Connecticut State in Mental Health Denial

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The recent July 9th Ct. Mirror article, Children Stuck in Crisis, accomplishes the intended purpose of deceptively convincing the people of Connecticut that there’s a severe mental health services crisis in the state.

On the surface, the article’s author provides a compelling scenario of the state’s youth failing to get the needed mental health care and forced to rely on emergency room services. The problem with the presentation is the failure to address a key piece of information in the reported mental-health-crisis-puzzle – the increased psychiatric drugging of Connecticut’s children.

The entire article focuses on the specific case of Peter, a 6 foot, 220 pound 13-year old, who apparently has been in the care of mental health professionals for many years of his young life. Peter is described as having “psychiatric issues and a developmental disorder that places him on the autism spectrum.”

Becker does not provide any details about Peter’s psychiatric history, including information such as when he first was diagnosed with a psychiatric mental disorder, the number of specific mental disorders he has been labeled with and, most importantly, which mind-altering psychiatric drugs he has been prescribed during his young life.

These are not unimportant questions, especially when one considers the known adverse reactions associated with most psychiatric drugs. For example, antidepressants carry the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) “Black box” warnings for increased risk of suicidality. Other known adverse reactions associated with antidepressants include aggressive and abnormal behavior, hallucinations, mania and psychosis.

Other psychiatric chemical “treatments” include anti-anxiety and antipsychotic drugs, which also carry such adverse reactions as hostility, confusion, hallucinations, agitation, restlessness and tremors.

Becker, in an attempt to get to the bottom of this mental health services crisis explains that “some mental health care providers link it to an increase in the number of children with mental health needs…others see a greater willingness to recognize problems because awareness of mental illness has grown.”

What obviously is missing from the list of reasons for the “crisis” is the increased prescribing of dangerous psychiatric drugs. In fact, the only mention of any psychiatric drug “treatment” comes at the end of the article when Becker finally reveals that Peter was seen by psychiatrists at the Institute of Living and “his medication was changed.” That’s it. Pathetically, that is the extent of the conversation about psychiatric drugging.

But the lack of important information doesn’t end there. Becker also does not provide any information about all the previous failed attempts to “fix” Connecticut’s broken mental health system. For example, in 2008, lawmakers attempted mental health fixes through the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health – (“Connecticut’s Mental Health and Transformation State Incentive Grant.”)

This $13 million dollar “fix,” as explained by Project Director, Pat Rehmer, as “Transformation efforts and activities are broad based and far reaching as they have been implemented across multiple state agencies offering the state’s citizens an array of accessible services and supports that are culturally responsive, person and family-centered.”

Certainly sounds like this “fix” should have helped Peter but, alas, it is another costly, failed mental health Band aid. Not surprisingly, this “transformation” also did not address the ever-increasing use of psychiatric drugs for “treatment” of Connecticut’s children.

Is it any wonder, then, that the “crisis” not only exists, but is worsening? The people of Connecticut still are not getting accurate information, and it is these omissions that render this article irrelevant in the debate for increased mental health services.

Ignoring important information does not benefit those who are suffering, nor does it help those in a position to make the necessary, and deadly serious, changes that are needed.

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Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

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62 COMMENTS

  2. This shooting occurred on the school campus on October 21, 2013

    Sparks Middle School shooter had Prozac in system day of shooting.

    Reyes was told to take 10 milligrams of Prozac once daily to treat his symptoms of a depressive disorder. That was based on what his doctor noted of feelings of inadequacy in his family and meeting family expectations. Reyes also told the therapist he was being teased at school and specifically spoke about being called “gay” and being teased about “peeing” his pants. According to the police report, Reyes took the prescribed amount of Prozac on Saturday, Sunday, and on the day of the shooting. http://www.mynews4.com/mostpopular/story/Sparks-Middle-School-shooter-had-Prozac-in-system/r91KftZlokuD-Suf7ks6_A.cspx

    Go ahead Connecticut and put more kids on drugs, I will just sit here watch your problems get worse and worse and worse and worse. There is just no other possible outcome. These drugs usually make people more unstable and cause the condition to become chronic. Eventually you will learn from your mistakes.

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    • “These drugs usually make people more unstable and cause the condition to become chronic. ”
      Totally right. I was put on at least 3 different meds in the hospital on which I not only got complete amnesia but also reportedly threw chairs at them. But I guess adding another 3 meds would make me better (or dead).

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    • Thank you for bringing up this important point. It seems like every community/state that has been affected by mass violence responds with an ongoing call for more “mental health care,” meaning more drugs and more force. It would seem ironic if it wasn’t so sad that we’re trying to solve the problem of violence by traumatizing more people and forcing them onto drugs that are known to directly cause violent thoughts and impulses. I don’t understand this “#treatmentbeforetragedy” rush to lock up and forcibly drug everyone with a psychiatric label when the common factors amongst mass shooters are right in front of our faces: they have suffered from some sort of injustice (or perception thereof), they want revenge, they lack the empathy to care about their intended victims, and they have some sort of access to lethal weapons. I’ll leave gun control out of this because this country seems unable to have a reasonable conversation about it without it turning into NRA members screaming about locking up all the crazed, potential killers out there (that would be us, apparently), but wouldn’t this assessment indicate that what we need is not more “mental health care,” but real efforts to combat child abuse, bullying, and other injustices in young people’s lives and making it an absolute priority to treat young people with empathy and respect so they learn to treat others the same way? I wrote a bit more about this in my article, “Violating the Human Rights of Those Presumed to be ‘Mentally Ill’ to Prevent Mass Murder Ignores the Real Causes of Violence,” at http://www.thesystemisbrokenblog.org/2014/07/07/real-causes-of-violence/.

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      • TSIB, I sort of wonder if the drive to force drug more and more of us is ever present but just becomes more public when a shooting tragedy comes to light. In other words, I don’t think it’s as simple as “Hey, crazy person with a gun killed people so let’s force drug ’em,” but rather “Hey, this is a great opportunity to further our agenda of force drugging ’em!”

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        • That’s an interesting point. I definitely agree in the sense that there is an enormous push for forced “treatment” anyway, but the opportunistic TAC and Tim Murphy-types definitely use these tragedies to further this agenda. The NRA has such a political stronghold, that their arguments about guns not being the problem, but simply crazy people who need to be locked up, is gaining traction. I think it’s a combination of opportunistic groups that take advantage of these tragedies and groups like the NRA trying to cover for pushing policies that kill people. The problem is, the population at large seems to buy into it. I think we need to be honest with ourselves within this movement- we’re not going to change the views of the NRA, NAMI, E.F. Torrey or Tim Murphy, but we can change the views of the people, and that’s a powerful thing.

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        • Tragic events are always a good moment to push authoritarian agenda and face little resistance. I believe the term is “shock doctrine” – it works with civil liberties and it works with economic policies and it works with forced drugging.
          And it doesn’t seem to matter than most of the shooters were “treated” and many with drugs. Apparently they were not treated enough…

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          • That’s an excellent point. The Patriot Act is definitely another example of that. The difference is, post 9/11, when there was that horrible explosion of anti-Muslim sentiment, most of us recognized it as blatant bigotry, and realized that a couple of extremists were not in any way indicative of all Muslims. After each mass shooting, if the shooter had ever received a psych label or was presumed to have mental health issues, “lock up and drug the ‘mentally ill'” is actually considered a legitimate policy position, as it’s “for their own good.”

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  3. Why do I bother posting comments on a story like this ? My psychiatric ‘SSRI story’ includes suicidal thinking caused by those brain fry drugs and a police SWAT team too but I lived to tell about it and fight back.

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  4. It always amazes me that they use an example of a kid who has received psychiatric “treatment” his whole life and is doing horribly as an advertisement for why we need more mental health treatment. And people fall for it! How dumb are we? This kid is proof positive that the problem is not a lack of available treatment, it is that the treatments we use DO NOT WORK!!!! Why is that not obvious to those reading the article?

    —- Steve

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    • Before I lived the psychiatric nightmare, I would have believed it too. There is a “crisis” and children need “care”… We gotta dooo something now !

      The Article States: Some people have advised her to take more drastic action to get Peter the mental health care he needs.

      “The mental health care he needs.” How is the average person to know that statement means getting abused and drugged into zombie useless oblivion ?

      Does the public’s vocabulary include the words akathisia, supersensitivity psychosis or neuroleptic withdrawal syndrome ?

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    • Because a true believer will just look at this situation and conclude the problem was that he didn’t have ENOUGH treatment. If someone’s doing well on meds, it’s proof that they work, but if someone’s doing poorly, it’s proof that we need more. They pretty much have the situation covered.

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    • I haven’t read the story through a third time, but where exactly does it say that this 13 year old has received psychiatric treatment “his whole life?” The story leads one to believe that the “treatment” is simply heading to the ER every time the kid has an explosion. How is it even possible that a kid who is so familiar with the ER is not receiving treatment elsewhere? But this is the kind of lack of intelligent information we are expected to swallow every time. There is never a detailed examination of what actual treatment has been given and what drugs are being taken. I applaud Ablechild for dogging the State of Connecticutt on these concerns.

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    • Okay, found it,but it’s vague. What does she mean when she says the family “has tried just about every program that it can”? The problem is the care he’s getting, the ER visits show that whatever treatment he’s getting (or how the family handles him) isn’t working. IMO, if you have repeated visits to the ER, the home environment is a big part of the picture. Treatment programs, whatever they may or may not do for the individual, don’t help the family understand how to handle things better.

      “Harding-Wheeler hasn’t yet found that for her son. To her, it feels like her family is in a cycle that never leads to Peter getting the help he needs. They’ve tried just about every program they can, she said.”

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      • From the article”

        “At one point, Peter spent two weeks as an inpatient at the Institute of Living. He saw a therapist he liked. The prescriber there worked well with the family. Peter began attending groups. His medication was changed.

        But when he got discharged, all that fell away. He returned to his old psychiatrist, who didn’t have any discharge notes that would explain what happened during the hospitalization, and who put him on the old medications.

        Transitions between services are particularly problematic. Peter now receives services in the family’s home.

        “By the time anything gets started, we have now had a week where basically we’re on our own because he hasn’t been to the psychiatrist, his medications aren’t working, this new in-home service hasn’t started seeing him yet, and so we’re back in the ER again,” Harding-Wheeler said.

        And there’s no one professional following Peter’s care. The psychiatrist only sees him for 15 minutes at a time.

        Harding-Wheeler worries the system is giving up on her son.”

        This sounds like someone who has been in the system and receiving “help” for years. But the “help” isn’t helping. I do agree, the family may be and often is part of the problem. But of course, given the biological paradigm, any family issues are largely ignored unless it qualifies as child abuse, and programs to help parents improve their parenting skills or develop specialized approaches to their particular child’s needs are relegated to third-rank “nice if we can do them” status.

        I’ve seen it too many times in my job. I recognize it in a second. A kid who is making that many visits to the ER is almost always involved in the psychiatric system and almost always is continuing to receive ineffective treatments, or receiving treatment to deal with the ill effects of earlier treatment. But rather than talking about the ineffectiveness of the treatment being provided, we’re all supposed to cheer for more funding for a continuation of the same stupidity that the case study shows has not only not worked, but probably made the poor kid worse than he would have been. Just as Whitaker’s thesis would support.

        —- Steve

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        • Yes, but that goes along with the idea of serious mental illness being life-long incurable condition that can only be managed. And drugs are like insulin for diabetes, you know…
          If you look at the issue with this preconception in mind than keeping the kid alive and minimally functioning is a “success”. Because without his meds he’d certainly killed himself or his parents and ended up in prison or homeless or wherever. In this paradigm recovery is not considered possible.

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          • Quite so. However, I still think it’s a very strange way to argue in favor of more funding. Kind of like saying, “This garage can’t really fix your car, but it can kind of keep it running, even though it will get worse over time, so we should help them service more cars.” If diabetics were appearing more and more often in ERs and getting limbs amputated and dying of heart failure in larger numbers, despite treatment, even the very credulous would probably suspect something was amiss with the treatment.

            The story, as Bob Whitaker puts it, is that these miraculous chemicals have taken disabled people and enabled them to become functioning members of society again. This kind of narrative completely debunks that story, and yet people seem to be unable to see the obvious contradiction.

            Or another way to put it: if these drugs were so helpful, why are you seeing more and more people coming to the ER with worse and worse problems? Shouldn’t our wonderful scientific technology be making people more functional and less severe?

            I just don’t get why people can’t see that the vignette they share doesn’t merit the conclusion they always seem to draw.

            —- Steve

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          • I agree with you, I’m just simply pointing out that this is the logic of the mainstream selling of such narratives. It’s internally consistent even if it makes little sense in the real world.

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    • I think that is because people believe that such “mentally ill” guys are lost cases who need care and treatment continuously or they will kill themselves or others. So the treatment is working keeping the poor brain sick kid alive.

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  7. Eli Silly,

    AbleChild is anything but a Scientology front group. These mothers started this group when they saw their own children threatened by the mental death profession and fought to have laws put in place to protect their own and others’ children. I believe it was Bob Whitaker who pointed out that there might be a misconception in that CCHR, a separate arm of Scientology, fighting psychiatric abuse, gave Ablechild an award as they have others who have no connection with them.

    As many have acknowledged, CCHR has done an excellent job of researching and publishing information about the many crimes perpetrated by the biopsychiatry/Big Pharma/Government cartel while quoting many dissident, critical psychiatrists and others in the field exposing and fighting psychiatric fraud and even giving some awards though they have no relationship or other ties. Like anyone else, if a credible person makes a public statement, anyone is free to quote it as is the case with Scientology quoting many critics of biopsychiatry’s massive fraud.

    Since psychiatry’s smear campaign has been so vile and vicious toward anyone daring to challenge their malignant narcissistic entitlement and grandiosity just at it is for their individual victims they lure in with the pretense of help only to completely destroy their lives with horrible stigmas; chemical, electrical and surgical lobotomies and robbing them of everything that was ever important to them including their freedom, career/job prospects, families, children, future and all human, civil, democratic rights. This vicious destruction of so many people in the guise of mental health for pernicious social/fascist control for our therapeutic state by psychiatry just exposes them as the pot calling the kettle black when they attacked Scientology as a dangerous cult because the latter group did such an excellent job exposing psychiatric fraud and the enormous harm they do to anyone who has the misfortune to naively trust them and/or get into their web of deceit.

    Thus, though Scientology has been criticized for their beliefs and tactics, the mental death profession serving as an arm of our growing police state with the full force of unconstitutional laws and violation of all democratic principles and freedoms can be forced on one and all with the full force of our therapeutic state as the enforced religion or cult of the land unlike Scientology. Thus, psychiatry’s attacks on Scientology and other critics is just a diversion tactic to hoodwink the public about their never ending goal of world domination and tyranny as they demonstrated when they instigated the Nazi Holocaust with their vile eugenics theories they continue today when they gassed to death those they stigmatized as “mentally ill” or “human vermin” as practice before moving their gassing/killing apparatus to concentration camps to expand their sadistic agenda.

    It’s really gotten so ridiculous in terms of this empty ad hominem attack to quell any criticism of psychiatry’s junk science and destruction of countless lives that all too often, when I post comments about the most outrageous, dishonest claims about “mental health,” I am immediately asked if I am a Scientologist with no consideration of my comment or the quackery presented in the article. This pathetic question is considered enough to silence others with no defense of the bogus article in question by the “critic.” This is pretty pathetic that psychiatry has to use this straw man to evade the truth and all responsibility for their pernicious stigma/drugging agenda.

    Anyway, when I am asked if I am a Scientologist because I exposed some lie or fraud in a mental death article, I ask if the critic could at least be original and expose the childish bullying and evasion technique for what it is: a low level below the belt tactic used by emperors wearing no clothes!

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    • Can’t say i’ve ever been asked if I am a Scientologist, but if it ever happens my reply will be “No, of course not Senator McCarthy”. Should be enough to more then neutralise any effect of the attempted false allegation/smear tactic. I might even add “but do you still beat your partner?”

      Keep it quiet but I did once know a person who had a copy of Dianetics in their library.

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    • You really believe AbleChild has nothing to do with Scientology? Why did they name themself ABLEChild (Parents for Label & Drug free Education), when ABLE (Association for Better Living and Education) is a well known Scientology corporation? Why do they have a link to CCHR on their website? Why do they have Fred Baughman on their board of directors, which was also a medical adviser for CCHR? Why is CCHR all over their website?

      http://ablechild.org/2005/02/26/cchr-36th-annual-human-rights-awards/
      http://ablechild.org/about-us/representatives/patricia-weathers/
      http://ablechild.org/2014/05/09/sign-petition-for-congressional-hearings-on-military-suicides/
      http://ablechild.org/1454-2/ (yeah, a picture with Tom Cruise)
      http://ablechild.org/2009/01/18/exhibit-educates-public-on-psychotropic-drugs/

      Why did CCHR write an extensive article about AbleChild?
      http://www.cchrint.org/2010/11/18/ablechild-unsung-hero-in-battle-against-psychopharmaceutical-industry/

      I’m not discussing CCHR as a Scientology front group and why you want to distance yourself from them.

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      • So? Seems like they have similar aims and CCHR has recently awarded Ablechild for their work. However, Ablechild does not promote any religion on their site.
        Btw, people don’t protest affiliations of other groups with Unitarian church or Catholics or whoever else. Why should Scientology be treated differently? For it being a cult – pretty much any religion existing has practiced brainwashing etc. on a smaller or bigger scale.

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      • My co-founder and I named Ablechild after President Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower’s description of the ABLE CHILD in the National Defense Education Act. We are a national non-profit parent organization and, as such, we refuse to denounce any organization or group that is willing to work with us to obtain “parent informed consent”. I, as the Co-founder of Ablechild, Sheila Matthews, am the cousin to the FBI Director James Comey but that does not make me an FBI agent.
        In regard to CCHR, after being presented a Human Rights award by CCHR, I was invited to, and participated in their Commissioner’s meetings in order to provide input from parents on the frontline. This was a policy meeting, not a religious meeting.
        Ablechild will continue to work with any group to further our goals for parental rights – to live label and drug free. We do not judge nor condemn others who are fighting for the same issues.

        As a side note, when Ablechild went to the State Capitol in Hartford Connecticut to support legislation to include MEDWATCH language, we were asked, quite directly, by a staffer of Governor Malloy’s office, “Is this a Scientology bill”. We found this questioning appalling and frightening. Not too long ago in history similar questions were asked of certain ethnic groups and we all know how badly that ended.

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        • Was this a Scientology bill?

          Do I understand you right, that you don’t care about the abusive and criminal activities Scientology is involved in? That you think there is nothing wrong in working with and supporting the CCHR and other Scientology organizations?

          What do you think of Dianetics and auditing? Do you think they are harmless methods? What do you think about Scientology’s goal to replace psychiatry with Dianetics?

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          • This is why I say Scientology has to put up with the type of bigotry no other religion is subjected to:

            – All three Abrahamic religions “brainwash” children with the traumatic notion of “do this or you’ll burn in hell for eternity”.

            – Hinduism brainwashes people with the notion of the caste system that divides human.

            – Judaism is the ultimate “we the chosen people” vs the rest of the world.

            – Islam’s official teaching on women and homosexuality violates the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, reason given by countries like Iran not to sign it.

            All these look absurd to the secular or atheist mind, but it is Scientology that gets attacked most viciously.

            I am a Christian with no affiliation with Scientology or CCHR but I recognize bigotry when I see it. If you don’t like Scientology’s teachings, propose an alternative. The answer to a religion you do not like is the same as for speech you do not like: not censorship but more alternatives.

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  8. Why should I care about this Scientology issue ? That’s what I can’t figure out.

    Although relations between the Soviet Union and the United States had been strained in the years before World War II, the U.S.-Soviet alliance of 1941–1945 was marked by a great degree of cooperation and was essential to securing the defeat of Nazi Germany.

    Psychiatry ruined years of my life and almost killed me and Scientology attacks them all the time.

    I don’t see any problem at all. A scientologist NEVER handed me a Zyprexa sample bottle and said “don’t worry it’s safe”. http://www.zyprexa-victims.com

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    • “Why should I care about this Scientology issue? That’s what I can’t figure out.”

      Because you don’t know what’s going in inside Scientology? People are getting abused (and traumatized), psychologically and physically.

      Scientology is against psychiatry, because they want replace it with their own system (Dianetics). Scientology wants to be as powerful as psychiatry is today.

      The antipsychiatry movement and CCHR may share strategies, but they don’t have the same goal (their ideas of an psychiatry-free world is totally different).

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      • Again during WWII alot of people had different ideas about a NAZI free world but everyone fought them.

        All I want from psychiatry is informed consent and the right to refuse it.

        I watched the ABC Nightline video you posted and I was not impressed. What are we supposed to do call in DCF to round up all children with parents into Scientology and send them off for mental health screening and then ‘treatment’ if they ‘need’ it ?

        Put Scientology kids in foster care to “help” them ?

        Invade the Scientology church Waco Texas style cause some kids had to help do some landscaping and people get shunned by their family for leaving ?

        Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…

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    • The difference between a cult and a religion is time from it’s conception and number of faithful involved. I used to laugh my a** off during religion classes when I was told by catholic priests how dangerous cults are and given lists of things cults do which are pretty much exactly what all the religions do.
      Sex abuse of kids and brainwashing practiced by Christian denominations:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_sex_abuse_cases
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_therapy
      on cult from Wikipedia:
      “In the sociological classifications of religious movements, a cult is a religious or other social group with deviant and novel beliefs and practices.[1] However, whether any particular group’s beliefs and practices are sufficiently deviant or novel enough is often unclear, and thus establishing a precise definition based on these criteria is problematic.[2][3]”
      I’m in no way defending CoS as a whole just as much I wouldn’t do that for the catholic church or any other denomination. I’m just saying that you should apply equal criteria.

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  10. And this is what Sheila Matthews thinks about Scientology and the CCHR:

    “Interesting, the media seems to promote all these people that bash religions. As a Roman Catholic who works with CCHR (Citizen Commission on Human Rights) founded by the church of Sceintology, the media clearly has a motive to Brainwash the public against sceintology based on their stand against mind altering drugs that are inducing suicides and mass murders like the Virginia Tech. The media benefits from the psychiatric drug advertising! Enough, no one is forcing you to become a scientologist. When is the media going to hold psychiatry accountable for selling the public snake oil cures! When we start mandating toxicology screening of suicide victims and sorting the dead, the evidence will clearly point to psychiatry, not the Church of Sceintology! Enough! We should start interviewing everyone who has left churches of every nomination and allow them to tell us how they were not saved, what a rip of religion is, give us a break! I am sure the Church of Sceintology only wishes this dude well. From the years I have known sceintologists, they are wonderful human beings, and have so much to offer society! How foolish anyone is to believe the garbage the media is selling on the Church of Sceintology! Let’s all try to respect others and their belief system. We should all be thanking Tom Cruise for speaking out against psychiatry, no one else had the balls to do it!”

    “I am a big fan of the work of scientologists, I think they are very well educated, giving, very considerate and enjoy when other people succeed! In addition they are honest, hardworking and dedicated to their religion and give back to the community. On the other hand those who attack Scientology are weak and are used by the media to make these attacks, they are often thrown away after the media finishes using them up.”

    Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Gifts/jason-beghe-tv-and-movie_n_96723_12504518.html

    I would say this is the last blog Sheila Matthews posted on MiA.

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    • I’d say: I don’t personally know anyone in the CoS and I have no beef in trying to defend their practices as comes to child abuse and such if they are indeed true. However, I don’t see how that would be different from pretty much any other religion out there (what I know most about is catholic church and they do have some nasty smelling bodies stacked up here and there) and nobody would criticise you for the fact you cooperate with them to say collect money for flood victims or something. Personally, I don’t trust any church at all as an institution but I think that CoS should not be treated differently than any other religious group. Secondly, I’ve seen some materials posted by CoS (since until recently they were pretty much teh only group speaking against psych abuse around where I live) and I didn’t find anything in it which I would call fraudulent or differing from my personal experience.

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  12. Psychiatry is a cult.

    A dangerous cult. A cult that mugs people, drugs people and imprisons them, trying to hypnotise them into believing in psychiatry by threatening them with higher doses of chemicals if they don’t. They prey on the vulnerable and lure youth in, claiming to cure people of their problems.
    Psychiatry has put people in comas, caused epilepsy, Tardive Dyskinesia, depression and suicide.
    Something must be done about this cult, it is powerful and dangerous. It has somehow infiltrated the government, such that people can’t even take psychiatrists to court when they’ve been electrocuted by them.
    Psychiatrists torture, they mug, they rape (unwanted penetration by needle).
    How can it be in 2010 that this cult, funded by the government under the guise of being ‘medical’ can exist? They are not medical, they are a cult. Medical services are what people seek. Medicine is never forced upon a person. Medical practitioners take the Hippocratic oath.
    So, this cult thinks it can hide under medicine, because the staff recruited are trained as practitioners. But they should be banned because they break the Hippocratic oath not to cause harm.
    This cult even has the power to ask for police assistants in their muggings. It’s outrageous! People are meant to have a charge or a warrant before an arrest, but they don’t because the person hasn’t committed a crime. How are the police getting away with co-operating with known felons?
    People see someone getting dragged away by police and they assume some crime has been committed by that person. Isn’t true when police co-operate with psychiatry. The person has probably just said something weird.
    People are afraid of people who say weird things because of the scare tactics of psychiatry. Psychiatry labels people who are not in any way a danger to society under the same banner as those that are. Newspapers report the ‘expert’, forgetting that they are part of a cult. Anyone dragged off to psychiatric facilities is labelled a danger to society like those criminals talked about in the newspaper, who had a mental illness.
    The fear the population has is that those people who are innocent, may become criminals if untreated.
    Why does the populus believe that? Because of newspapers in combination with cult representatives advertising their products.
    The chemicals they force on people are addictive, in that the withdrawal symptoms are acute. They give high doses of these addictive chemicals immediately upon incarcerating a person, they then label an involuntary patient.
    The person made into a patient is embarrassed about being in a psychiatric facility. They rarely tell their friends. They are therefore alone.
    Psychiatry has their own court system. There are three judges: a psychiatrist, a case-worker, and a lawyer. They will only let the person go if the person says: ‘Yes I agree I have a mental illness and I will keep taking the medication and attending appointments.’
    And you have to say it like you meant it, because they want to be certain you are fully hypnotised and compliant with their wishes, so that you will go about spouting ‘the greatness that is psychiatry’. Don’t be fooled by people who give up fighting and become compliant with this cult. It takes a lot of effort to fight such a powerful dangerous money making organisation.

    http://www.theicarusproject.net/bigpharma/cultpsychiatry

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    • Psychiatry has their own court system. There are three judges: a psychiatrist, a case-worker, and a lawyer. They will only let the person go if the person says: ‘Yes I agree I have a mental illness and I will keep taking the medication and attending appointments.’ And you have to say it like you meant it, because they want to be certain you are fully hypnotised and compliant with their wishes, so that you will go about spouting ‘the greatness that is psychiatry’

      I knew I’d seen this somewhere before.

      The assertion that “confessionem esse veram, non factam vi tormentorum” (literally: ((a person’s)) confession is truth, not made by way of torture) sometimes follows a description of how, after torture had ended, the subject freely confessed to the offenses. Thus confessions following torture were deemed to be made of the confessor’s free will, and hence valid.

      Volpes pilum mutat non mores. The wolf may change it’s fur, but not it’s nature.

      It’s the same methods used during the Spanish Inquisition.

      Have a read of the section in the Wiki page here copy_cat and tell me that aint what you experienced.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition#Functioning_of_the_inquisition

      Only difference is that it is being done to maintain Corporate Orthodoxy rather than Catholic Orthodoxy. Hmmmph I’m going to send a letter to the hospital that detatined me, the Ariel Castro Memorial Hospital that is.

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      • Well, that’s basically how I got out, they refused to let me go before they can diagnose me so I came up with what I could have and told them that sure, I’ll go to therapy when I’m out and take my pills. Or at least that is what my family claims since I can’t remember anything (drug-induced anterograde amnesia). They also forced my family to talk to them about me threatening that they will keep me “as long as necessary”.

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  13. Can we cut this crap about Scientology? I’m starting to wonder if some posters are working for Big Pharma and trying to distract us from our objectives. I’ve known Sheila via e-mail for about 15 years. There is NO ONE in this country who has worked harder for ending psychiatric abuse than Sheila. She does NOT deserve to be attacked in this way! She is definitely “one of us,” and anyone who attacks her after all she’s done, I am prepared to consider an enemy of this cause.

    As I’ve stated in another thread, this is not the place to talk about Scientology. There are plenty of anti-Scientology boards where this discussion is going on. It HARMS OUR CAUSE to give even a line of space to the idea that our allies are aligned with Scientology or are “front groups.”

    I am very suspicious that this is an outside attack. If it is not, it is an ill-conceived personal mission of someone who is very mixed up about what we’re trying to accomplish here.

    At this point, I am going to ask that the moderators remove any comment that accuses any person or group of being a “front group” or associating anyone with the putative evils of Scientology. Not only do these comments violate the posting guidelines, they devalue and insult valuable allies like Sheila, and encourage the kind of sniping and backbiting that the APA would absolutely love us to engage in.

    Sheila Matthews is, in my view, and American heroine. She does NOT deserve this kind of crappy treatment!

    —- Steve

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    • RE: “I’m starting to wonder if some posters are working for Big Pharma and trying to distract us from our objectives.”

      Pharma does this kind of stuff, if you look on http://www.drugs.com its so easy for anyone who has taken the pills to spot the totally phony reviews for the psych drugs.

      This guy is a pharma hack that does reputation management by keeping dirt about pharma off Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Edgar181

      Maybe the PHARMA FRONT GROUP NAMI is doing this ?

      As much as 75 percent of NAMI’s donations come from drug companies says the New York Times and it has been investigated by Congress. http://www.google.com/search?q=nami+pharma+funding

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      • “I’m starting to wonder if some posters are working for Big Pharma and trying to distract us from our objectives.”

        No way to tell from any individual case, but it’s quite possible in theory. Corporations and governments do it all the time. It makes sense from the point of view of manufacturing consent: It’s cheap, easy, and effective.

        I would encourage people to prepare for it. Asking inconvenient questions and raising awareness makes you a target in this society. The more attention this site gets, the more it is likely to happen.

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  14. Here we go again, another ad-hominem attack. Exactly what is to be expected, if you start to criticize Scientology.

    I’m anti-psychiatry and I have nothing to do with Big Pharma.

    Believe it or not, it’s possible to be anti-psychiatry and anti-Scientology at the same time.

    And I would say the same for Scientology/CCHR: it harms our course.

    I think Scientology/CCHR

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    • My point is not to attack or defend CCHR or Scientology. It is to focus on our mission. Attacking Sheila Matthews is simply an outrageous action. I don’t give a crap about Scientology or CCHR, to be frank. I believe every person has a right to make up their own mind about those groups on their own, and there is plenty of info out there about them if people care to look. If you want to critique them, please find one of the many websites that do so. I see no point in wasting our energy on this divisive crap, when there is so much to be done. And I will reiterate that any statements that conflate antipsychiatry/psychiatric reform groups with CCHR/Scientology, especially in the critical way you have done, plays into psychiatry’s hands.

      If you have issues with Sheila, take them up with Sheila. If you have issues with Scientology, take them up with Scientology. If you have issues with psychiatry, that’s what we’re here to talk about. It is foolish to validate the “scientology smear” in any way on this site. It undermines our purpose and aids and assists the very people we are trying to oppose.

      —- Steve

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      • AbleChild is associating itself with CCHR. They chose to put links to Scientology organizations like CCHR and H.E.L.P. on their website. They decided to receive awards from CCHR and be part of CCHR. I’m just presenting that information. I don’t create this out of thin air like you speculating this is an outside attack orchestrated by Big Pharma.

        To get an picture where I’m standing, these are the writers I mostly agree with:

        Sera Davidow, Daniel Mackler, Tina Minkowitz, Joanna Moncrieff, Richard D. Lewis, Bonnie Burstow, Michael Cornwall, Brett Deacon, Philip Hickey, Leah Harris, Bruce Levine, Jacqui Dillon, Carina Håkansson, Lucy Johnstone, Rufus May, Olga Runciman, Lauren Spiro, Dan Fisher

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        • How about you critise the person for actual words and actions she takes and not for whom she associates with? Do you have any knowledge that Sheila abuses anyone or has an agenda that is going to facilitate this abuse? Do you disagree with something she has said or written in the course of her advocacy? I’m sorry but I couldn’t care less if she’s decided to cooperate with CCHR on some aspects of her work if their aims align.

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      • Steve: “My point is not to attack or defend CCHR or Scientology. It is to focus on our mission. […] I don’t give a crap about Scientology or CCHR, to be frank.”

        How did that work out for Rethinking Psychiatry? Did the involvement of CCHR helped you to focus on your mission? Did it help MiA that Jonathan Keys posted a blog about the conflict between RTP and the Unitarian Church? What would have happened, if CCHR/Scientology had not been involved, if RTP hadn’t screened films produced by Scientology?

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