I am appalled to read a press release by the National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery that lauds the proposals emerging from the Vice President’s Task Force and accepts in principle a national database of individuals with mental health diagnoses that is “limited to those with a known history of violence.”
The headline reads “National Coalition Representing Individuals with Psychiatric Diagnoses Lauds President Obama’s Recommendations to Contain Gun Violence.”
The Coalition notes that “several of the recommendations will increase the fear of, and discrimination against, individuals with mental health conditions,” including expanded reporting by mental health professionals to local authorities, but does not suggest that the President reconsider and revoke those recommendations. Instead, the Coalition makes a number of suggestions for development/application of the President’s executive actions, of which six deal with preferred approaches in mental health, and number 7, the only one to address civil liberties issues, reads:
“Limiting a national database of persons labeled with mental health diagnoses to those with a known history of violence.”
It astounds me that the Coalition accepts in principle a national database of persons labeled with mental health diagnoses that have also committed acts of violence.
How will it be determined that an individual has a “known” history of violence? Will hearsay accusations by family members and mental health system workers, routinely included in mental health records, be used to deem an individual to be violent, just as it is used and accepted in civil commitment hearings?
And why stop there? Why limit a database only to people with a “known history of violence” who also have mental health diagnoses? Mental health diagnoses have nothing to do with violence, so why not go right to the heart of the matter? Again, what would count as evidence of a “known history of violence”?
Such profiling would certainly be used against anyone and everyone who is out of favor with local authorities for whatever reason. And it would almost certainly involve the “expertise” of mental health professionals. Remember the racist “Violence Initiative,” which Peter Breggin helped to expose – a series of initiatives by the federal government to fix the blame for violence in genetic predisposition?
Profiling is always wrong. Scapegoating is always wrong. Our community is alarmed that it hasn’t even mattered to our President and Vice President that we are no more violent than anyone else; that really if society wanted to profile anyone as violent, it should be males from particular states. Profiling that is not only stereotyped but flies in the face of all rational evidence can only mean that there is an intentional policy to create an enemy that the rest of society can unite against. We have seen this so many times, in the anti-Muslim profiling after 9/11, and so much more. Now we are the ones targeted, and NCMHR by supporting the President’s policies and endorsing in principle a “limited” database will allow the Administration to claim that it has the approval of our community.
I call on NCMHR to reconsider and revoke its support for the President’s recommendations on gun violence and in particular to oppose any database of persons labeled with mental health diagnoses. If NCMHR truly is in favor of those recommendations, including a “limited” database, I call on them to make known the votes of its membership on these policies, so we know whom to hold accountable.
Day of Action to Stop Psychiatric Profiling
Using the Mind of Evil, I am going to imagine how can I get even with enemies. I know! I’ll just say or do something to provoke them (manipulate them with my incredible social skills) and watch them get hauled away.
Brilliant!
You’re setting people up. How incredibly IRRESPONSIBLE (LACK the ability to RESPOND correctly). I’ve known too many people who will go out of their way to “give you Hell” and “make your life a living Hell”, here in America.
You’re setting people up.
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Not my primary genre but it’s RIGHT ON:
http://youtu.be/VN8k5FiFUR0
“Kill Yourself”
[voice:]
Get out, you can’t be in here, you have to get out.
I implore you, please?.. please?..
You all going to die down here…
It’s life or death, either one,
The king is back, take heat and run,
I piss and take a shit on your beef for fun,
I killed the game, I AIN’T EVEN USED A GUN,
Who better than me? don’t make me laugh,
I run this shit,they just chase my ass,
I ain’t talking shit nigga, just telling the facts,
I think all the tracks I’m hearing from niggas is whack,
I be hearing these niggas,
What they say in their rhymes,
I took my spot nobody gave me mine,
I make the beats that boom boom boom! in they trunks,
You disagree homie then go on and jump,
You can bump your gum,
You can say what you want,
That’s all you gonna do ’cause yall niggas is punks,
I’m number one, you ain’t nothing’ but shit,
When they need a hit I’m who they gonna and get,
Talk to me…
[chorus:]
If you got love for me I got love for you,
If you won’t fuck with me I wont fuck with you,
We can do it however you wanna do,
Nigga if you don’t fuck with me I wont fuck with you,
Gonna head
Kill yourself kill yourself kill yourself
Don’ kill yourself,
Kill your self kill yourself,
If I was you I wouldn’t fell myself,
Don’ kill your self kill your self
Kill your self done kill yourself,
Kill your self kill your self
If I was you I wouldn’t fell myself,
I’m tired of niggas, niggas is tired,
You ain’t a g, I see bitch in your eyes,
If you close to me, you supposed to be,
But most of you rap niggas is hoes to me,
Wherever you from, the question I ask,
Is do you think I give a fuck, riddle me that,
’cause in my hood and you jump into hell and back,
This industry shit, to hell with that,
I seen ’em come, I seen ’em go,
I doubt if you can show me something I ain’t seen before,
Who supposed to be in charge? I need to know,
When I shake your hand ima step on your toe,
Go get you gun, go get you click,
Imma be rite here chilling with yo bitch,
You mad at me? ’cause I’m getting rich,
Well put the pistol to your head and empty the clip, pop nigga!
[chorus:]
If you got love for me I got love for you,
If you won’t fuck with me I won’t fuck with you,
We can do it however you wanna do,
Nigga if you don’t fuck with me I wont fuck with you,
Gonna head
Kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself
Done kill yourself,
Kill your self, kill yourself,
If I was you I wouldn’t fell myself,
Done kill your self, kill your self
Kill your self, done kill yourself,
Kill your self, kill your self
If I was you I wouldn’t fell myself,
See my heart, feel my pain
Some of these stars, some is lames,
How they follow little trends to get they fame,
I ain’t snapping my damn fingers to get in the game,
You claim you rich, show me son,
If you got so many dollars then loan me one,
Fools think they killers they own a gun,
When you no you about as sweet as a honey bun,
Trash your broads, behind a bar,
Like you that dude fronting hard,
V.I.P. bands don’t make you a star,
Like we really still don’t no who the fuck you are,
Don’t talk behind my back just call me nigga,
Move my heart to the side
Make room to forgive you
If you still wanna hang, we’ll come to get you,
Put the rope around your neck and jump my nigga!
[voice:]
Your all going to die down here…
Get out get out you cant be in here…
You’re all going to die down here.
Go ahead. Start your list.
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Its time for the head of NCMHR to turn over the reigns to someone who will act to remedy the human and civil rights violations of those marked defective by psychiatry. Period.
I have not words other than those of us who have experienced torture and abuse by the hand of psychiatry, who have had our lives destroyed and our health devastated – we have been betrayed.
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Answers to these “complex problems” can be found in the U.S. Constitution.
For those who are content to surrender quickly their 2nd amendment rights, I would only ask, “Where will you be when they come after your 1st amendment rights, or your right to vote?
This is not a “slippery slope.”
This is the edge of a cliff.
Duane
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Tina, thank you for writing this and I hope the people who need to read and understand this do so!
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There is not enough watchers to watch. “Who will guard the guards themselves?”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes?
You can look for this on wikipedia also
Roman_Catholic_sex_abuse_cases_by_country
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Tina, thank you for having the courage to speak out about these frauds who claim to speak for us, but who really are just a branch of the mental illness system.
What is being done to us now is exactly what the Nazis did to the Jews at the beginning of their regime. We are being vilified and set up for something far worse than being on a database. As our country sinks further and further, and our alleged government is unwilling to address its problems, we will become the favored scapegoat. (“It’s all the fault of the Jews.”) Already we are being seen more and more as subhuman, and without being able to make our case to the public, it will be nearly impossible to reverse this.
Twenty-five years ago, we had access to the media, and our human rights movement was taken seriously. Now we are invisible, the government has appointed our representatives, and our point of view is ignored.
Why? because these false “leaders” are happy to take the system’s money in exchange for betraying us. It is time we stopped being so polite to these people and started calling them what they are. They have betrayed the people they claim to speak for. They are traitors to our cause and we must repudiate them.
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Thanks, Tina, great insights on profiling.
I, too, have concerns about the vague wording in the president’s recommendations, but I hadn’t equated it to profiling.
Thanks again.
Pam
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Yeah, what a bummer. Not just, but an invitation to keep killing us. Where do self appointed people get the nerve to speak FOR US???
Living in Massachusetts, a neighbor no less, and not a bad sort in other contexts, why does this not surprise me? Where did the advocacy of Mental Patients Liberation Front and M-POWER go? Down the toilet with the pundits and the sell outs who, for a fee or for public recognition or both, have sold our rights again and again.
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Actually, the German government and German psychiatry allowed and carried out the murdering of thousands upon thousands of people labeled as “mentally ill” and “mentally defective” before the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. Everyone who was deemed mentally ill or who were in mental institutions had to submit a written form; these forms were evaluated by two psychiatrists. If one of the two psychiatrists gave the person represented by the form a “thumbs down” the person was taken to one of six designated cities in Germany where they were gased and then their bodies were burned in large ovens. The “showers” alias gas chambers and the ovens for disposing of mass numbers of bodies were created by the German government and German psychiatry and not by the Nazis. When Hitler came to power by the vote of the German people, he had German psychiatrists train his Nazis and they took over the system and used it to destroy anyone and everyone who they disagreed with. Some Allied soldiers tell stories of rescuing and liberating people held in mental hospitals, where they were being starved or drugged to death. Hitler appropriated their gas chambers and ovens but allowed German psychiatry to continue its pogrom against the “mentally ill.”
In 1941, a doctor gave the main speech at the APA’s yearly convention in which he advocated the mass murdering of the mentally ill in the United States. He didn’t refer to it as murder of course, he called it by that nice word “euthanasia!” The only rebuttal he received was one given by another psychiatrist who asked what they would do for garbage pickup and cleaning the streets if they killed the mentally ill and mentally defective. Great rebuttal, huh. One year later, in the APA’s Journal there was an anonymous editorial written by two people supporting euthanasia for the mentally ill in the United States.
This history, coupled with all of the ridiculous rhetoric found in the statements of politicians and the media for the past few weeks becomes problematic and frightening to me. The voice of anyone who tries to speak out against the prevailing “the crazies need to be put away” attitude seem to be quickly silenced or neutralized. The White House blocked the petition asking that they look into the part that psychiatric drugs play in the mass shootings since the advent of the SSRI’s and atypical neuraleptics and articles and editorials in media like the NYT and the Washington Post see no reason why the rights of the “mentally ill” (what few we have) shouldn’t be stripped from us as soon as possible so that Americans will be safe again. We don’t seem to have a very strong voice speaking out for us at this time.
I took a cab ride the other afternoon home from the grocery store. The cab drivers was listening to a radio talk show about the gun control debate. He proceeded to tell me how the real problem was not the guns, but “all those damned crazies running around with guns!” When I asked him who he meant by “all the crazies” he informed me that he was talking about “those mentally ill people!” It takes five minutes to get home from the store by cab. For that cab driver it must have seemed like an eternity as I quietly informed him about all those “crazies running around with the guns!”
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Awesome post, Stephen. Yeah I hate those moments, formative in regards to my perception of psychiatry as a force for evil, when one has to suffer the nauseating bigotry and arrogance of some self-righteous non-entity who is sufficiently stupid and ignorant enough to believe he/she is some sort of bastion of sanity and reason.
I was in a proper hospital the other day, and I heard this absolute buffoon ridiculing some nurse about going to work with the “loonies”, as he so eloquently put it. Such experiences are epiphanal in that they reveal to me that Mental Health ideology is a supremacist ideology like any other, allowing bigoted mediocrities the pleasure of feeling superior to those designated “mentally ill”.
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“where they were gased and then their bodies were burned in large ovens”
SCREAM!!!
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Thanks again, Tina. — Ben Turner-Blackhouse, Blackhouse v. TLC Properties, et al. (anti-psychiatrist fighting against the “mental health” paradigm, fighting for world-wide [“hospital”] Closure)
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I’m sorry I didn’t come across this article until now and I’m pretty disgusted by NCMHR, who until now I thought were on our side.
I presume “violence” would be limited to criminal convictions? Even if it was, that would still be problematic if you don’t know the circumstances. I have an assault conviction from throwing a cup of coffee at a psych nurse. (Strange how throwing someone into an isolation cell, body slamming them to the floor, ripping their pants down and injecting them with a neurotoxin is just business as usual but what I did was assault).
Anyway, a mental illness registry is just another step towards their ultimate goal of eradicating us altogether.
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