his parents, asked him to enter the night of his breakdown. My son’s first-time psychosis was triggerred by a sea of stressors plus his toxicology screen was positive for cannabis and later my son confessed to me he had used one-time “shrooms” which did not show up on his drug screen. The psych hospital ignored the significance what illicit drugs can do to the brain, rather labeled him ” mentally ill for life, bipolar for life, meds for life” and gaining 55 lbs so rapidly it caused stretch marks all over his abdomen forever a reminder of “the system” mantra. Massively drug, label, stigmatize this young man who never showed a second of mental disorder until an overwhelming number of stressors which included recovery from a serious boating injury, loss of his job, insecurity of his financial ability to marry his girlfriend but sacrificing his fears to marry anyway out of unconditional love. Did the system attempt to unravel the causes for his break? No, yet my son’s forced use of all those psychiatric meds did not help his psychosis abate. It took him 10 wks to clear from his psychosis. I believed my son who repeated ” these meds are blunting my feelings, like I’m in some fog”. I dare Pete Earley or the mother of the NAMI son to take just ONE neuroleptic and feel its effects. As I was horrified my son was given Haldol round the clock because the hospital told us they were afraid of him. Yes, he was 6’5″ and tried to bolt ( despite his knee injury) once he walked inside the locked unit. I still think that was the most normal, lucid reaction. . My son feared for his life and any person who has the unfortunate experience observing the inside of a locked ward knows exactly what I mean. How in this country could this be the system we accept to supposedly provide the best treatment for mental health recovery? What hope does a young person have being drugged and humiliated and shamed into accepting a mental illness for life? Where are the alternatives for those who feel victimized by the drugging and labeling? No one offerred my son, or his family, the knowledge -yes people can and do recover from psychosis. Smart, intelligent people but naive and ignorant to alternative help and belief that the health care system would not fail our son.

My irony is I believe had my son received the same scientific evidence presented at NAMI, he would be alive today because it would have empowered him to know his label of a ” mental illness” was not just treatable, but even curable with the right help and support. This would have given him hope again, the key to survival.

I can’t bring back my boy, but I sure have a voice now after reading the abundance of scientific facts and why the ” brain dx theory” isn’t valid. Keep going please, if this happened to my family,It can happen to any family. The truth will ultimately win out.

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Thank you, Robert Whitaker, for your persistent scientific, journalistic integrity, which I see as ethical exploration and exposition of the toxic vipers nest of global Big Pharma with lackeys high and low in medicine, media, governments and family- and users’ organizations, so many on the take from Big Pharma’s enormous coffers.
The blood is on their hands, who are willing to close their eyes and keep hiding the dark truth of millions of ruined lives, early death and rampant corruption in Big Pharma’s wake.
Your articles in the Boston Globe and the book Mad in America explained to me what my son had been exposed to as a psychiatric patient in Norway. Some of the horrors I was a shocked witness to, but did not understand fully to be able to protect him while there still was time. He died in his sleep, 28 years young, 8 years with continuous medical treatment doing continuous harm, finally killing my highly sensitive, vulnerable, gifted son.

You, mr Whitaker, deserve praise and thanks for enlightening me and countless others to the dangers of psychiatric medications and the abysses of corruption making naive trust in not only this sector of medicine an irresponsible, dangerous folly. I look forward to listening to you in Oslo in August!

Thankfully, Berit Bryn-Jensen

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Even though we all have the common sense here to see that the accusations were of course completely without validity it’s still not nice on a human level to hear/read that. Of course you don’t have blood on your hands Robert and these sorts of tactics have been around for a long time.
I remember before the hearing voices movement started of similar sorts of slurs. Before the terms ‘voice hearer’ and ‘psychosis’ came about talks (from survivors, allies and professionals) were about ‘Schizophrenia’. When I did such talks questioning the lack of full information, lifelong medication, the possibilities for alternatives, no where in my papers did I state “everyone must come off ALL medication NOW”.
A member of the former NSF (National Schizophrenia Fellowship), which was mostly a relatives organisation for a while seemed to follow me around at events and would jump up immediately after I’d finished speaking always to say the same thing, “You’re telling people to stop taking their medication!”. It almost became comical as audience participants would end up answering this person before I did saying “No she didn’t”.
Equally I would find myself on the wrong side of survivors telling me that I was lucky I didn’t need to take daily medication as they did and would die if they didn’t, through to, unless I did take daily medication then my condition could not have been that serious.
It’s not easy being an activist Robert – but don’t let it deter you, take support from your friends and allies, of which you have many here.

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It has always amazed me how, to people like Pete Earley, death seems to be acceptable, maybe a little tragic, but still acceptable, as long as it occurs as a ”side” effect of psychiatric ”treatment”, while the mere possibility of a fatal outcome is unacceptable as soon as it occurs in context with free and informed choice.

We’re not born into this world knowing everything about how to make the most constructive choices. We have to learn it, and we all learn it by making our own choices. But nobody can make constructive choices if they’re denied access to all the information important to the specific choice. Keeping information from people, lying to them about the facts, will almost inevitably lead to ”bad” choices being made. What I find particularly interesting here — alongside with the phenomenon that in fact grown-up people consistently are referred to as “children”, i.e. human beings who still haven’t learned enough about this world to be able to make constructive choices concerning all parts of their lives — is that, in general, I experience quite a bit of secrecy, mystification, outright lying, and sweeping things under the carpet in the families of labeled people. Usually more than in other families. And it doesn’t start with, or is limited to keeping for a truly constructive choice important information about, well not just psychiatric ”treatment”, but the nature of the labels themselves, hidden from the labeled person. It starts with the family secrets, the skeletons in the closet, the elephant in the living room, the existence and nature of which the ”bad” choices of the labeled person threaten to reveil, which again has earned the person in question their label. The secrecy, closedness and lying toward labeled people Pete Earley and his likes openly advocate for indeed are necessary if the family secrets are to be kept secret, the skeletons are to be kept inside the closet, the elephant in the living room is to be kept unseen. And so ”bad” choices and, in the end, fatal outcomes are passed on from one generation to the next. If anybody has ”blood on their hands” it’s these people, who’ve decided that being able to continue and live their lie is more important than facing the truth and being able, they themselves as well as everybody under their influence, to make constructive choices on the basis of it. If their offspring is “mentally ill”, i.e. keeps making “bad” choices, choices that don’t take all the important information about the subject into account, then these people should ask themselves who it is that kept important information hidden from their offspring, who it is that kept their offspring in the dark, and about as educated about the world as the kindergarten child they themselves fancy to reduce their, mostly, grown-up sons and daughters to.

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I ache for this anonymous mother’s son yet her letter and accusations hurled at Bob Whitaker made me furious. Blood on his hands — good grief! The only blood on anyone’s hands belongs to those perpetrating the mental death system and the colluding families of mental patients.

We are so lucky to have you on our side, Bob. It’s sickening that they imply those diagnosed with mental illness should be protected from valid science, i.e. the truth. This is, I believe, part of what Sally Satel refers to as “benign paternalism.” Well, it’s not benign; it’s toxic.

Had our social policy reflected this science, this anonymous man would have been provided safety, shelter, good food, psychosocial support, a judicious tapering off his neurotoxins, and an opportunity for counselling to deal with his obvious fear of and rage at his parents.

I actually like Pete Earley, though I vehemently disagree with him on most things. We’ve emailed a couple of times and he seems to me more thoughtful and moderate than would be obvious from his blog.

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Sir,

I hope no gathering of people, outside your residential, throw stones at your windows.

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Nicely stated. I think the dramatic counter argument against those who think being homeless is the worst thing that could happen to a person is to see someone who has been on antipsychotics for twenty years. My friend, who had graduated top in her medical school class, now appears to have severe dementia. Through the years, moving toward her end state, she was extremely obese. Her body was twisted because of the high prolactin levels (attributable to the antipsychotics) cause osteoporosis. I never saw her distressed, but she also never laughed. Although she never roamed the streets, in my opinion, she never had a life. For those of us who remember the state hospitals before they were closed, that is what it looked like: a warehouse for zombies.

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As far as I can determine, it was an anonymous letter from “A Broken Hearted and Angry Mom” that started this firestorm.

I have to use a nom de guerre because when I first started to comment on my experience using my own name on Margot Kidder’s website years ago, I triggered a barrage of vile personal attacks.

“Broken Hearted and Angry Mom”, however, has strong support from her fellow NAMI members. Why doesn’t she go public and write about her and her son’s experience like Kathy Brandt? Perhaps her son could be found quickly if she disclosed his identity and last known location like so many other missing children and adults.

We need to be assured that this story is genuine and that Mr. Whitaker is not being set up for a take-down, starting perhaps even before his invitation to the NAMI convention.

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Thank you for all you have done and continue to do – in an attempt to encourage our society to move towards an honest dialogue about science and particulary “psychiatric support” within the current realities of our communities.
We as a society should discuss what science tells us about psych-drugs. And we as a society should not keep this discussion from the public. We have a collective responsibility to pursue and promote experiental truth.
Not pursuing this conversation leaves all of us with blood on our hands. I took “anti-psychotics” for years and the quote you incorporated at the end of this post deeply resonates with me. I don’t know that these drugs did anything to adress “psychosis” – whatever that is – but they definetly disabled my brain’s ability to acknowledge my perceptions thoughts and emotions and disabled my ability to care about my perceptions thoughts emotions and much of anything. Oh yeah, and the effects of the drugs also included weight gain, sexual dysfunction, and involuntary facial movements. “Is the cure worse than the disease?”
You aptly stated that in the absence of talks like your recent one at this NAMI event in Texas – our society won’t have enough mechanisms for people who want to come off of psych-drugs to do it more thoughtfully, safely, and hopefully with a better chance of positive outcomes – than just doing it cold turkey without much external support. Not having these conversations you have been championing increases the blood on all of our hands for another reason. Accepting the 25 year life disparity that atleast partly results from a med. first, med. second, and med. third approach to “psychiatric treatment” without analyzing the costs and benifits of these psych-drugs – prohibits or society from ever pusuing “psychiatric treatment” approaches that might allow, encourage, and facilitate people who are suffering to build or rebuild meaningful and active lives without psych-drugs and the harmful effects of psych-drugs. I believe that a bell-curve analysis of the history of mankind reveals that people can and have overcome intense emotional distress without psych-drugs. If we don’t have the conversations you are championing and if our society views people acting on what they percieve to be the truth based on honest and thoughtful rational analysis of science – and potentially getting hurt – as more appalling than the number of people recieving “mental health services” who are obese and have diabetes – we are not a society comitted to supporting humans in extreme states – we are a lazy society comitted to being comfortable. I also want to express that I believe that the number of people who feel that taking psych-drugs does more good for them than harm – is exagerated by our culture’s mass modes of thought. And that I believe that the number of people who despise taking psych-drugs every day and want to stop – is grossly under reported and minimized by our culture’s mass modes of thought.

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Bob’s books, this site, and his presentations are invaluable sources of sound, fairly-presented information pointing us toward the reality of human suffering.

At the same time, I find the mother’s letter compelling – not as a policy prescription or depiction of fact, but as the expression of someone who has done their best with what they knew, and who has suffered greatly in the process. She wrote in the midst of a replay of the catastrophe she had endured many times before, under the reasonable fears that she may never see her son again.

We must not dismiss her feelings simply because she misses the larger contextual problems with her position that Bob so clearly points out. The trick to correcting vast social wrongs is not to shout down those who support those wrongs, but to understand the profound reasons why good people come to embrace such harmful ideas. This mother is not an odious PhARMA marketing executive who makes incredibly dangerous decisions just to increase market share; she is like the rest of us – struggling with often-overwhelming stresses and feelings, and doing the best she can. This mother is the target – a victim – of the cynical PhARMA executive. She is not “the enemy”; she is a potential ally we need to reach.

We need to get good at maintaining human contact with people like her. Biological psychiatry and PhARMA have figured out ad-biz ways of “connecting” with people like this mother, and they will continue to beat us like a drum unless we find more profound ways of establishing genuine human connections that are better than that.

We see clearly that those struggling with mental and emotional problems respond when they are offered attention and humanity – they deserve nothing less. We are less clear that the same is true for all people, including those who believe whole-heartedly that NAMI’s vision is the only thing standing between them and profound personal disaster.

One lesson from this episode: any presentation should contain a very, very clear warning that stopping psych. drugs abruptly and without a lot of support is very risky. As Bob said, the danger is increased by the system’s lack of resources to support gradual withdrawal. I would refer people to Glenmullen’s and Breggin’s books on withdrawal, and to the many groups and individuals who are working to provide real support.

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Giving people information or a different opinion, is what freedom and democracy is all about.
“A slave is he who cannot speak his thoughts.” Euripides (484-406 B.C.)
The guy who ran away is suffering from Drapetomania. When they find him they can’t cut off his toes like in the past, so that is progress eh?

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Bob, thanks for hanging in there and having the courage to continue speaking despite the crap you’re being unfairly given. I posted on the website to register my dismay with the characterization of affairs as somehow being “your fault.” Notably, there is no blood, but there is a lot of fear and drama. On one level, I understand the tremendous anxiety these parents feel as they are unable to control what they feel are bad decisions by their own offspring. On the other, that need to control is part of what is wrong with the system and is most likely contributing to their children’s ongoing distress. They have been heavily brainwashed and don’t really see other options, and are so invested in their views that even the idea there might BE other options creates immediate defensiveness, perhaps because of their own guilt that they really do know they and the system may be failing their adult child.

It is somewhat ironic to hear this “blood on your hands” rhetoric when the treatment these folks so fervently defend is killing off its recipients many years prematurely. It seems very reasonable that a person receiving such “treatment,” especially for such subjective and potentially spurious “disorders,” might consider dying early and being miserable in the present a pretty poor tradeoff.

Bottom line, speaking the truth has gotten lots of people in trouble throughout the millenia, especially when the truth threatens the power base of the status quo. The fact that people are attacking you means you’re having an impact. Keep up the good work – you are making a BIG difference!!!

—- Steve

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Psychiatry has the bloody hands,

CAICA is an informational and educational website that provides news articles, reports, etc.,
regarding children and teens abused, neglected, and who have died in residential treatment settings.

http://www.caica.org/

NAMI wont address this blood at all cause of sponsors like “Universal Health Services”

More blood,

Info for Parents who are pressured to diagnose and drug their children for ADD or ADHD. Story behind our Sons death caused from ADHD drug, Ritalin.
Between 1990 and 2000 there were 186 deaths from methylphenidate reported to the FDA MedWatch program, a voluntary reporting scheme, the numbers of which represent no more than 10 to 20% of the actual incidence.

9/1/1985-3/20/00 Our 14-year-old Son Died from Ritalin Use

http://www.ritalindeath.com/

NAMI won’t address this blood cause of pharma sponsors I guess…

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No, you don’t have blood on your hands–and wouldn’t have even if Earley’s son had fared worse.

My very honest opinion, given the information given/linked here? Mr. Earley, I have no doubt, believes that he is trying to do the right thing for his son, and believes that “tough love” is a perfectly useful tool in motivating people to live up to their families’ and cultures’ expectations of them. But what I think I see is not at all unusual in the culture I live in (US, “western”, anglo-american–lots of names and none of them sufficient): our emphasis on individualism and personal responsibility often passes into brutality and abuse despite good intentions and in spite of every bit of love we believe we hold for those close to us.

Take your meds or get out of my house? It looks to me that Earley’s son was given a choice between two barely tenable alternatives, and the son took the one that he himself considered less painful, less risky, less likely to cause him great harm: he left home, alone, knowing what he surely knows about his capacity to handle difficult situations.

Being diagnosable with mental illness does not render us incapable of looking out for our own interests. Not knowing anything about Earley’s son, I can only speculate about why he chose to leave home rather than continue treatment when those were the only options available to him, but if I were going to analyze the situation further, I sure would want to know why he made that choice. I suspect the answer as to how best to serve his son could be found by listening to his son–for Earley, for anyone else.

Earley instead blames you for daring to uncover empirical facts and pointing them out where his son could see them. Controlling information access is a display of power. Possibly an abusive one. But it is endemic in our paternalistic culture and, for too long, has been an acceptable practice in “caring” for those whom we deem incapable of caring for themselves.

And yet Earley’s son cared for himself by leaving home. This seems plain to me from here. The missing side of the story is the story his son could tell if given an audition. Earley maybe finds it easier to look outside for others to blame for “things going wrong”? I don’t know for sure, but I cannot see how you can be held responsible for his son’s decision.

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Glad to hear this man found some shelter.

What’s next?
A man hears a lecture and decides to shave his head and sell everything he owns?

I guess Bob gets a bill from a NAMI mommy – for the haircut and cost of new furniture for the basement?

Give me a break.

IMO, “Friends don’t let friends join NAMI.”

Duane

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Mr Whitaker;

First, let me Thank You for all the heavy lifting you’ve done.

Second, Blaming you for whatever happens when someone decides to stop ingesting these drugs or changes their own personal life routine in any way, is ridiculous.

Considering the damage these drugs do, a simple cost/benefit analysis says we’re better off without them, and yes, that Does include the un-drugged individual who takes their own life.

Since the drugs are already prohibited under Federal Racketeering Statutes and punishable by up to 10 years in a Federal Correctional Facility per script, How on Earth You would end up wearing ‘blood on your hands’ is beyond me.

I’ve back-linked to my own page so often on this issue already I feel as if if I’m spamming MIA. For those who haven’t already read the statute and explanation, enter 18C95 in my search box.

This ‘Therapeutic Privilege’ thinking that consumers need the drugs so badly that prescribers are allowed to lie about what they really are – again, cost/benefit – is as asinine as billing the Treasury to put in rubber sidewalks in every city in America to protect every pedestrian with a trick knee.

For every person who dies Without these drugs, how many More die Because of them?

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Is she willing to conscientiously consider all the consequences of her actions? As she’s probably driving a lot of attention to this site, does she think that then puts blood on her hands? The truth is that the AMA has blood on its hands. It denounced energy machines that were popular and considered effective over a century ago. Proof was called for. (I read this in The Biology of Belief around page 89.) Now, “energy machines” (computers with EEG sensors)can give proof that they coordinate brain activity. This occurs as symptoms are relieved. The graphs of the brain activity are more proof than psychiatry uses when medicating patients, (especially given skewed, bias trials). This proof of real-time brain activity shows medications often destabilize brains.

Energy machines were probably considered effective decades long ago because they resolved problems. That’s some proof. They became widespread. Instead of letting problems be corrected all these years, the AMA controlled almost everyone via controlled substances. It developed as a upper class version of a good ol boys network, like frat guys using drugs to overpower people unhealthily. It’s well-knonw how men with all their testosterone are driven. If they use their drive to effectively care for a person’s whole life, it’s OK. If they use it in ways that overpower people with drugs, it’s a huge problem. Female doctors often conformed to the norm established by the drug-controlling men.

The AMA forcibly stopped what worked before that the people wanted – that’s blood on their hands. Abusive, male-dominant networks also raped and drove out the natural healers as “witches,” which is centuries upon centuries of blood on their hands.

This continuing tragedy is enabled by parents who tell their children this drug network is best. In 1990, the AMA also lost a court battle as they were found guilty of using illegal tactics to destroy the chiropractic profession. (The Biology of Belief, ~p.89.

Currently, energy machines that work are offered by companies like brainstatetech.com Sharing information on this technology is the best way I’ve found to best protect everyone possible.

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Duane,

How would police know if someone had been diagnosed with an mental illness? If that is the result of a police database, that is really frightening.

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Disobedient patients can die from “psychotic delirium” or “excited delirium”.
Newspaper article “… the 52-year-old man died of psychotic delirium…Casey, described by his mother’s lawyers as a highly functional schizophrenic, was confronted on his 52nd birthday by officers with the mental health warrant at his mother’s home in the 4100 block of Meyerwood after she called his psychiatrist’s office to report her son had been acting oddly and had stopped taking his medication.”

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Houston-mom-overwhelmed-with-3M-award-in-son-s-1619045.php

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Perhaps if taking the son to hear public speaking influenced a decision to go off of medications, then the choice to expose the son to any public speaking events was a poor choice. There is no concrete way to determine how a patient will remain on medications, and using this event as blame is ridiculous. If the medications truly worked, there would be no need for hospitals or inpatient care–how many patients are locked up involuntarily “without hope” while on meds? If one cannot be open-minded to others who have successfully removed medications (Successful atty Jim Gottstein for one) as well as statistics showing negative impacts that are REAL from being on long-term psychotropics, then one has no hope for a long-term future. The writing is on the wall with efficacy and side effects, permanent movement disorders (lip-smacking, tongue movements, hand tremors). NAMI has taken pharmaceutial industry funding which is a fuel to the pro-med NAMI platform patient) as well as mandatory drugs that are proven less than efficacious with severe side effects to boot. — At least NAMI finally had another viewpoint represented other than the Fuller Torrey Fan Club!

There is a pro-med/pro-NAMI discussion at Huff Po regarding this mother’s defamation of Whitaker’s character:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/marvin-ross/journalists-are-not-medical-experts_b_3643655.html

There is no blame– find a cure for mental “illness” because it sure isn’t pills and lock ups which is all that is offered in America!

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Bob,

When I first read Pete’s book “Crazy” in 2008, I immediately contacted him about concerns I had with his book.

Because I noticed “Crazy” developing a strong influence on both our mental health care and criminal justice systems, I felt Pete’s efforts should be closely scrutinized and I have followed his blog since its creation.

Among the concerns I brought to Pete’s attention was his investigation into the life and death of Deidra Sanbourne.

Deidra’s symptoms were diagnosed as schizoaffective disorder and she spent over 20 years being “treated” in psychiatric wards.

Twenty years is a very long time to be “treated” and not get any better.

In 1988, Deidra was named as plantiff in the landmark civil rights case, Sanbourne v. Chiles. The case challenged the conditions of Florida’s mental health institutions.

Diedra’s 2003 death, as reported by Pete, occurred from a bowel obstruction while being “treated” in a psychiatric unit at Westchester General Hospital.

Many reviews of “Crazy” falsely state Diedra died after being neglected in a boarding house.

The medication Clozapine is used to treat severe
cases of schizophrenia.

Clinical research suggests Clozapine has caused bowel obstructions leading to death in individuals being “treated” for symptoms considered to be schizophrenia.

Deidra’s “treatment” could have caused her death.

It is important for those who take antipsychotics to be aware of the wide range of possible side effects, so that they can recognize them, alert their prescribing physician and seek immediate help.

It is irresponsible of Pete to ignore the possible cause of Deidra’s death and for his readers to be mislead. Pete has repeatedly shown a blatant disregard for the psychiatric drug-induced death of others.

Pete takes a position of advocating for forced medication management, yet continually fails to warn his readers of the possible harmful/deadly side effects.

Forced medication management, should be considered as forcing consumers to contract the services of select providers/facilities, and forcing them to purchase certain, potentially lethal, products.

In the State of Florida, the patient is primarily responsible for the payment of “treatment” as an involuntary Baker Act commitment.

Forced to stay, and forced to pay, just does not seem right, but that is the way it is for our mental health care patients.

Those who advocate for forced “treatment”, that only includes medication management, should consider the fact they are forcing other consumers to purchase products that may result in their own death, at their own expense.

They have contributed to a medication management monopoly.

If a contract is not mutual, it should not be viewed as legal.

Forced consumers deserve treatment options and an alternatives to being forcibly “treated”.

While I admire Pete for his fierce stance and dedication, I do not believe he has the patience to tediously sort through and digest vast amount of research comparable to your efforts as a medical journalist and author of very well-researched books.

Pete accurately describes himself as a “storyteller” and I do not believe any of his books site any research.

“Storytellers” are not required to be fact checkers. They fabricate from whatever information they gather and seems to fit their opinions and supports their own beliefs, in order to create a believable story, from their own perspective, while ignoring, or belittling the perspectives of others.

In this blog title, Pete had no right to change your presentation title from “The Case for Selected Use of Anti-Psychotics”
to “Robert Whitaker’s Case Against Anti-Psychotics”.

He changed a pro-best practice stance that many agree to, to a negative-based claim that you alone are making. Was he trying to create discussion, or a lynch mob?

Pete recently wrote about medication management that, “While it may not be effective for everyone and may, as Mr. Whitaker claims, harm some, it has helped keep my son…”

It is not YOUR claim that medications “harm some”, it is a fact.

Where does he think the FDA warnings came from?

http://isepp.wordpress.com/2012/06/02/1991-fda-hearings-on-prozac/

Does he not understand, “possible side effects” means someone else actually did experience them and the drug company is now obligated to warn others?

Does he not listen to the commercials?

http://www.peteearley.com/2012/05/09/abbott-board-should-be-forced-to-publicly-apologize-write-ethics-essay/

For the NAMI – “National Alliance of Mandatory-medicating-mental Illness” members like Pete, it is not a matter of opening Pandora’s Box, or pointing to bloody hands, it is a matter of taking the blinders off, putting down the boxing gloves and opening their hearts and minds to the suffering others have gone through and what they may go through as well.

Despite the very sad “psycho-feud” going on among advocates, “it’s better to light a candle, than curse the darkness”

Thank you for being committed and supporting individuals like the professional members of the International Society of Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry (ISEPP).

Without the providers, patients would have no choice.

Kind Regards,
Maria Mangicaro
ISEPP Volunteer

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I tend to believe that the tendency to alarmist and scapegoating rhetoric must really tie up N.A.M.I. and true believers in the psyhiatric and behavioral research establishment, and agree that the least self-proclaimed journalists like Earley is enter into a responsible examination of such obviously inappropriate modes of “free” speech.

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I understand you’re French but the last part of your sentence
does not make sense: “…the least self-proclaimed journalists like Earley is enter into a responsible examination of such obviously inappropriate modes of “free” speech.” I am wondering what you intended to say. I suggest you formulate so people can understand.
Maria provided some critical information. And keep in mind that as someone noted this Earley character is a worldwide missionary for forced
psychiatric drugging.

SF

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I have read books by both Pete E. and Robert W. from cover to cover. I must say that Roberts books offer a whole lot more hope for the healing process. What sane mind would offer up a whole lifetime of nothing but drugs. There but for the grace of God go I.

I read in Mr. Earleys book Crazy that Phychitrist and Witch Doctors have the same success rate. With Phychitrist handing out drugs like candy you might actually be better off seeing the Witch Doctor.

Please hang in there Robert otherwise the entire population will someday be medicated.

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I appreciate all the words of support here, and the larger discussion. There is an important issue, given that others–Treatment Advocacy Center, Marvin Ross in Canada–are using it to basically further the idea that I shouldn’t be allowed to speak. I am going to write more on this later.

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Seems to me as if there was a great deal of scapegoating going on here from the mother.

“In her letter to Earley, she blamed both me and NAMI (for inviting me) for this bad turn in her son’s life. “In my heart, I wish I could hold [Whitaker] and NAMI legally responsible for what is happening. They gave an alcoholic a bottle of whiskey for Christmas and asked him to join in a toast . . . I damn them (NAMI and me) and if my son ends up dead, I believe his blood should be on their hands.”

I don’t doubt she cares for her son but maybe she should look closer to her own backyard for responsibility here. She appears to be projecting outwards, laying the problems at other peoples doors because she can’t seem to accept that maybe, just maybe somewhere in there she could be one of those people responsible for how her son is and how he reacted recently. I guess if something had happened to her son she would project outwards even more and blame anyone in sight other than considering she and her immediate family could be the ones who have ‘blood on their hands’. Seems her son may have been the intial early scapgoat in the family – hence him wanting to ‘e’scape after Bob provided him with that ‘eureka moment’- “Yes! Someone finally understands me! Me! Bob a lone voice in a very long, enduring and painful wilderness for this young man it seems.

You have nothing here to blame yourself for Bob

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What did we expect?
Really?

IMO, these folks are “enemies.”
That’s right…
There, I said it.
Somebody needs to.

I remember being taught a commandment: To love our enemies.
I do not remember being taught not to have any enemies.

Let’s get real.
It’s the only way we are going to be able to defeat these people.
The only way the battle of *ideas* will be won.
And the use of deception and force will be stopped!

Let’s get it done!

Duane

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Bob,

You say in your comment (on July 26, 2013 at 12:33 am), that, “There is an important issue, given that others–Treatment Advocacy Center, Marvin Ross in Canada–are using it to basically further the idea that I shouldn’t be allowed to speak.” I’m not sure of your meaning, there — especially, as some of the subsequent commenters suggest that maybe you should call for protests, from your readers. (In response to those suggestions, I wonder: Who would we be protesting? NAMI?) I’m inclined to assume you’re meaning to indicate, that Pete Earley’s “Broken Hearted and Angry Mom” post is being used, by some, to suggest that you shouldn’t be allowed to speak at more NAMI gatherings?

You say you’ll post more, on that, later. For now, I’ll assume that’s what you’re saying. And, here, in this comment, I address issues pertaining to NAMI – including, very briefly, firstly, this one question of, ‘How might NAMI members lose out, if you are forbidden to speak to their groups?’

Bob, frankly, I don’t think NAMI members would suffer greatly, if their leaders forbade you to speak – because so many of your talks are available on Youtube. The Internet makes your message entirely available to anyone with Internet access; thus, to whatever extent your message may be censored within NAMI meetings, NAMI members can find it, nonetheless, on the Net.

Meanwhile, there’s this other question: ‘To what extent may NAMI be changing?’

On that question (which various MIA commenters have raised, in the past, couple of weeks), Ted Chabasinski posted a comment a couple of days ago (above, on July 24, 2013 at 12:50 am), which concludes:

I am starting to feel that it’s possible that enough people within NAMI could change to the extent that NAMI would have to change. Of course, if that point is ever reached, the drug companies who make up most of their funding will take it away. Whatever would happen after that will be very interesting.

To Ted’s having said that, Theinarticulatepoet replied (on July 24, 2013 at 10:28 am),

It’s analogous to working inside services to change them. The work goes on in private, bound by confidentiality, it’s no less vital and can pay dividends as well.

Battles are won, that no one ever hears about them makes them no less important.

Though I often find myself in sympathy with Ted’s expressions, I respectfully disagree with Ted, on this matter; and, simultaneously, I wonder if that analogy, which Theinarticulatepoet offers, makes any sense — as NAMI is a private organization, not really akin to a public service. (I believe Theinarticulatepoet is a Brit, referring to the workings of the ‘mental health system,’ in the U.K.; public ‘mental health services’ are expected by many in the U.S., just as they are expected by many in the U.K.; but, the two systems are organized differently; in particular, there is some tradition of bottom-up planning and development of those ‘services’ in the U.K., which does not compare to the ways that most presumably comparable ‘services’ in the U.S. come in being; the structure of the ‘mental health system’ in the U.S. is quite different, IMO, so that an organization such as NAMI would never gain a foothold in the U.K..)

Also, I wonder who’s changing, within NAMI, really? How are they changing? And, will NAMI members change so much, that they actually change the mission of NAMI? I really wonder if Ted is (and, I wonder if you are) thinking clearly about that…

You’ve invited a few NAMI leaders to blog here, on your MIA website, in the course of the past year; questions of who may be changing within NAMI and questions of whether or not NAMI itself is changing (and/or, questions of how NAMI might change, ultimately) could be addressed, in comments, to them.

It’s probably important to distinguish between mere ‘rank-and-file’ members of NAMI (who’ll come and go from the organization, without fanfare, never fully buying into the NAMI message) and dedicated leaders of NAMI, who have more oversight of what’s going on, within NAMI… and who strive to advance NAMI’s goals. We might ask ourselves: Can such leaders, having forged connections by advancing reputations built upon their leadership roles, be expected to tell us what kind of changes may be coming down the pike, at NAMI? Or, won’t they be more concerned with publicly downplaying organizational infighting, struggles and potential shortcomings? As far as I can tell, your NAMI bloggers are all proud of NAMI, so I doubt they’ll be willing to offer anything but a public face, regarding NAMI matters, and it seems that Ted and the Theinarticulatepoet realize this.

What may or may not be obvious is that any real changes in NAMI must eventually point to doctrinal issues (very nearly ‘religious’ in nature – i.e., matters of faith) …as NAMI is, indeed, a cult (I call it “a dangerous cult”), that’s long been dedicated to advancing the power and influence of medical-coercive psychiatry, in our society; and, medical-coercive psychiatry is, arguably, a sort of religion (albeit a non-traditional, ‘medicalized’ sort of religion) which ‘serves’ our modern society’s family systems.

Medical-coercive psychiatry performs the duties that traditional religions did (a hundred and fifty years ago and more) – in terms of intervening, when certain, individual family members were in psychological and emotional (or, ‘spiritual’) crises; but, it does so primarily by denying that ones budding ‘spirituality’ may literally require the development and the endurance, of such crises.

What may be needed, in many instances, are good rites of passage; but, medical-coercive psychiatry is mainly interested in manipulating its subjects’ brain chemistry, mostly with psychotropic pills and, occasionally, other brain-invasive ‘treatments’ (of course, always without reference to deities and to traditional mythology and associated systems of belief).

Medical-coercive psychiatry is, thus, in significant ways, a ‘medical’ religion, substituting for what traditional religions once were.

NAMI is a cult supporting that religion; and, it may be changing a bit, inevitably, as its members are made aware of your work and the work of others who are likewise sharing ‘alternatives’ to medical-coercive ‘treatments’ for supposed ‘mental illness’; nonetheless, like any huge cult that’s likewise dedicated to advancing a certain religion, it can only change so much – and no more; for, it will never buck the fundamental doctrine(s) of that religion.

Certainly, NAMI will never eschew the medical model itself, which is the very basis for medical-coercive psychiatry’s existence and its claims to power, in our society; after all, that model is advanced by medical-coercive psychiatry — because that model provides a basis for advancing the very core of psychiatric doctrine.

Literally every belief the average psychiatrist ascribes to, professionally, is based on that model, such that, despite this fact, that no “mental illness” has any bio-marker to prove that ‘it’ exists, people (called “patients”) who are widely considered (by psychiatric fiat) ‘mentally ill’ are routinely declared incompetent to make the ‘right’ choices, regarding their ‘medical care’; they’re said to be in need of psychiatric ‘medical care,’ whether they want it or not, because they supposedly aren’t capable of reasoning wisely, due to presumed brain disorders. (Really, it is a fantastic racket: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_%28crime%29 )

So…

There are those who post here, on this MIA web page, with so many comments (including, now, mine), each one of us, in our own way, offering whatever little insight(s) we may possess, doing what little we can do, to speak the truth, of these matters, of supposed ‘mental illness’ and the typical (as opposed to ‘alternative’) ways of ‘treating’ those who’ve been officially deemed ‘mentally ill’; each of us, in our own ways, aims to alert each other and any other (non-commenting) readers of your website, that: in many ways, medical-coercive psychiatry threatens to undermine our society.

It threatens to undermine our society mainly by its persistent attempts at pushing its ‘treatment’ (mostly in the form of drugs, but also ECT) into our lives, thus making more and more citizens, of all ages, into pill-popping and/or brain-damaged slaves. Many of us have been severely traumatized by having had psychiatry’s ‘treatments’ forced upon us, but we would not, ultimately, accept those ‘treatments’; we would variously reject and denounce such ‘treatments’.

Those of us who are familiar with NAMI, know that NAMI has long been a promoter of such ‘treatment’ (i.e., of psychiatric ‘treatment’ by force and/or coercion).

I presume that certain, individual NAMI members are less inclined to advocate such ‘treatment’ (and, maybe, there are even some few NAMI members who oppose it?), I consider NAMI a dangerous cult mainly because it promotes such ‘treatment’.

Now, I suppose there are NAMI members who could be good friends, just like members of any other cult or religion can; really, I don’t doubt that for a minute; but, NAMI itself is a commercially backed cult, wholly dedicated to promoting the religion of modern medical-coercive psychiatry and the doctrinal faith upon which that religion is founded.

Hence, I am most skeptical of NAMI’s leaders (no matter how well-meaning they may be); I am especially skeptical of those who clearly have all the resources to fathom the actual truth, of what ails themselves and/or their loved ones; for, if I believe they have the resources to see that so-called “side-effects” of psychopharmaceuticals and of “hospital” trauma are causing “patients” harm, then why do they continue to promote the “mental illness” equals “brain disorder” hypothesis?

Is that proposal of theirs not a matter of faith? Are they not blindly devoted to their organization (NAMI), which is born on the wings of Big Pharma funding and which has got the full the APA behind it?

Those are powerful ‘mainstream’ influences (Big Pharma and the American Psychiatric Association), which do not yield to the idea that ‘alternative’ ways of addressing ‘mental health’ issues are feasible.

Indeed, NAMI forwards the standard view of medical-coercive psychiatry (which is reiterated continually by TAC), that concludes, there are certain so-called “diagnoses” of “serious mental illnesses,” which are, necessarily, “severe” conditions, which ostensibly necessitate brain-invasive ‘treatment’; so, every time a NAMI member pays dues, s/he effectively empowers NAMI lobbyists who seek the passage of evermore laws, aimed at forcibly drugging NAMI’s identified “patient” family member(s), who are said to be afflicted with such “serious” and “severe” ‘mental illnesses’; that’s a matter of adding ever-more executive, governmental authority to the accrued influences of the pharma-psychiatric faith, which is forever attempting to further impose itself, in the lives of U.S. citizens — especially, those who have ever been called ‘psychotic’.

The general public fears ‘psychosis’ like nothing else it fears (except for, perhaps, ‘terrorism’).

Perhaps, Ted’s hopeful view of NAMI, that it might “change” (as expressed in his comment, above), is influenced by the comment you posted, two weeks ago (July 12, 2013 at 9:38 am, under Matthew Cohen’s blog post titled, “5 Things You’ve Taught me about Civility, Empathy, and Asking the Hard Questions”); in that comment, of yours, you wrote,

Let us imagine, for a moment, if NAMI national got behind the idea that first episode psychosis treated in the manner of open dialogue would be a good thing. Or if NAMI national got behind the idea that people on antipsychotics deserve to be supported and helped in whatever way possible if they wanted to taper from the drugs. If NAMI national were to get behind those ideas, which I am quite confident is supported by good science, then the conventional paradigm of care re the use of psychiatric drugs WOULD CHANGE.

(I presume Ted read that “Let us imagine…” remark of yours — as he commented a couple of times, on that same web page.)

I have a NAMI brochure from the first NAMI talk you gave (which was barely over a year ago); whoever imagines that NAMI could become the benevolent sort of organization you’re describing, would do well to study it (and/or, study any other seminal NAMI literature).

The back cover of that brochure reads (in full),

NAMI IS THE NATION’S VOICE ON MENTAL ILLNESS.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness is a grassroots, self-help support, education and advocacy organization dedicated to improving the lives of people with brain disorders (mental illnesses). Most NAMI members are the families and friends of people who suffer from severe illnesses such as schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, clinical depression, panic disorder obsessive-compulsive disorder, dual diagnosis, and borderline personality disorder. People afflicted with these disorders form a vital and growing part of the NAMI membership and leadership.

WHAT IS MENTAL ILLNESS?
Mental Illness is a term used for a group of disorders causing severe disturbances in thinking, feeling and relating. They result in substantially diminished capacity for coping with the ordinary demands of life. Brain disorders can affect persons of any age — children, adolescents, adults and the elderly — and they can occur in any family. Several million people in this country suffer from a serious, long-term brain disorder. The cost to society is high due to lost productivity and treatment expense. Persons with mental illness occupy more hospital beds than do persons with any other illness.

DID YOU KNOW?
Mental illnesses (brain disorders) are far more common than cancer, diabetes, heart disease or arthritis. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that one out of four families in the U.S. will have a loved one with a mental illness. Mental illnesses are NOT the same as mental retardation, which involves deficits in learning ability and intellectual process. Mental illnesses are NOT the result of weak character or bad parenting. Serious mental illnesses are brain diseases, biologically based, and are NOT anyone’s “fault”.

Bob, NAMI calls itself a “grass roots, self-help support, education and advocacy organization,” despite this fact, that it was built with Big Pharma grants and the fact, that, still, the majority of its funds come from Big Pharma. Ted indicates that he knows this, so I don’t know why Ted imagines that Big Pharma would stop investing in NAMI. In my opinion, it will never stop doing that…

To offer an analogy, I’d suggest, that: Big Pharma is no more likely to cease investing in NAMI, than are the major corporate lobbies, in the U.S., likely to cease investing in the Democratic party – regardless of this fact, that, yes, especially since the financial collapse of five years ago, now more than ever, new voters are joining the ranks of the Democrats, who feel comfortable openly criticizing corporate power.

Plenty of people who rely on psychiatrists are highly skeptical of psychiatrists, and they know that psych ‘meds’ have many terrible effects; but, most people who rely on psychiatrists are hoping to get their prescriptions filled (and, perhaps, changed or adjusted), by them. NAMI is full of people with that ‘practical’ mindset.

And, Big Pharma is no less ‘practical’; it loves to do direct marketing (as we can see from so many TV commercials produced and aired in the U.S..) It sees that NAMI is full of ‘consumers’ of prescribed psychotropic drugs. Thus, no way will Big Pharma remove itself from NAMI.

Surely, it would not remove itself from NAMI; and, it will do everything possible to see that NAMI’s literature continues to reflect the “brain disorder” view of “mental illness”; but, will NAMI promote that view forever?

I think it probably will; for, again, I emphasize: NAMI is *fully* dedicated to the medical model of “mental illness” — such that all NAMI families need rely on psychiatrists; thus, not only will Big Pharma continue to pump funds into NAMI, American Psychiatry (via the APA) will naturally seek to maintain power and seek to further empower itself (often, forcibly, with the help of laws promoted by NAMI) through NAMI. The APA will send its speakers to NAMI, and, certainly, the APA will be guided by the “brain disorder” hypothesis for a very long while to come.

NAMI will be guided, in the main, by the most widely accepted ‘wisdom’ of the APA and the current head of the NIMH, and NAMI’s most active lobbyist-parents will continue fighting to reduce the individual rights of psychiatrically labeled people, at least to the extent that they can control the ‘medical care’ of their psychiatrically labeled family members (hence, radically limiting their freedom of self-determination).

Is NAMI changing?

Perhaps, NAMI’s hard edges were softened, somewhat, as it agreed to listen to you; but, now there’s bound to be push-back within NAMI, such that, possibly, an organization even more thoroughly opposed to individual civil liberties will spring up, from within the ranks of NAMI.

I.e., maybe a group of NAMI defectors, adamantly opposing the message of scientific truth that’s being conveyed and disseminated through your work and that of other notable Pharma-skeptics, would bring such a new group into being. Such a group could form as a counter-reaction, to your having been invited, by NAMI, to speak to its members. If/when such a group gains prominence, then NAMI might possibly have room for members who consider your message reasonable.

But, no way shall NAMI ever become an organization dedicated to Open Dialogue, let alone shall NAMI come around to helping *everyone* who wishes to taper off neuroleptics, taper off them. Even if it softened its stance on the “brain disorder” hypothesis, it would not become the organization you’re describing.

IMO, it is highly unrealistic of you to offer such a Utopian vision for this one, simple reason: NAMI members are not, by and large, dedicated to openness, of any significant kind.

While, of course, there are people who get involved briefly with NAMI (becoming members), who are genuinely in search of truth, most NAMI members are, for the most part, ruled by fear – being very deeply scared of what they call “serious mental illness”; they want ‘psychosis’ drugged out of existence, by psychiatrists; and, truly, they are not interested in exploring and illuminating family-system dynamics, to discover that so-called “psychosis” develops between people, in relationship to one another (such as is suggested by Open Dialogue). Simply, they’re interested in identifying certain family members as “psychotic” psychiatric “patients,” and they’re concerned that ‘heavy meds’ (i.e., neuroleptics – a.k.a. “antispsychotics”) be made not only accessible – but, furthermore, that such ‘meds’ be made mandatory – for many (if not most) of those family members.

Respectfully,

~Jonah

P.S. – I think many psychiatric survivors and their most genuinely caring and loving supporters presume that if we could all just effectively denounce the “brain disorder” hypothesis (e.g., if we could convince society that much or all of the apparent sufferings called “mental illness” are actually psychosocial phenomena), then we’d find ourselves altogether free and clear of unwanted psychiatric meddling. To them, I’d say this: Though psychiatry’s “brain disorder” hypothesis is, in fact, key to mainstream psychiatry’s views, it is not always key to convincing legislators that certain “patients” of psychiatry supposedly ‘must be medicated’ (by force and/or by coercion). IMO, those who support the psychiatric survivor movement in the U.S. must reject psychiatric force and coercion based on the Constitution, including this principle, that such ‘treatment’ amounts to slavery (which is, of course, in violation of our constitutionally guaranteed rights); we, who have experienced the worst effects of medical-coercive psychiatry must not hesitate to call such ‘treatment’ what we know it to be. That is “torture”.

After all, much of the general public will not be swayed in favor of protecting civil liberties based on ‘nurture versus nature’ arguments. Here’s a link to a study abstract that briefly elaborates upon what I’m saying there, at last: http://smh.sagepub.com/content/1/3/200.abstract

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Bob, the only blood I see is the blood of thousands of nameless children in industrialized nations who are dying slow, agonizing deaths due to psychiatric harm, abuse, and neglect

My beautiful, creative and gifted 19 year old daughter was put in five mind numbing neuroleptics during the most vulnerable time in her life. That and a ten day ‘hold’ and being slapped with a label and told to take medications for the rest of her life was our system’s way of dealing with her crisis and our family’s introduction to the mental health system. She continues to relive that horrific abuse time and again, cycling through jail, hospitals, foster homes, and the streets for the last three years.

The failure of our mental health system to recognize and treat abuse, poverty, racism, trauma, family dysfunction, and iatrogenic illness, as well as the failure to adopt a more humane, collaborative, and transparent treatment model during a crisis (such as the models already used successfully in other developed countries) is harming our children and delaying their recovery.

Our mental health system has become a mammoth disability industrial complex, converting loving parents into compliant sheep who will not raise a peep to protect their children from psychiatric harm and abuse for fear that they will lose whatever crumbs the state awards them for being ‘disabled’ or for fear that they will end up in jail or on the streets.

As parents, we should question if there are worse things than ending up in jail or on the streets. I posit that the hopelessness and despair one feels when one is told one is permanently disabled and that one is not ‘important’ or valued by society may be worse.

We fear that our children will be ridiculed and spat on, or that people will cross the street to avoid them. We fear that they will have body odor and look funny or they will make people feel uncomfortable at family gatherings or that our vanity will be slighted in a myriad of trivial ways. We cringe at the way society views our children but rather than demand individuals learn how to be inclusive and tolerant, we spend all of our energy desperately coaching our children on how to act normal even if it requires them to take massive doses of neurotoxic medication.

We fear that they will squander their meager funds or be victims of crime on the streets. I posit that abandonment by family members and friends is worse than the coldest night on the streets.

I’ve spent some time searching for my daughter on the streets and its not as bad as one would think. Some of the homeless kids I’ve met during my darkest hours and the kindness they showed me brought much more comfort than any psychiatrist in a white coat, giving me the usual lecture about my daughter.

People on the streets look out for one another more than we housed individuals know. People who are ‘suffering’ are often giving one another peer support on a daily basis, sharing socks, smokes, hotel tokens, and showing more kindness and dignity than the so-called mental health ‘professionals’ who are paid to care for our children.

Instead of cowing with fear, we parents should be shielding our children from our society’s harsh judgement and bridging the shameful disconnect between the wealthy and the poor.

Our children are unwilling to live and work in cubicles, nor are they likely to behave ‘normally’ unless we drug them into compliance. Our system defines what is valuable at the expense of individuals who find value in the whimsical, the abnormal, the absurd. A system that only rewards individuals who have the ability to produce something that our society deems valuable while rejecting and discarding those who are unwilling or unable to do so is not ready for the evolutionary leap necessary for creating lasting peace and justice, or to stave off ecological ruin.

Even kings in medieval courts knew the value of fools. The last documented court fool in English Court was in the sixteenth century, around the time of the reformation and beginning of the age of ‘enlightenment’ After western industrialization, the fool became extinct.

‘Normal’ behavior is wrecking the fragile ecological balance of our entire planet and led us to the edge of nuclear Armageddon, yet we continue to find the gene for ‘abnormal’ and the magic pill that will correct those who have it.

Instead of focusing on making our children compliant, and coercing them into taking their chemical straight jackets everyday, maybe we parents could try something different for a change, such as dropping our judgement of our children, and holding a mirror to the cruelties directed by society on those who are ‘different’, the homophobia, the bullying, etc.

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@ Duane,

O ye, of little faith.

Please read this brilliantly written piece written by a dear cyberfriend and look in the mirror to see the remarkable person who wrote it.

http://isepp.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/mental-health-freedom-and-recovery-act/

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” ― Albert Einstein

All of the King’s researchers, and all of the King’s journalists, could never have crafted that brilliant masterpiece.

It is a gift to us all.

Someday the children of NAMI will thank you.

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I am familiar with the tactics of Mr Early, his anonymous mother and even her son. They are predictable defensive reactions, intended to dismiss unacceptable facts or evidence, and preserve the status quo. We had better get used to them if we intend our movement to succeed. Applause to Cannotsay, Discover and recover, and many others for keeping the discussion honest, without taking the bait to become emotional. The facts of this debate are very clearly on our side, and it isn’t difficult to calmly, but persistently stick to them.
As I wrote I am familiar with this tactic: My disciplinary “counseling sessions” have always been in response to a “concerned patient, or family member” who is upset by my suggestions that recovery is possible, the diagnosis is far from scientific, or that dependence on meds is not always absolute. In short; I am either “not letting me accept my illness enough”, or “saying something bad about the meds”. In my “final written warning” a young man, taking 4 different addictive medications, threatened to dump his pills down the drain, because I said “you need to do more then take pills and sit in therapy to get better”. (I can only assure you I said this very gently, and the young man was not upset after I said it, although it was clearly not what he wanted to hear.
The young man threatened to drop out of treatment unless my heresy was admonished. The young man was reassured that he is obviously dependent on meds and therapy, and wont be expected to do anything to recover, aside from take pills and sit in therapy. He stayed 34 days and went back inpatient after the medical folks tried to wean him off Ativan. (he was quickly put back on the Ativan).
Both the young man and myself are surrounded by people whose faith obscures critical thinking. All the young man had to do was to recite a reluctance to believe: “I hate taking pills”, to provoke this validation. Faith in his incompetence relieves him of expectations to change.
It could be the same for the young man in the story, the one from NAMI. If whatever version of “sanity” his dependence on meds provided him was preferable to the anguish of “insanity”, he wouldn’t require leverage to ingest them daily in the first place. It reads like a classic power struggle to me, but perhaps Im just cynical. Also it is the fundamental compulsion of the enabler to externalize responsibility of the person being enabled. This is why her interpretation of “tough love’ Is so rigid and black and white. Kicking the son out was obviously much harder for her then it was for the young man to endure 48 hours outside. Not to mention all the attention he receives..
So for all the drama of Bob’s message, all the talk of “blood” on hands, the only actual harm was done by the status quo, which was probably quickly restored.
Frankly I am rooting for that young man, as I am for the young man who set in motion the end of my career. Possibly they will find us here someday.

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Well, well, well you are causing quite a stir bob 😉 the psychiatric nation is quaking in their boots. The best kept public secret is getting out and the psychiatric army is preparing for battle anything goes. So you have blood on your hands this anonymous mother says, no all you have done is hold up the mirror and the trail of psychiatric deaths is what is reflected back.

I feel I want to say you have to watch your back as being the not boy but man saying the emperor has no clothes on and being heard in so many countries is going to make the ’emperor’ very threatened and angry. Yet I know we are many who will look out for your back as we have done for our fellow survivors and victims of psychiatry, for you are changing the face of psychiatry and we are right behind you!

Cheers!

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@Maria.
I don’t mind working together or uniting but that depends who I am uniting with and what I am agreeing to work with!
Julie

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Bob you are in good company.

My dear friend of 35 years Jay Mahler, who was shocked so bad he lost all memory of who he was for a time, and who founded the oldest consumer/survivor rights agency in the country, was speaking at a public conference in 1996.

Torrey was there and heard him, and as Jay spoke against involuntary treatment, Torrey estimated that Jay and activists like him were responsible for the death of a half million people who had avoided forced psychiatric treatment. Torrey publicly printed his estimate of deaths.

A few years after that, I was chairing a public meeting with our guest Dan Fisher, who had flown to California to help us get a Soteria House started, when a NAMI leader said Dan was a Nazi who has the responsibility for encouraging a holocaust of death, because he says people may recover to the point where they don’t need meds.

You know that NAMI tried to get Loren Mosher fired, and Peter Breggin’s license suspended, for questioning the ubiquitous use and dangers of meds.

My guess is that Torrey and Jaffe and many NAMI members will now plan some kind of retaliation against you, given that the first publicized attack by a NAMI parent has reached the level of saying you have blood on your hands.

You aren’t a consumer/survivor/peer or a dissident psychiatrist, but that won’t matter to the people who want to maintain the status quo. Of course that includes pharma and psychiatry as well as demagogues like Torrey, and the thousands of suffering NAMI members who have been duped via the medical model hoax.

Olga Runciman is right- it is time to watch your back in ways you haven’t needed to until now.

The powers that be wishfully think that you are vulnerable now because of this NAMI cry that you are a death bringer- but you aren’t more vulnerable.

You will speak the truth and enough ears will believe you.

You are in good company- on the high profile list with Loren and Peter and Jay and Dan, and in the good company of a whole lot of anonymous readers and writers here on MIA who are scapegoated everyday for speaking out about the dangers of meds.

Thank you dear Bob!

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Yes, but this watching Robert’s back might involve understanding that Robert needs to distance himself from MIA and choose very carefully (i.e. reduce the number of) his public speaking engagements.

Of course I could be completely wrong in this, but I do think that the guiding criteria for Robert should be to preserve his reputation as an independent impartial journalist at all costs, and not become associated or identified with any one group or movement.

I’m not sure if I’m correct in saying this but my impression is that Robert’s greatest impact has been through his book writing, and I think he should protect that more than anything else. Otherwise his activities as an investigative journalist could be seriously compromised even though he has done nothing wrong. Reputations are very fragile things and can be destroyed with lies and unfair accusations just as easily as with the truth, perhaps more so.

I do think that Robert maintaining a relatively low-profile might be much more useful in the long term than to engage with critics who are likely to be “agents provocateurs”.

Anyway, I’m repeating myself now, so I’ll just shut up about this.

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Bob, you have already done so much good, whether you need to take a break from speaking out publicly on this issue or not (I hope you don’t) your legacy is already assured. Fifty years from now no one will remember Early’s books because there are already dozens and dozens of similar books on the market however, one day, your book will be likened to Rachael Carson’s ‘Silent Springs’ that led to the banning of DTD. Every movement needs a catalyst and you provided it in spades.

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Obviously Bob shouldn’t go into hiding or stop speaking publicly, because look who has come out with an army of backers– the pharma-based, pro-AOT group who don’t like Bob’s message–which is simply that the so-called mainstream drug-based ‘treatment’ isn’t working! The best compliment Bob and anyone else writing or speaking about patient rights, civil liberties and injustices is that of a negative response from that very group! Of course they want his message twisted and or silenced!

Until there are other ways promoted in mainstream psychiatry for the treatment of “mental illness” other than chemicals there is no hope for anyone afflicted.

If the pills worked this conversation wouldn’t be happening. If harm wasn’t done to innocent bodies by the chemicals we wouldn’t be having this conversation. If people were treated with dignity in the mental health system we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Anyone here reading who has been strapped 5 points down to a gurney to go against your will for “treatment” knows it is TIME FOR CHANGE. Don’t ever stop telling the horror stories that are associated with mental health “care” in America! What a hidden atrocity!

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In his comment above, Bob refers to Marvin Ross, who along with the Treatment Advocacy Center, is furthering the ides that Bob shouldn’t be allowed to speak.

Ross published a hit piece on Bob in the Huffington post a couple of days ago called, “Journalists Are Not Medical Experts” where he patronizingly says-

“Whitaker does not seem to have learned that he is a reporter with opinions and that those opinions are listened to by some very vulnerable people.”

and- “There is a big problem with the idea that a journalist who is not a scientist is capable of providing new ideas for more effective treatment of a disease and that NAMI thinks that it is OK to have him give a presentation. Well in my opinion, he can’t nor should he.”

Wow- there is a big problem with the “idea” that someone who is not a scientist may have something to say.

That kind of Orwellian rhetoric is consistent with what the new president of the APA said recently- that critics of psychiatry are- “spreading scientific anarchy.”

In the chorus of Bob’s detractors that are going to jump on the bandwagon after the NAMI mom claimed Bob has blood on his hands, it is interesting to see this twisted version of Bob’s perceived transgression by Ross.

Since Bob isn’t a scientist he should be silent.

Don’t be surprised if there is a Pulitzer Prize somewhere in Bob’s future, and if so, it will largely be because his impeccable, groundbreaking science reporting, was done in the face of opposition by huge powerful interests that tried to silence him.

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If they can’t refute what he’s saying it doesn’t really matter what he does for his day job.

If they can’t discredit him based on the actual content he’s going over then I guess attempting to block him and personal attacks is all they have.

It sure appears like there’s a bunch of professions and an industry that doesn’t have a solid foundation, a justification for doing what it does. It doesn’t really matter how many letters a psychiatrist has after their name if they can’t even prove they’re treating real illnesses, apart from the medical training it might as well be a degree in theology.

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“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”

— Nietzsche, Gay Science

Just replace ‘God’ with ‘psychiatry’.

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As i mentioned in an earlier comment, I appreciate these words of support. The larger issue here of course is that what we are talking about here is my speaking about research, often funded by the NIMH, which belies the common wisdom (and as I wrote in Anatomy, ultimately tells of a paradigm of care that, on the whole, increases the chronicity of disorders, worsens long-term outcomes, and so forth. That discussion, or reporting on such information, is what some people want silenced, and they are trying to do so by attacking the messenger, so to speak.

I just want to respond to some of the questions raised in these comments about how I should proceed in the face of some of the vitriol that has been unleashed, and some of the efforts to keep me from speaking.

In my talks, mostly what I do is go over the data for a particular class of drugs. I suppose there is an advocacy element to it, because such facts do certainly warrant a change, but my job is to present the information and then hopefully those in the audience will see that the facts combine together to tell a story of science that, in a moral sense, requires rethinking the current use of psychiatric medications. I don’t really need to advocate for that; the facts do so on their own. I am comfotable in that role, which is certainly compatible with the usual actions of a journalist who has written a book. He can be expected to talk about the “facts” that make up his book.

I had the madinamerica.com website ever since I published Mad in America, and about 20 months ago, I decided that I would turn it into a webmagazine of sorts, one that would, among other things, allow for a variety of voices to be heard (with the one common aspect being that they shared a belief that current psychiatric practices needed to be rethought.) Of course people are writing about human rights, and all sorts of related issues, and I must say, the readers comments both carry the conversation further and help flesh it out. That community aspect is such an important part of the website.

Now the website may be seen as having an advocacy role ( for change), but I am comfortable with that as a journalist, in the sense of publishing a magazine that brings together information, writers, and voices that collectively make a case for change. The voices are so many on this site, and thus I never feel that I am leading the charge, or even that the website is in any way “mine.” It is a collective activity, and I think most people familiar with the site can understand that.

I also think that some of the animosity now being directed toward me, or trying to stop me from speaking, is related to the fact that this website is proving to be a gathering place for a larger community of voices, which is being heard in ever larger circles.

What I am trying to say here is that I have tried to proceed in a way that is consistent with a journalist’s role: In my writings, I speak about research (and as one might do in a blog, draw an opinionated conclusion about the importance of the research), but otherwise I try to keep my opinions to myself. You can’t let attacks like this latest one, and all the spinoff vitriol, change what you do.

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Speaking of Pete Earley, he has a new post on his website: “Virgil Stucker describes healing, building bridges and a ‘recovery college’ concept.”

I submitted a comment along the following lines:

You charge $17,000 a month yet you are a “non-profit”? How much is your salary?

My comment was held for moderation and now appears to have been deleted.

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Dear Bob,

It’s been difficult reading the recent posts on the Pete Earley article, lots of emotion stemming from unjustified personal attacks. I can appreciate that people may feel challenged and frightened when looking at the treatments for those with psychosis and other mental health issues. I know from experience that when people are prescribed antipsychotic drugs it is often the case that they are not given the full picture about them, and the claims for efficacy and side effect profile are not truthfully portrayed. The rationale given for the lack of accurate information is that the person receiving the drug needs treatment and is unable to make an informed decision (though I know from experience that not all people first given these drugs are in a psychotic state and/or lacking in mental capacity).

The time has arrived when we have to look honestly at treatments for psychosis, people receiving treatments need to be informed, carers need to be informed. There will be pain and difficulty when looking at these issues, there always has been. This demands being mindful, honest and compassionate and I believe that you are and have been so.

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“Straighten up and fly right’ – this is the apparent psychological understanding of the family. Unfortunately a quite common response to behavioral adversity in our society and has a lot to do with inherited mass cultural attitudes quite possibly an inherited cultural transmission of ideologies of personal fascism.

To my mind , despite the hysterical posturing and possible emotional protestations I identify this kind of behavior as loveless and uncaring. Yes, yea, I’m sure there is a defensive protestation of love made often with accompanying anxiety and hostility. A facade of caring like this is often illusory , behind it is a selfish maintenance of ego interests a need to control and objectification or lack of acceptance of others. This is shown in the destructive emotional conflicts with others in society. Where is the base where strong quiet love and acceptance pours form? Is it there? Is it obvious and effervescent?
..
The “Straighten up” mind has only one solution for others – “Do the right thing” – “say the right thing” – otherwise all is lost, it is a disaster. They only know this one solution to any behavioral problem, they have no empathy for for consciousness, no ability for the acceptance of others which is the beginning of assisting emotional transformation and stems from genuine love.

The outer shell becomes paramount importance and the inner state is not accepted nor loved. If Biomeds make the person act right and talk right then it is a success! That the person inside is lost,destroyed and turned to dust is of secondary consequence.

Here is one of the fundamental “root causes” of mental illness in our society. The lack of understanding and acknowledgement of growth processes stemming from selfless loving behaviour and the lack of condemnation of the behavior of control. We do not teach formally or acknowledge growth processes – teach them and transmit them in or culture. We do not teach that there are transformative growth processes and methods.

“Straight up and fly right” is one dimensional and doomed to crash with the slightest problem. It is not just an attitude of some dysfunctional or destructive families it is also a problem replicated in the medical bureaucracy where the power of control becomes the ruling ideology far more important the the transmission of love and growth. We have the horror of robot like medical professional, seemingly barely human themselves, rewarded for being vacuous, manipulating others eliminating ‘wrong’ emotions. “wrong’ states of consciousness with themselves totally no understanding of even the simplest psychological process of the interplay of how emotions function.

Indeed how can these Commander Spock-like clones understand emotional interplay in the ‘humans’ when they are busy waging war on the world of negative and ‘wrong’ emotions. It has now culminated in ‘excessive emotion’ being placed on the DSM. They are waging war on and putting an end to evolution itself.

Perhaps the family of an troubled person is abusive and the root cause of the problem or perhaps the family is abrasive, destructive, selfish caustic, vacuous, poisonous or non growth encouraging to the offspring. Whatever, it means that person is alone without inheritance. Perhaps I can define the word inheritance here as a transmission of solid emotional knowledge practices and caring. Inheritance of such a kind is almost an intangible , maybe not something often discussed or identified.

That lack is a tragedy for many people and I’ve met so many of them – adrift in an internecine society without a solid emotional inheritance. The only hopeful thing is that person can get an inheritance from somewhere else because they can never get it from the family.I know this , my own inheritance was nil , nothing – I got what I needed elsewhere and I learned form a life of desperation to identify in an instant – ‘necessity’ – what is necessary to survive and succeed. These assessments maybe difficult to do but they must be made ruthlessly because the consequences are the difference between life and survival versus death and failure.

What society – mass culture needs primarily is not lessons in Schizophrenia and drugs but first, lessons in how to love and how to identify lovelessness.

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Mr. Whitaker, the truth is, that while you’re book eventually brought me a wonderful understanding and sense of control over my life, but in the beginning, I felt so lost and hopeless and angry. The reality is, that if her son has spent anything near the time in psychiatry as I have, he probably felt the same facing the reality that the people we trusted or complied with, who often waived our freedom over our heads, were using us or lying to us. The truth that the boys mother has to face is that, while the meds played a part, facing the reality of everything we have sacrificed with no hope of a better outcome is just as likely to have motivated his actions. However, you gave him a choice, and in our lives, we don’t always get many.

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Sad ending to the story, the son is hospitalized The system got him – for now anyway. No place to run, no place to get help, nabbed by the annihilators and a family he is better off without having.

The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath An embassy.
Their numbers as he watched,
Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.

Used to be controlling parents blamed rock and roll or jazz.

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I don’t think it is actually. He did wander off, but he went to a homeless shelter where he could be “safe” and agreed to be hospitalized. That means he is making decisions. It’s not ideal, but it still means he is grappling for something like control.

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“”Actually, CooperRiis charges $17,400 per month but who will quibble over a mere $400 here. I fell out of my office chair when I found this out.””

Hi Stephen,

As an FYI, Mr. Stucker responded in a comment that the charges start out at a maximum of $14,500 per month. He then goes on to say that after the 2nd month, they adjust the fees to whatever the family can afford to pay and offer scholarships for up to 24 months. Additionally, he claims that in some cases, medical insurance will pay for the first few months. Of course, that is still a huge chunk of change but I did want people to know what Mr. Stucker had posted about the fees.

http://www.peteearley.com/2013/07/26/virgil-stucker-describes-healing-building-bridges-and-a-recovery-college-concept/

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I apologize. For me, thinking is sort of a vague imagining, not like knowing or arguing or even claiming. However, feel works just as well. It just seemed like a self destructive stance would have been to wander off with no consideration of his safety and then refuse hospitalization (which we both know they were going to take him one way or another). His refusal might have felt freeing, but it would make things more complicated later. So, I felt like he made his decisions less as a knee jerk emotional response, and more of a choice. Also, I agree with you about those places. I will never go back.

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I’ve look at these blogs, this one and Mr Early’s and another one.

I’d really like to hear from the son.

Mr Whitaker is answering from his ethical standpoint of being an investigative journalist and doing so very well.

We have heard from the mother and her allies. We have heard from those who counter these arguments from the perspective of research and from personal experience.

What about the son? Has no one asked him how he feels about all this or why he made the decisions he did?

It feels slightly distasteful for no one to make the effort to see if he wants to say anything publically. Not for Mr Whitaker, he is sticking to his interpretation the medical data and his defence of himself is admirable, but for Pete Early, the other parents who comment on those blogs, and sometimes people who oppose forced drugging but who make assumptions about either the mother or the son. It feels slightly disrespectful, like gossiping about someone in such a way as they might overhear.

We don’t know what he thinks or feels about much of this and it is people in distress who are so often demeaned and ignored. I don’t like seeing it repeated on the web, wherever it occurs.

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_anonymous

It’s very difficult.

There are days that I can barely get out of bed and get myself ready to go to work. I’m a retired hospital and nursing home chaplain so I know a little about what healing is all about and what you do to walk with people making that journey. I had really excellent clinical pastoral training in both psych and medical hospitals. I know good “treatment” from bad when I see it. What I witness now is all bad.

It’s very frustrating and heartbreaking to watch people out my office window or to meet them being admitted knowing that what they receive at our hands is not the beginning of healing and well-being, but harmful so-called “treatment” that they’re never consulted about nor given the chance to refuse.

What is most disturbing is the lack of self-esteem in the so-called “patients.” Many of them have been in the system since they were teenagers, most are poor, and many of them are from minority populations. They are beaten down and no longer know how to defend themselves. They believe what they’ve been told to believe about themselves. Most have had at least three admissions to the hospital while I’v met many with 25-30. I’ve only met three people in two years who were experiencing a “first episode.” We’ve created perpetual “patients” who know only learned helplessness.”

When an individual person does show up who actually stands up for themselves and speaks out they’re “assaulted” in every way possible short of physical attacks to try to force them to comply. You know what I’m describing here; you’ve seen it. They can no longer be beaten with pieces of rubber hose, like I once witnessed in 1971, at the Louisiana State Hospital, but it’s perfectly permissable to assault them in subtle, hidden ways to make them compliant.

I just grit my teeth and hope that Bob and all of us who come to MIA will cause the tide to turn so that something can be done to release people from what I witness each and every day. And it’s all done “for their own good” of course! And the thugs go home at night and probably sleep like babies.

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I solved this in one glance. Mr. Whitaker isn’t responsible for the woman’s son’s behavior and niether is NAMI. omg.

From Peter Earley’s website and dramatic presentation of the woman’s letter, the answer is in the first paragraph:

“Dear Mr. Earley

I have a son, much like your’s, who became sick while in college. Voices were telling him to harm himself. He climbed onto the top of a residence hall and was standing on the edge because he thought he could fly. The police talked him down and thought he was on drugs.”

Her son did WHAT because of somebody else?

Hopefully, somebody can RESPOND appropriately to the woman’s son’s OBVIOUS sensitivities and help him to process it all, and learn how to live with being an overly-sensitive person. I know how it is, excruciating.

You’re off the hook, Mr. Whitaker and NAMI. jeez.

lol

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First and foremost, it is fallacious, not to mention callous and unfair, to attack the mother who authored that letter for being a bad or abusive parent. We might not agree with her decisions or conclusions, but this woman has obviously been through hell, and I doubt her suffering will be ending any time soon. Her experience is unique, we don’t know all the facts, and attacking someone who, like many of us, has spent decades trying to get help for a suffering loved one, is at the very least counterproductive. I personally find it monstrous, and I wonder why we’re so eager to attack each other when we should be striving for empathy and support.

Instead of assassinating her character and playing “bash the system,” how can we help her, and countless others in her position? Isn’t that what we as a community should be primarily concerned with? If not, what is the point of all of this?

Knee-jerk reactions, blanket statements, black-and-white thinking and extremist positions–none of this is helpful, whatever end of the spectrum it’s coming from. If we are truly concerned with helping others who share our trials, we need to let the ideology go and have a real, nuanced, thoughtful discourse that recognizes differing viewpoints.

The antipsychiatry movement has much to offer. It can provide much-needed critique and checks to a branch of medicine with an egregious history of human rights abuses and a problematic (to say the least) relationship to Big Pharma. It can shine the light on alternative modes of treatment, give voice to those who were abused by the system, and demand accountability from the medical community and pharmaceutical industry.

But the extremist language and rush to judgment evinced by many comments on this thread do more harm than good to both the movement and the individuals we supposedly wish to help. What’s more, they squelch opportunities for the very kind of discourse Whitman calls for. We can’t adequately discuss this issue when we’re painting all of psychiatry as a bunch of “goons,” and we aren’t going to be taken seriously by those outside the movement.

Medication is not a black-and-white issue. Few things in the mental health field are. Each of us has our own experience and it is dangerous, not to mention hubristic, to act as though our own personal stories are universal. Medication has ruined lives; it has also saved them. Until we appreciate and respect that, we’re not going to get anywhere, and we recreate and reinforce stigma within our community. We don’t need to march in lockstep, but we need to respect each other and keep an open mind to differing views and methodologies if we truly care about improving the lives of people who share our struggles.

If that is not our primary objective, then we’re no better than Big Pharma.

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I think you’re misrepresenting what I said about family involvement in treatment, which in no way claims that family dysfunction causes mental illness. We can have that “chicken or the egg” argument for days and not get anywhere. I will say that if we’re going to claim that the causes of mental illness are entirely environmental and that the family is usually culpable, then we also need to acknowledge that this is most likely an intergenerational problem passed down through trauma, upbringing, etc, meaning that pointing our finger at the parents and painting them as the villains is reductionist and misses a chance to actually address the inherent problems in the family.

I will say that while I don’t have a lot of experience with schizophrenia, I am highly skeptical that a grown man was walking around defecating in his pants simply because his parents smothered him.

None of us knows what happened in that family; can’t we too be accused of projecting if we jump to conclusions?

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addendum: I had a friend in high school who began showing signs of schizophrenia in high school, and his father also had that diagnosis. His family left him pretty much to his own devices from his adolescence on, in part because his father was too ill to properly care for him. He was in no way overprotected, smothered, or told he couldn’t take care of himself.

There is a BIG difference between seeking out causes and looking for someone to blame.

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I grew up pretty off kilter and I don’t think anyone around here should think they have a place to guilt anyone else for their opinion. However, my concern is with the reversal of trends involving involuntary commitment issues. I am not the largest fan of some diagnostic labelling of some things or seeing things become socially acceptable. I grew up hyper and my moods elevate sometimes to the point that I lose it. I have spent many years being drugged with many things to tame the energy and that has made it better and worse for me. I am hyper and will vouch for the argument against ADHD drugging as a trend. However, I have sometimes and have had experience on and off with dexedrine tablets and aside from making my brain seem to go into slow down and take things seriously mode, it doesn’t raise my blood pressure and my body feels less drugged from it than caffeine. That is only all but one generic of the tablet form of that drug. I have tried all of them even the Spansules and Vyvanse and felt like I was going to have my heart blow out, go nuts, get paranioid etc. I don’t see how some of that crap is legal. Dexedrine tablets I can start, take for periods of time and I go back to my funny spontaneous self again. I have the “always in a rush” issue so attention is fine with me.

Given the history of that, I was a mouthy, “manic”, very antisocial late teen with a very foul mouth and the archetypal “Nurse Ratchets” of every place I landed and I would immediately butt heads. Even people in any place like now are the same way but now I use more intimidation and emotional coldness and basically state, I will say/do_________ when I want I need _______. I don’t expect the answers and solutions ASAP and you will stick to the boundaries of the enforcing rules and me following them. I let them know to check their charts too because I have made an entire group therapy session in a psych ward go into chaos just by adding a point of view from the 3rd party and call the lack if there being equality in dialogue, the dialogue that isn’t respected from some of us that need help because it would interfere with any help and request that they apologize etc. Some staff take pride in their reputation and I saw an old file that said something like.

[“Pt. can be one of the easiest most laid back clients once the mania is stabilized in hospital settings but he is high risk for two reasons, it is easy to identify with the credibility of the delusions he has and become drawn into it because he is a “highly intelligent paranoid” and the other was that when I have had issues with staff and :”conflict consisted, my behavior pattern was destructive, effective and so insidious that it led to losing 2 employees who were exemplary in being able to often be the only one to manage the most unstable borderlines”]. I have lesser moments of restraint with the “Nurse Ratchet” type staff who are good for some people that end up in mental health care that need a wake up call… However, t have on more than one occasion been put under 72-hour involuntaries for engaging with them and referring to them in vulgar ways. I wasn’t a threat at all, it was just an f*** you situation. At times some meds had short term help… one 72 hour hold probably saved me a life sentence because a friend was raped and I was after someone. There have been great staff, and people who are there for the wrong reasons. This type of employee tends to seem to go the extra mile and are acclaimed by fellow coworkers and every client tell you to watch out for the,.

The fact that there are these staff and that even with the good hearted ones, group situations show them not doing much to intervene because in the end, all the law, society or fairness fallacy in the world, I still end up responsible for my role and own my place but the feeling I get when I look at the thrill of many online as they are happily shrieking that these women are losing all of their rights is scary. Kind of that whole “first they came for the….” situations in the red herring context.

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Penning a letter from an “anonymous” victim of some tragedy is just about the oldest trope used by any powerful interest group that wants to advance its agenda. I’d be suspicious- VERY suspicious- of any unsigned letter that advances the psychopharmaceutical mafia’s.

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Thank you Robert.

You and we acknowledge the pain and fear of the parent. And broaden the discussion to include more of the actors.

thankyou

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This Pete Early dude himself has a screw loose or more like some screws missing, the dude acts like a prostitute serving the pharmaceutical industry and I guess what is the real irritating thing is the fixed rigid thinking. What part of the fact that treatment is much worse than the condition for many people can’t this dude get ?

Psychiatry took me through hell and almost killed me but I can admit that it does help out some people but this Pete Early something is wrong with this dude like he is on a mission just to be on a mission. If only these damn mental patients would take the drugs or if it was legal to force them everything would be just great… No it won’t , mental illness just sucks and what this dude is doing isn’t helping anyone.

What an incredible waste this dudes energy not directed at the crooked abusive mental health industry itself that causes people to avoid it like a modern day plague.

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