The New York Times cites an article in the American Journal of Psychiatry, on the savings realized by forced outpatient treatment, as evidence that programs such as New York’s Kendra’s law “work.” The article states that “In the shadow of the massacres in Newtown, Conn.; Aurora, Colo.; and Tucson, programs like these are drawing renewed attention — even though people who commit such crimes are not always those who would qualify for measures like Kendra’s Law.”
Swanson, J., Van Dorn, R., Schwarz, M., et al.; The Cost of Assisted Outpatient Treatment: Can It Save States Money? American Journal of Psychiatry. Online July 30, 2013
“In the shadow of the massacres in Newtown, Conn.; Aurora, Colo.; and Tucson, programs like these are drawing renewed attention — even though people who commit such crimes are not always those who would qualify for measures like Kendra’s Law.”
Not always? I’m not aware of any of them that were. Even the article says the program is for “revolving door patients.”
Now let’s think of how many shooters were in and out of mental hospitals in the months leading to their rampage. And also, how being forced to take drugs would have somehow stopped them.
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Let’s also think about how many of the shooters *were already under outpatient treatment* on SSRIs.
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Exactly JeffereyC. Alot of the shooters were already in the mental health system and taking meds before they committed their crimes. While I am not going to claim that in all cases the meds were directly responsible, obviously, this wasn’t a situation where being out of the mental health system caused the crimes.
By the way, why isn’t any research being done on why people suddenly cold turkey meds. The claim is always due to people being in denial about their condition but this happens way too many times for this to be due to one cause.
Of course, no one wants to admit that the drugs are the problem which research would uncover. Easier to just force something on people.
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The only “crime” being “out of the system” is likely to lead to, in my opinion, is homelessness, which should not *be* a crime, and is often the only remaining alternative for people who have fled corrupt, abusive “supportive housing” that is anything but supportive; more like exploitative, demeaning, and permanently enmeshing, but when your record of independent, private-sector (non-crazy) housing and employment has been so trashed by their involvement with the system (in my opinion, purposely so to prevent reassertion of independence that the system finds terribly dangerous to itself but which concern it masks in a patronizing, smothering “concern” for their welfare) it’s near-impossible to *convince* anyone in the non-crazy world to let you back in. It greatly resembles an abusive relationship where the abuser “for your own good, because without me you’d be nothing” purposely cripples you to keep you from running away and lies to every one about you to keep them from helping you escape them.
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The New York Times has always been the tank for psychiatric quackery, and even more troubling, in the tank for state psychiatry’s heinous social control role, ‘pre-crime’ ripping away of the right to own one’s brain, from innocent people who happen to have a psychiatric label. Punishing many, for the crimes of a few people who are perfect strangers to them.
I wonder how the German papers reported the Nuremberg laws when they first were put into place.
Rounded up, and forcibly drugged, because the government ‘cares’.
There is no greater proof that New York hates people with psychiatric labels, than New York making it illegal for these people to own their own body.
The world likes to believe complicated heavily planned crimes like gun massacres are visited upon this world by a ‘brain disease’ that nature created.
When you don’t have evidence, just use prestige, credentials, and overwhelming numbers, gang up, pile on, to the minority group, and rip the group’s rights away.
Someone ‘might’ commit violence? Well NY state will be sure to do violence to them first.
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I find it highly ironic that many of the same people who resist tooth and nail every sort of restriction on abortion and claim that pro-lifers only care bout fetuses but once you’re born you’re on your own, often support gross impositions on the freedom of born and grown persons to *think differently* without being forcibly drugged and imprisoned (a psych ward is just a prison where the guards wear white).
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You are right. The formidable solidarity with which pro choice people lobby to protect themselves from state intrusion into their bodies, is not matched by anything near a concern for the bodies of those forced into psychiatry, until that is, they get targeted themselves.
Actually there’s only two ways a survivor of forced psychiatry can go, they either get indoctrinated to believe in psychiatry’s lies, and come to be ‘thankful’ for their forced drugging, or they become devastated by the violation of their body and try and fight for their right to own their own body.
Every single aspect of forced somatic interventions in psychiatry is just an unbelievably ghoulish invasiveness by the state hat is very hard to even think about, it’s just so extreme, there really isn’t much further invasiveness that the government could carry out when it comes to altering its citizens brains by force, short of maybe the death penalty or police fatal shootings, maybe the draft, sending citizens by force into combat. With forced psychiatry, we really are talking about the ‘big leagues’ in terms of government overreach. It doesn’t get much more invasive than what they are doing to people.
And you’re right about the prison guards only wearing white. All of psychiatry is just a big word game, word magic. Label a locked building where nobody is even getting so much as their blood pressure taken, a building that exists solely to tranquilize people like animals, label this a ‘hospital’, or a ‘ward’, and bada bing! bang! magically, because the government says its a bona fide ‘medical facility’, everyone steps in line ‘agreeing’ that it is, assuming, that it is.
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When we see how New York governors, congressmen, and mayoral candidates treat the bodies of underpriveleged young women as property, it shouldn’t surprise that these ‘caring’ politicians seek to round up those labeled ‘mental patient’ and put things in our bodies.
So let me get this straight? I think I CAN’T smoke a cigarette in the open air in central park, can’t buy a Big Gulp soda, but I can’t also say no to toxic brain disabling tranquilizer drugs, which will be forcibly injected into me if I dare be a New Yorker with a psychiatric label slapped on me?
Interesting state. Pretty, amazing big city, wow, amazing place, but polticially? politically one of the worst places in America.
NY leads the leaderboard of US states for use of home-based forced psychiatric drugging against its citizens. That looks set to continue.
Readers don’t be bamboozled by the use of the term ‘outpatient’, you’re a ‘patient’ if the government says you’re a patient, and you’re ‘out’ if you’re at home. It’s just another in the endless cavalcade of pretend word games where psychiatry steals and adopts the language of the real doctors they are so jealous of… you know.. the ones that actually examine bodies and demonstrate real disease exists in those bodies.
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A chemical lobotomy does work to keep people orderly, so yes I would agree forced outpatient drugging works (for society).
Just don’t be the one who is drugged.
Can society afford the costs to “help” (drug) so many people, to prevent (unbalanced brain chemical) crime?
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You know it would be amazing to go back to the time of the dinosaurs or the primordial soup and identify these genes that grew into the amazingly evil brain disease that knows how to use a gun and plan a crime to the letter. I mean what an amazing fact about the natural world, that nature would basically seed the human organism with a disease that ‘makes people do’ bad stuff.
Compose a symphony, blame the person.
Hug your kid, blame the person.
Compose a suicide note, blame the never-examined by a physician nor proven diseased brain.
Kill a kid, blame the never-examined by a physician nor proven diseased brain.
We are living through a global brain blaming scientism secular religion and the sooner everyone realizes this the better.
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If your “mental health” system is based on the de-humanizing and unscientific premises of biological psychiatry – to the point that you think life on Haldol is really a good idea – it might make sense to force people to take the drug. This article sets up a straw man – the idea that the only choices for the “seriously mentally ill” are to run around naked in traffic, assaulting innocent bystanders or to be constantly drugged on Haldol (which, as recently noted in this blog, has been acknowledged to be “neurotoxic.”) Given only these two possibilities, it makes sense to force drugs on people.
But of course, those aren’t by any means the only choices . Just one of the lessons of Open Dialogue is that standard medical model approaches to “psychosis” actually turn people into the stereotyped “revolving door” menaces the system then points to as justification for forced “treatment.” The Open Dialogue catchment area would be astonished by this study – given that Open Dialogue has now become so effective at providing real human- to human support within the community that first episode “psychosis patients” there are are virtually never hospitalized in the first place.
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Might make sense, to a world that thinks shackles are uglier than chemical brain rape. As I and others always say, there are always less invasive ways to stop people going ‘in traffic’.
In other news it has just been discovered that the Incas forcibly drugged kids right before they became child sacrifices…
remind you of anybody?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/sounds-like-public-school-kids/
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I also see this horrific “study” and article as another Big Pharma/psychiatry industrial ad to push the latest atypical neuroleptics or depot drugs on patent now that most if not all pill forms are going off patent. Of course, this endangers those targeted all the more since there is no escape from these poisons. Perhaps another goal by the mental death profession is to make sure none can escape this death sentence without trial by jury as have others Bob Whitaker cites from various studies by those with a conscience that show people do “recover” from being trapped and deceived by biopsychiatry’s bogus, voted in stigmas that have been acknowledged to be totally invalid and lacking any scientific or medical evidence. The only evidence behind them is that countries like the U.S. are increasingly fascist, totalitarian dictatorships pretending to be democracies.
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From the article it says that in the state of New York, there are currently somewhere between 2000-2500 under Kendra’s Law AOT. Though I despise this gross exercise in abuse of power, I appreciate that the number of people under it are relatively low.
I’ve only met one person who was receiving involuntary treatment. His mom achieved a 5 year commitment for clozapine. I only have become curious about other people’s experiences with psych drugs after getting off them and when I heard this I remember being slightly jealous that at least he was only on one drug. In the 12 years that I believed in my “psychiatric disorder” I always swallowed a polydrug cocktail of harmful, interacting substances. Was my brain more ill or was I more brainwashed? Nevertheless, it is a sad, sad day when a person can find something to be jealous of in someone under an AOT!
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Home based forced psychiatric drugging, also known as ‘AOT’ is relatively new in the United States. If these laws are allowed to continue to metastasize, hundreds of thousands of Americans will be forcibly drugged in their own homes.
It’s all about 1 guy kills Kendra, thousands of innocent people labeled mentally ill get punished for that crime.
You shouldn’t be jealous of anybody being forcibly drugged constantly in the ‘community’, for what, 5 years was the example you gave. That’s five years of constant, 24/7 government invasion of his brain that the government can’t prove is diseased. A crime against his humanity.
Victims of fraud, while catastrophically harmed and very sad, still were not forced. The two situations are not the same.
I am a survivor of long term home based forced drugging aka ‘AOT’. Trust me it’s nothing to envy.
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How did you get free?
They’re trying to get AOT ennacted in the state where I live and they’re using the new health care act to do so. It’s scary to me. I know that with the state legislature that we have in place right now and with the Department of Human Services trumpeting what a wonderful benefit AOT will be to those “poor people suffering from nental illness who don’t realize that they need help,” and with NAMI mommies backing it completely, it’s a done deal. I’m seriously considering moving to another state but there’s no guarantee that the same thing won’t happen where I move to.
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Like the centuries old elephant and its chain story, I got free only when my owners were convinced that I would voluntarily drug myself.
My government owners, if they believed I couldn’t be trusted to believe their belief system and imbibe the drugs they believe in, wouldn’t have relinquished ownership of the inside of my body.
I tell anyone, do, say, whatever the psych fanatics want, once you ‘play the game’ and they think you’re a handily indoctrinated ‘model patient’, they will feel you’re programmed enough to release their legal ownership of your body.
Once you get away from government psychiatry, you can begin the hard work of putting the pieces of your life back together after they’ve had their way with you and left you a wrecked, heaving, crying, traumatized victim that’s had things put in your body by your attackers.
Outcome of ‘AOT’? The targeted person hating the perpetrators of the forced drugging for the rest of their natural life.
If I was officially surveyed in the system however, I’d sing their praises. It’s like passing around a survey at a death camp. Anyone going to be honest about how they feel about their captors? No.
Forced drugging has no right to exist in a free society. If it’s wrong for a date rapist to slip drugs into his victim’s drink to bend human behavior to his whim, it’s wrong for the state to use powerful drugs as a social control mechanism.
There’s only one minority group that Hitler tried to wipe out, that is still being rounded up and systematically victimized and scapegoated in New York state in 2013. The people labeled ‘mental patient’.
As a group, we know we’ve got a long way to go if we’ve only marginally graduated from being murdered in Nazi germany by psychiatrists, to being forcibly sterilized until the 1970s by psychiatrists all over the western world, to being forcibly flooded with chemical lobotomy drugs in 2013. All the other groups targeted by Hitler for removal have made extraordinary progress compared to us. We’ve only marginally inched forward, ‘generously’ allowed to exist in society if we are made into drooling drugged zombies.
Anyone who makes an anti-Semitic comment, a homophobic comment, publicly, is excoriated. Mel Gibson, said, in a horrible drunken comment that I don’t by any means agree with, that ‘the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world’. This was the beginning of the end of his career.
The New York Times essentially openly says that we as a group are responsible for the gun massacres of three angry young men, and then advocates that even the non-criminals among us, should be rounded up and drugged, brain pickled, ‘just in case’.
Scapegoating, hate, contempt for our humanity, is alive and well. Just look at how soundly the perpetrators of state hospital forced drugging sleep at night. They go home, after their shift, read their kids a story book, while the innocent humans they own, sleep locked in the brain storage facility, drugged to the gills.
Organic milk for little Jane before school, only the best, most purest diet choices for their kids’ bodies, while their parents pay for their children’s food with money earned forcing poison into our bodies using violence.
And these people are considered pillars of the community. I call them brain rapists.
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-anonymous
I agree with you totally.
It gives me the willies to walk among the “brain rapists” at work every day. I know that if some of them had their way, I wouldn’t be working alongside them, and I’d be drugged to the gills. It’s very upsetting to many staff when they learn that I do not take any of their toxic drugs four years out from my little stay at their wonderful facility. First they’re shocked and then they get angry that I’m not on my “meds” like I need to be for my own good!
One of the quacks, aka paychiatrist, actually slams doors in my face if I happen to be walking behind him! The first time it happened I thought it was just an absentminded accident. After the third or fourth time, with him actually looking back at me as he slammed the door behind him, I realized it is no accident. I want to tell him to grow up but you don’t say things like that to the “doctors” where I work.
Yes, their children get only the best. Many of them live in my neighborhood and shop at the market where I shop so I see what they buy. Only the best for their dear children as they poison and brain rape people who are placed in their supposed “medical care” by the state.
Thanks for answering my question.
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Anonymous,
Thank you for saying this so eloquently (would that it did not need to be said at all). I managed through some miracle to avoid much forced drugging although I spent time in jail after being railroaded (there were other charges concocted but my main crime was being homeless and insisting that *I* knew better than the system what was wrong with me and what would help, and pursuing it from alternative practitioners) under severe pressure to accept it and only was let out on probation by a fascist judge who acted like she was an expert in brain science (she was not) and was obsessed with the idea that I should be on heavy antipsychotics, when I agreed to “take whatever was prescribed for me” and then made it my business to secure the assistance of a therapist and a psychiatrist who did not believe it would be helpful on balance to involuntarily medicate me nor that I was in fact severely symptomatic enough to justify that. Thankfully they gave me a chance to prove she was full of shit in her obsession about me. i have had extensive deprivations of liberty nonetheless and most of the symptoms she attributed to something else were actually PTSD *from the treatment I had been forced to endure*..
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uomosenzanome, great, keep on keeping on, glad you got free. It’s an exciting time, this decade and next, we have never been a better position to expose psychiatry’s violence against those it labels ‘patients’.
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I’m sorry to hear that Anonymous, that you were drugged against your will from your home. It’s despicable and I really don’t envy your experience.
I know what the drugs are like, trust me on that one. I know the clouded and slow mind, having my thoughts resemble something like trying to swim in glue. I know what it is like to spend years of my life sleeping more hours than awake because of the heavy tranquilizers I’ve been under.
I’m against AOT, AP drugs, and psychiatric drugs in general. The oppression of the chemical prison, I’m convinced today, is worse than the physical one.
Your MIA friend, happily psych drug free for 2 years,
Emily
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Thanks Emily. Congratulation on 2 solid years of operating on a mind free and clear of psych drug poison, as nature intended.
I’m glad you’re pro human rights and anti forced drugging. It’s the only logical, and moral position to take in this debate.
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This sort of approach seems similar to the UK’s Community Treatment Orders, CTOs. They were introduced following a change in mental health law with the Mental Health Act 2007, and I think the first patients put on them were in November 2008. Basically this law (through a set of individual conditions) places an obligation on people released from hospital, following their compulsory detention, for them to accept treatment in the community or face being recalled to hospital, with the potential to be assessed and even end up back as a hospital patient.
The change in the law was primarily brought about by powerful lobbying that made a case for ensuring those with schizophrenia when in the community took their medications. I know one group that was highly successful in terms of lobbying and I recall they, the Zito Trust (now wound up), had financial support through an unrestricted educational grant from Eli Lilly and Co. Ltd. Tragic high profile homicides formed the background to the lobbying.
Prior to the law change there was much talk of the benefits of CTOs and of how they would reduce violent crime and hospitalizations of those with serious mental illness. It was also put forward that the change in the law would only affect a minority of “revolving door patients”, a figure of 250 per year was initially muted, then a figure of 400 per year was put about. Around 4,000 people in the first year were placed on CTOs. I have no idea how many people are now on them but it will be in the thousands.
Everyone was told that CTOs would of course be helpful and that it was obvious they would be helpful, this was despite the only research available (albeit from other countries) showing no real benefit. We do now have some research outcomes:
Lancet. 2013 May 11;381(9878):1627-33. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(13)60107-5. Epub 2013 Mar 26.
Community treatment orders for patients with psychosis (OCTET): a randomised controlled trial
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Disregard, I asked about something I had misread.
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The Illegality of Psychiatric Imprisonment, Forced Drugging and Forced Electroshock in the US:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HE-bjg3JqA&feature=plcp
Duane Sherry
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I just found the article I recalled being posted at MIA by/about Dr. Tom Burns of Oxford admitting that Community Treatment Orders don’t work.
This is quite an admission for him to make considering he was the greatest advocate for them in the first place. Now, he admits they violate patients’ rights too much and they don’t improve anything.
http://www.madinamerica.com/2013/04/community-treatment-orders-forced-treatment-dont-work/
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I can see that the from a reading of the abstract of study mentioned in the article there is a net financial saving, I am not sure that this means the programme “works”.
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I’m in New York, and the social worker at the state psychiatric hospital where my adult daughter ended up after horribly misguided psychiatric “treatment” over several years suggested that she should be provided with “assisted outpatient treatment” (i.e., court-monitored “Kendra’s Law” treatment) upon discharge. Fortunately, by this time I had informed myself enough about this insidious euphemism and pointed out that the only time she was ever violent was in reaction to the medications she was either being given or withdrawn from–and that all but one of these incidents occurred IN the hospital. They quickly dropped this ruse, but unfortunately the discharge program she opted appears dominated by staff who have been thoroughly indoctrinated in the religion of biopsychiatry.
I’m a school psychologist with longstanding concerns about the burgeoning use of psych meds in our society (especially with kids). However, it took the “up close and personal” experience of seeing my own daughter ravaged by psychiatry to see just how misguided, harmful and draconian our psychiatric system can be–even when some or even many of the people involved in this form of “care” may be well-meaning (in fact, that makes it all the more pernicious and maddening!).
It became chillingly clear to me throughout my daughter’s saga that a patient in an involuntary psych hospitalization has less rights than a convicted felon! Few people realize how utterly stacked the cards are in favor of acute care psychiatrists and against the unfortunate souls who enter their domain; they may as well post a sign at the door: “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!” But…but…don’t the patients have access to Mental Hygiene Legal Services? Yeah, right…any idea how often the judge at one of these psychiatric kangaroo courts decides in favor of the patient (represented by MHLS) versus the hospital?? Maybe about 5%, from what i remember reading. Clearly, the hospital’s have the big bucks, the best lawyers, the power!
So now I’ve become part of the “Resistance” on behalf of my daughter and the many, many unfortunate souls who fall into the biopsychiatry trap.
I definitely smell the odor of Big Pharma and the APA behind this puff piece touting the benefits of AOT in New York. Sadly, the public in general has NO idea of just how misguided and insidious it is. I’m trying to do my part in my little corner of the world. I’ve even rejoined my local NAMI chapter (gasp!–i hear it from many of you, my dear comrades), since like it or not that’s where ALL the mental health clinics, psychiatrists, hospitals, etc. direct people–at least in these parts. I think i’m having some success in promoting dialogue and have clearly given some folks a message other than what they’re going to hear from the NAMI “rank and file”. At this point i see winds (perhaps a breeze?) of hopeful change in NAMI, even though i know some of you vehemently disagree. We’ll see…at any rate, if it seems to be a lost cause, i’ll have to look to other venues (which i’m doing anyway). I love MIA and Mind Freedom International (I’m a contributing member of both), but unfortunately there are no notices on the walls of psych units about these or any other “alternative” mental health organizations, and there are no local chapters (to my knowledge). Maybe i’ll start one….
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Thank you for being a parent who sees what is happening to people who have this belief system forced on them by government. It is so refreshing to see parents like you, unlike some parents, who force their sons into the system and then become fanatical lobbyists who seek to extend government power into the neurons of innocent strangers. Rather than becoming a menace to our liberty like these parents chose to do, you have become a true ally.
And ‘in hospital’ self defense violence is perfectly understandable. Occasionally those carrying out forced drugging get socked in the face during a take-down. What do they expect? Us to just lie down and take it? I think that is what they expect.
It is horrifying when you become aware of the reality of the invasive violence the state carries out on an industrialized scale against those labeled ‘patients’ in the system. I can only imagine what it would have been like to watch powerless as the body of your child you had nurtured for so long, was treated like a toxic waste dump by the government of New York, and by extension, the voters.
The voters need to wake up, and stop allowing this sheer contempt for the humanity of those labeled ‘mentally ill’.
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Thanks backatcha, anonymous. I deeply appreciate your many articulate, heartfelt and sometimes heartrending posts here on MIA. I’ve read many of them and they’ve had a strong impact on me.
You’re absolutely right–it was horrific having to witness their repeated brain-raping of my daughter, putting one toxic substance after another into her brain after being specifically told of her prior adverse reactions to the same. I’ve likened trying to work with them to negotiating with terrorists, but worse! With terrorists, you’d at least have an identified enemy with a known malicious intent, and possibly some allies with power to extract your loved one from their clutches!
I’m so glad you escaped and are “fighting the good fight”; i hope and pray my daughter will also do so eventually. She has recovered well in many respects, for which i’m very grateful…but she continues to bear the scars, physically and emotionally, of the ravages of her “treatment” and the road remains rocky with many potential pitfalls.
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Thanks. I think there is plenty of time for your daughter to come to understand the issues and join the fight to shut these violent policies down.
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Thank god your daughter has you for a parent.
Far too many family members parrot the “take your med” mantra to their loved one. I work in a state hospital and sometimes meet parents or family members of people being admitted to us and all of them always parrot the mantra that if their child would just “take their meds like they should everything would be fine.”
It’s disgusting but I’m not at liberty to express to them what I’m feeling inside when I hear them say these things. And even if I did they would protest against me in total shock. They’ve fallen for the propaganda pushed on them. They’re totally uninformed, taking only the misinformation given to them by the drug commercials on television and the psychiatrists in the community mental health centers that people are forced to go to after being discharged. They become complicit in the harming of their loved one but they don’t realize this and probably wouldn’t admit it if they did. Lots of people want their family member tranqualized and subdued and made into a zombie because then they’re easy to deal with and to control.
Thank goodness your daughter has you!
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Hi mom from New York. Shoot me an email sometime. I live in Oregon. My daughter is being sent to the state hospital (for the third time) for more ‘treatment’ under our state’s commitment laws. My email is sarahsmith1000@hotmail.
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Yes, Donna…When i saw this piece from the New York Times i also immediately thought of the previous article here on MIA about Dr. Tom Burns of Oxford admitting that Community Treatment Orders don’t work. You don’t think this “news” from New York could be in any way related to that, do ya?
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I had a discussion with a UK prof about this who suggested that forced drugging in out patients might be ‘better’ than the damage they had seen in those hospitalised for long periods, and they tried to suggest that forced out patient treatment was somehow different to our CTO’s where people are readmitted for forced drugging. My answer was a needle in the arse feels the same no matter where you have it, home, clinic or hospital. The effects are just the same too. Being ‘binned’ as some of us say here is dire but something which is possible to survive, but the physical effects of drugs some of which are life changing or permanent are not. I received no further response..
Here CTO’s are also used to ‘guarantee’ a service/bed by some consultants. I remember the Zito Trust well, they did their thing tirelessly until they got what they wanted. I note this org has now sprung up:http://www.hundredfamilies.org/TheProblem/keeps_happening.htm
Am I right in thinking that in some US states compliance with treatment in the community is linked to welfare payments?
That’s a nightmare vision I fear we might be edging towards.
We had a programme here recently which showed ‘maintenance’ ECT, a man (voluntarily) being shocked every few weeks to keep his depression at bay. I’m observing a renewed promotion of ECT in some psychiatrists with utterly ridiculous claims. One for example claimed that he could be sued for NOT administering it, so I asked him to produce evidence of this. He produced a Canadian paper from 1979 claiming this was the most important medical ethics paper of all time implying I was a bit dim for not knowing of it. So I repeated, please show me your evidence for the UK of any case at all of a patient/family attempting to sue a psychiatrist or NHS Trust for ‘failing’ to administer ECT. He couldn’t, but insisted on the ‘risk’. I pointed out that we no longer have legal aid for real medical negligence (nor for welfare/employment) so unless you’re rich there’s no chance of suing anyone. Survivors who have been iatrogenically damaged cannot sue/get compensation nor those who have been sexually violated. I offered a reference for the latter and he accused me of suggesting that he abused his patients. That’s the level of debate you get with some of them..
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“Am I right in thinking that in some US states compliance with treatment in the community is linked to welfare payments?
That’s a nightmare vision I fear we might be edging towards.”
I don’t think any of the US forced drugging in the community statutes are tied to welfare. But anything is possible in the future. When you accept a psychiatric diagnosis officially, as the justification for getting the taxpayers’ money by force, it shouldn’t surprise when the taxpayer bites back and imposes force and conditions on the person imposing force and conditions on the tax payer. Already around the world, an ‘official’ psychiatric diagnosis is required for ‘mental illness’ justified welfare. So clearly you know it’s gonna look when someone say I’ll accept other people’s money confiscated and redistributed by force on the basis of a diagnosis, but reject ‘treatment’ for that ‘diagnosis’.
It’s the tangled web. This is why relying on government for anything is a bad idea that sentences the person who is reliant on government to a lifetime of being at the whim and mercy of government policy in regards to welfare.
And thank you for alerting me to the ‘100 families’ site, truly a British rendition of Torrey’s style of forced drugging lobbying. Amazing evil website. Guy’s dad was killed by someone he believes is ‘brain diseased’ so he sets his compass to take away the rights of everyone else he labels ‘brain diseased’, killers or not. He even coined a new term ‘mental health homicides’, amazing. A true British propagandist in the vein of Torrey et al. An amazing find, thank you.
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Everyone is a tax payer, the vast majority of people who end up on welfare have worked and payed into the system and disability payments are also available to those in work for the extra support they need or because their work is low waged. Some people use disability payments for non-psychiatric support and personal assistance, that requires them to state their psychiatric diagnosis, I’ve got no problem with that because that’s the way the system is currently structured but I look forward to a future where diagnostic systems are not required to qualify people for perfectly reasonable support to live and work. So lets not get into blaming people, those with physical disabilities also end up needing state support and are subject to the same dire unforgiving system which could also dictate to them what they should do.
Everyone ‘relies’ on the state one way or another.
Agree 100 families truly dire following on from Zito.
Here’s some further dire reading for you:
http://disability-studies.leeds.ac.uk/files/library/FROM-BRITISH-WELFARE-STATE-TO-ANOTHER-AMERICAN-STATE-2013-3rd-edit-FINAL.pdf
http://disability-studies.leeds.ac.uk/files/library/THE%20HIDDEN%20AGENDA-a-research-summary-March-2013-FINAL.pdf
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“Everyone is a tax payer, the vast majority of people who end up on welfare have worked and payed into the system and disability payments ”
Anyone who has ‘paid in’ had no choice but to pay in. And nobody on ‘mental illness’ welfare in their 20s, 30s, 40s, could have possibly paid in what they take out, it’s the tragedy of putting a gun to society’s head and making everyone’s money a commons. Endless arguments. It’s a violent system. I don’t blame anyone, people who vote for these governments should shoulder some blame though.
I do believe that if you don’t believe in the ‘mental illness’ the government believes in, that signing your name to some welfare arrangement based on the government’s beliefs, has to be considered dishonest. There are lots of people on welfare these days due to psychiatry, it’s an epic tragedy. It’s always the ideal situation to not rely on government for the majority of resources you consume. That said, they use taxpayer dollars to abuse our human rights with forced drugging, so whatever.
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What does Bob state in his book?
I think he found that every day about 850 adults and 250 children are put on the disability rolls and begin receiving checks. This is over a thousand people A DAY that go on SSI or SSDI It’s no wonder that Medicare and Medicaid are hemmoraging money at this very moment, dut to the numbers of people put on the rolls from psychiatry. Two year old children go on the rolls after being “diagnosed” as being supposedly “bi-polar!” And the vast majority will stay on the rolls and never, ever hold a job in order to take care of their own needs. The system has not only created a terrible situation where people are harmed rather than healed, the system is responsible for creating permanent patients who know nothing but the lessons of learned helplessness and who will never take care of themselves. I’ve worked for two years in Admissions and have met FOUR people who were actually working before they experienced difficulties and got brought to the hospital. Four.
I’ve met numerous people in their 30’s who’ve always received an SSI check. I don’t understand this since the regulations state they you will be evaluated every two years and must re-submit paperwork to prove your need. But, the majority of people are on the drugs and still in the care of the community mental health clinics so I guess they access their records and make determinations accordingly.
Something else that must be considered. The amount of money you receive each month is not enough to actually make it possible for people to live decently. You exist, you don’t really live, on disability checks. People live in substandard housing, at least this is the case where I live. They don’t get to do a lot of things that so-called “normal” people do because they don’t have the money. You don’t get to take vacations on the Florida coast on disability; although some politicians would say today that everyone on the rolls is on a vacation and need to be booted off. This is what is being stated in the state where I live by three of our four congress people.
I am not judging people who go on the rolls because I know how difficult it can be to just exist once you get out of the hospital. I was lucky in many ways. I never went on SSI, although that was the constant advice I was given while in the hospital. I caution people to think about what will happen to them before they sign up for SSI. This is one of the biggest things that the social workers assigned to each “patient” work at, helping people apply for SSI! I’m even beginning to suspect that getting people on disability is another way of controlling them to make them compliant. I know I sound like a conspiracy person now but I’ve come to the conclusion that, if you can keep people in poverty you can control them to a great extent.
The system has lots and lots to answer for, not just for harming people initially and doing it against their will. The system is responsible for helping to create a system and situation which will bankrupt our country if it keeps going the way it is going now. What will happen when almost everyone is on SSI because they’ve been “diagnosed” with the diasnosis made possible by the expansion of “mental illness” so that all of human existence is pathologized by psychiatry and the drug companies?
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It’s the opposite here Stephen, people do not have social workers or nurses helping them to claim disability benefits, and discharge and employment are regarded as the main goals (virtually no assistance with the latter) and people can be reassessed as frequently as every 3 months. Services along with the general public, politicians and media sneer at people in receipt of state benefits. It’s viewed as shameful.
Welfare systems do need overhauling to assist people to give the best of themselves as able and supported when they can’t. What we have here is a system which has been deliberately redesigned to not assist costing billions using systems which have been shown to not work, but business has profited from it. Meanwhile poverty has been reclassified as a state of mind.
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“I am not judging people who go on the rolls because I know how difficult it can be to just exist once you get out of the hospital. I was lucky in many ways. I never went on SSI, although that was the constant advice I was given while in the hospital. I caution people to think about what will happen to them before they sign up for SSI. This is one of the biggest things that the social workers assigned to each “patient” work at, helping people apply for SSI!”
I completely agree. And this is a delicate issue that needs to be handled with sensitivity. A lot of people get defensive about it. I think this is because inevitably, no one can be on welfare long term without inevitably feeling shamed by society. It dates back to the caveman. I’m not evolutionary psychology fanboy by any means, I think a lot of it is disgusting quackery, but in any group, those doing hard work for the benefit of others, are going to have a say about resource distribution.
In the modern mass society, it’s handled fairly simply, and violently. Pay your taxes, or get put in a cage whereupon a gloved finger will be inserted into you on visitor’s day at the prison. I think it is important to remember that society in the mass state era is held together by violent threats of coercion.
http://www.jack-donovan.com/axis/2011/03/violence-is-golden/
The inspired child of the Renaissance, was the US constitution, the idea of of a limited government constitutional republic. Not mob rule leading to months and months of the year working for the tax man to pay for unlimited utopian government ‘services’. When a society accepts that there are no limits to government, that every single facet of society should be placed under government control, regulated, and every service imaginable provided by government, you wind up in a nightmare where people expect for government to provide everything but their haircuts and movie tickets, and then the country goes broke.
Helping someone get on disability, can of course, be a helpful thing, but it can also lead to one of the most degrading traps of all, the welfare trap. They don’t call it a trap for nothing.
I don’t begrudge anyone ‘taking it out of the state’ for a while after state psychiatry decimates their life, but I think inevitably the time comes where people will feel that old caveman instinct that others are toiling for their sustenance, and it’s not right, and eventually the goal is to get off welfare.
I hear the madness radio is going to do a show on getting off welfare this year. I look forward to hearing what Will Hall has to say about this complex issue.
You’re not a ‘bad person’ if you’re on welfare. But the messenger always gets shot. It is true the ideal scene, is that you get off it. People will hate me and shoot this messenger for saying it, but it’s really not an ideal scene. If you have to stay on it, stay on it, you’re not a bad person, but it does have the potentiality to breed a learned helplessness and dependency that can rob people’s dreams of bettering their situation. It’s just true. People hate to hear it, but I think that is just the gnawing caveman guilt at being a kept person. If you genuinely feel that there is no possible way you can earn any money, fine, you’re not a bad person, and society has decided this is the system, but let’s get real, Whitaker publicized the shocking massive numbers of people being added to the rolls, and it’s not an ideal scenario.
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I think that the expectation when all of this was instituted was that a person would use SSI until they could take care of themselves and then they’d get off and go on with their lives.
Well, this isn’t happening and from talking with people the conclusion I come to is that some people want to remain on it because it’s free money. I don’t think this is a large group of people but it does happen. As you pointed out, a lot of people don’t want to even talk about that.
I suspect that the reason that a lot of people stay on it is because they’re zombified by the drugs and can’t hold a job, or they’re already damaged by the drugs and again, can’t hold a job.
Lots of people buy into the quackery and firmly believe in the drugs so they do stay on them and the end result is that they can’t do much of anything. So the mantra heard from the lips of psychiatry and the drug companies that you “need to stay on the drugs for life” is believed and followed and we see the end result. My suspicion is that more people stay on the damaging and toxic drugs than get off them.
So, I make my point again that the system formed by psychiatry and the drug companies has a lot more to answer for than just the original harm they do to people.
But you also point out an important issue about how our society seems to have evolved to the point that it believes that the government should provide and pay for anything and everything. We’ve got a can of worms here that has no one, easy answer. Hundreds of thousands of people are affected by this. We could have a terrible disaster on our hands since there’s a certain group of politicians in this country who think that the answer to anything like this is to just stop benefits and force people to get jobs.
My question is where are the jobs that people are supposed to get? Where is the training going to come from for the 40 year old person who has never held a job in their entire lives? Are the jobs going to be jobs that people can actually make a real living at?
All of the jobs that I know about in my area are all part-time and pay only minimum wage. There are no benefits. A person has to have three part-time jobs to just make ends meet. My pay rate is more than minimum wage but my job is part time and has no benefits, other than that I get to pay into the retirement fund even though I don’t want to.
Some parents welcome a diagnosis for their child because they know that SSI will follow. People don’t want to discuss this either. Some parents willingly hand their children over to the system because it brings momey into the household. I have problems with this and want to ask these people if they know what they’re really doing to their children, since most of these kids end up on neuroleptics! And then, once the system gets its hands on the kids and begins the drugging the parents are told that their children will be taken away and put in the foster care system if they don’t agree with and continue the drugging.
It’s truly a very tangled web we’ve got ourselves in. We’re in the briarpatch and there’s no easy way out and whatever is done is going to lead to lots and lots of hardship for the people in the system. If you say the least little thing about it, you get accused of not being sympathetic to the people being harmed. We aren’t allowed to discuss all of the issues surrounding this very difficult problem and everyone remains mum. And today 1,100 people will be put on the rolls, and tomorrow 1,100 people with be put on, and Sunday 1,100 people will be put on…………………
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Thanks once more, anonymous, for your excellent and articulate comments. Your balanced view on this issue amazingly incisive and greatly needed, in my opinion.
On the one hand, you have people who have NO idea what it is to experience extreme mental/emotional states and to then be traumatized by the supposed “helping” system, and they portray everyone on SSI and/or SSD as freeloading deadbeats. On the other hand, you have the constant “gimme, gimme” crowd who plays up victimhood to the hilt and for whom the government (i.e., working taxpayers) can NEVER do enough.
We need the kind of realism, compassion and balance your comments reflect.
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I feel deeply for you
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I don’t understand this one sentence comment.
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It isn’t an ideal scenario but people are not facilitated to live/work as best they can and are being seriously and increasingly mistreated.
I stand beside my fellow survivors who cannot work sufficiently and consistently enough to sustain themselves, I believe they should be supported but I’d like to see a different system of support for sure. One which isn’t black and white where people are forced into a position of they must be able to do everything or nothing. It’s not great for people with physical or learning disability problems neither, and it has been shown that people defined as mentally ill are the worst off of all.
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Joanna
I agree totally. I don’t know how the system is going to be revamped since so many people are going to be harmed no matter what is done. It saddens me to even think too much about it. And you are right that there is nothing black or white about it.
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Steven, I also greatly appreciate your comments on this issue, especially from your unique perspective as one who has overcome the damage the system has meted out and now has an “inside” view. Kudos, and keep up the good work!
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Thanks Stephen.
This is why I wish survivor groups/leaders would have these discussions because these are real world issues which tie into psychiatry but too often it’s ignored or people are chastised for being in receipt of benefits. That doesn’t help. So if we can pull apart psychiatry with a fine tooth comb why are we so reluctant to speak of how people manage to live? And do so without prejudice or shaming.
Many people defined as mentally ill in receipt of welfare whether in or out of work don’t feel able to speak out for very good reasons, they are more silenced than people with physical disabilities so I view it as a duty of activists in better positions to speak out on these issues.
Diagnosis helps access support whether anyone likes it or not, that’s how it’s currently structured, it needs to be different so support is accessed without that and there needs to be a wider range of outcomes other than full-time work.
Not everyone can do full-time work, and part-time work here unless well paid still needs to be topped up with benefits, but rules have made that harder. Ditto for anyone attempting to become self-employed. So, we have a system which dictates all or nothing.
Some people take up voluntary work and either don’t have the confidence to go back into paid employment or can’t manage the stress of it. Maybe chosen voluntary work should be an outcome for some people.
Then there’s the issue of training/education, how accessible that it is. Not everyone can work and study at the same time to improve their prospects.
Job coaches where they exist have a very low bar for psych survivors, shelf stacking, and there’s so little employment support. We have a high level of unemployment where 100’s are chasing a single post where a person with massive gaps on their CV simply cannot compete. In retail, short term sick leave for physical reasons can get you the sack, they don’t tolerate a few weeks or longer for mental health.
Some people ended up in psychiatry at a young age before they ever established a career, it’s especially hard for them.
It’s a complex picture which requires sophisticated solutions, but until groups, orgs, activists and survivors face this head on we don’t progress.
We need to take the bull by the horns and come up with alternative systems and not leave our governments to it. Here physical disability activists have led the way, they produce reports etc, they are proactive, we could learn a lot from them. Whereas psych survivor groups do bugger all.
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I don’t think anyone here is being ‘chastised’ for being on welfare. It’s just a fact that welfare is a controversial transfer of wealth, and no one on welfare, anywhere, can avoid getting the message that society sends, that message is, society would rather you not be on welfare.
I’ve heard a lot about low wage jobs and ‘shelf stacking’ and ‘low bars’, starting at the bottom is common in all jobs. I agree with you that there is way, way too much ‘all or nothing’ type of rules to welfare systems, and that there should be far more scope for the government to allow part time work combined with welfare, so people don’t fear being cut off welfare if they get a job. Centralized control, bureaucracies, government diktats, is just par for the course when a society has decided to do away with private charity and replace it with government charity, so it should not surprise anyone that it’s a rough ride having these tough rules imposed from central government control. But I agree, I totally believe that if we are going to have welfare, we ought not penalize people for getting part time jobs.
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Joanna
Once again I’m in total agreement with you.
It’s all good and fine to debate and carry on all we want about the DSM5, and diagnoses, and whether peer workers have gone over to the “dark side.” We’re missing the boat however, when we don’t talk about the day to day, real life issues that face people who’ve been harmed by the so-called “mental health” system.
I’ve noticed that not much is said about what we’ve talked about here this morning. As you point out, all of this is very delicate and too many people always want to bring shame into the discussion instead of looking at the bare facts and then working to do something to come up with a better situation and system.
I do know about some of the things that people struggle with since I sit down and listen to people each and every day. I myself was once a person with a profession, a house on a lake, a nice truck that I could drive anywhere in, and I was a person who could take vacations. I could spend five dollars on a gee-gaw I wanted without having to worry about whether the electric bill would get paid or if the cat would have food and litter if I spent the money. I had no financial worries and could afford to buy most anything that I wanted.
Then the bad years came and everything in my life changed. I got my little diagnosis and ended up in the state hospital. I learned what people must struggle with on a daily basis. I will never have the life and things that I once had before the bad years came along. I’ve learned to plan ahead and to pinch pennies, and to sacrifice for the important things like a roof over my head and some food on the table. I don’t have SSI but must live on Social Security retirement that I had to take early, which meant that my check is not as big as it would have been if I’d waited three more years. What it boils down to is that they are one and the same. I could state that I get SSI for all that’s said and done. There’s no reason for me to make a distinction, unless I dindn’t want the “shame” that sticks to SSI in the eyes of many. It is what it is and there’s no reason to try to make it otherwise. A rose is still a rose by any other name.
Yes, these are the things that need looking at, along with the DSM5 and all the other things.
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Yes Stephen this is what I’ve been trying to say for some time, that it’s pointless focusing on forced psych treatment and diagnosis to the exclusion of social justice and how people live. Whatever our party politics or preferred political system is there are some common points of interest we could work on. If we don’t, it will be our undoing as a movement.
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You’re preaching to the choir. Any movement devoid of social justice is no true movement at all. For some reason however it’s not very popular.
When I was a high school religion teacher I had to teach a course on Social Justice. It was never popular and all of the complaints I received about whatever I taught (three different courses) always came from the parents of the students taking my Social Justice class. Of course, this would make sense, since I taught in upscale Roman Catholic schools filled with students from the best neighborhoods in New Orleans! There was a smattering of rich and well off African American students, some very rich students who were originally from Central and South America, but the majority were White. Every group complained about it by the way.
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“Any movement devoid of social justice is no true movement at all”.
Completely agree Stephen, I think that’s the best quote of the week for me, and I’m sadly unsurprised by your teaching experience.
It’s a question of how we do we get our respective movements to wake up to this and manage the vitriol it can illicit from those who don’t wish to see social justice or recognise it’s part of the same struggle with psychiatry? Answers on a post card! Here, some of us refer to psychiatric activism as a social movement
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It’s never ‘pointless’ to work on ending forced psychiatry. ‘Social justice’ is a rubbery leftist term that a lot of people will never agree on, including me.
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Ending forced psychiatry is definitely not a “pointless” issue nor will it ever be. I would include it as one of the basics that always must be discussed since it’s the very thing that usually starts this whole process off. In my view of “social justice” ending the power of psychiatry period must always be addressed as a basic given. If I had my way, psychiatry would be removed from Medicine as a specialty or discipline.
I had a supervisor whose father was a surgeon. She said that as a young child she was allowed to accompany her father on his Saturday rounds at the hospital. One day there was another doctor sitting at the table in the lounge reading the paper and her father leaned over and said, “You see that man at the table? He’s a psychiatrist. We let him think he’s a doctor by allowing him to sit at the table with the rest of us!” I would remove it from Medicine. I’ll probably catch a lot of flack for this but so be it.
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Oh definitely. One of the constant themes in my mind is the betrayal of all of us on the part of the real doctors. The real doctors tolerate these quacks in their midst. I would love to understand why psychiatry doesn’t take more of a hammering from the real doctors.
I think it is important to remember that 50% of doctors graduated in the bottom half of their class.
That is a Yogi Berra type joke.
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People with disabilities or defined as mentally ill disproportionately remain in lower level jobs and experience high levels of unemployment. ‘The message’ as you put it is not quite as benign as you state.Private charity..that is amusing.
However I’ve finally found a single point we agree on regarding part-time working. Way hey!
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“Private charity..that is amusing.”
About as amusing as private doctors seem today in the UK.
About as amusing as private haircuts are going to seem in the year 2100 in Britain.
I can just see it now, ‘salon service users’, ‘national hair service’.
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“”He’s a psychiatrist. We let him think he’s a doctor by allowing him to sit at the table with the rest of us!” I would remove it from Medicine. I’ll probably catch a lot of flack for this but so be it.””
Hi Stephen,
I just wanted to provide you another viewpoint to consider. As much as I despise what psychiatry stands for, I do not want to see the profession banned.
There is a neuropsychiatrist/sleep specialist not in my area whom I would go in a heartbeat to solve my sleeping issues if I was able to. Not only is he knowledgeable about modern medicine but he is very knowledgeable about supplements that are helpful. I also know that he has greatly helped a few people who were on psych meds who had trouble with withdrawal issues.
I realize he is not the usual psychiatrist but I would take him in a heartbeat over the two sleep specialists I have dealt with including one, whom I feel tried to bully me into taking psych meds and seeing a psychiatrist.
Also, keep in mind that 80% of all psych meds are prescribed by non psychiatrists. So when a person gets put on one by probably their primary care doctor, they are going to be left hanging big time. But yet, no one would suggest banning primary care doctors for obvious reasons.
I just feel the best way to deal with our cause is dry up the supply of customers all these doctors have alot less opportunity to prescribe these meds willy nilly. Force them to change whether they want to or not.
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I wouldn’t want any profession banned. I think people should be able to become drug dealers, quacks of any kind, provided its all voluntary and society doesn’t give that profession special legal powers to force itself on people and into their bodies.
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Seconded
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Agreed!
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“”Oh definitely. One of the constant themes in my mind is the betrayal of all of us on the part of the real doctors. The real doctors tolerate these quacks in their midst. I would love to understand why psychiatry doesn’t take more of a hammering from the real doctors. “”
Hi Anonymous,
Doctor learn very early on that if they tattle on another doctor, it will destroy their career. An example of this in my area was that many doctors knew a big time quack psychiatrist was quite dangerous but did nothing about it. It took years get him out of the profession.
Also, if a psychiatrist labels someone mentally, sadly many non psychiatrists assume it is true and continue to treat the patient like crap. So it seems in this situation, they don’t seem to think psychiatrists are quacks.
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Thanks AA, good comment. Yes its a scary thought that we might need a real doctor who thinks there is nothing wrong with psychiatry.
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This has been an interesting discussion but unfortunately veryone avoided the topic of the NYT article and the claims:
“Patients were much less likely to end up back in psychiatric hospitals and were arrested less often. Use of outpatient treatment significantly increased, as did refills of medication. Costs to the mental health system and Medicaid of caring for these patients dropped by half or more.”
A co-author, Dr. Marvin Swartz, head of Duke’s social and community psychiatry division, said a study in 2010 by the team found that patients “were less likely to return to the hospital, if they went to the hospital they had shorter lengths of stay, they were more likely to be adherent to medication, and generally they functioned better in the community.”
I would be interested in people thoughts on this–which I suppose must be speculation since we don’t have the study. I publicly opposed Kendra’s law. I did it on the basis of the study they used to support it. There was a control group. The patients who got AOT actually got essential resources such as housing as compared to the control group who didn’t.It was obviously flawed yet it was used to support Kendra’s Law.
. The director from Bazelon said the what made the difference described in Times was the “array of services” provided not the coercion–in other words not the forced drugging. But we are not told what the services were. On the other hand, the Times cites a couple dramatic cases in which patients were engaging in very self destructive behavior until they were AOTed. Their families were understandably relieved they were AOTed.
Obviously it was not the drugs that made the difference but these patients and their families–one of whom is constantly popping up on my FB and hectoring me–are going to BELIEVE it is the drugs. And others will say even if it isn’t, the AOT still helped.
What do WE say?.
The above is an important discussion but coming up with a response to the Times is also important and urgent–yet no one has addressed it. Everyone has changed the topic to a related issue that is important but not the one that calls for a response NOW. Please look at the headline on top. NY Times: Forced AOT WORKS.
Seth
Seth Farber, Ph.D.
http://www.sethHfarber.com
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Write to the New York Times reporter who wrote the story, ask her why she excluded the voice of the very people who the laws target.
[email protected]
Ms. Pam Belluck, science journalist, author of a book on a Nantucket doctor soon to be produced into a big time major TV drama, no doubt millionaire, journalist who doesn’t think a quote from the people on the other side of the forced needle is necessary when writing a story about forced drugging laws…. journalist who privileges DJ Jaffe’s voice over ours. Write her.
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And ‘in hospital’ self defense violence is perfectly understandable. Occasionally those carrying out forced drugging get socked in the face during a take-down. What do they expect? Us to just lie down and take it? I think that is what they expect.
Anonymous, isn’t it strange that society accepts without question that those in power have the authority to arrest, hospitalize, drug, electroshock, isolate, restrain, etc. a citizen yet there is so little tolerance for violence when it flows up from the bottom of the power structure.
I’ve been seriously assaulted and battered by the psychiatric squad. Yet, when I threw a cup of coffee at a nurse and slammed a door in her face, I was charged and convicted of assault. Now, I’m not condoning my behaviour; I’m just asking that it be seen in the context of what I endured.
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Yes, it is telling of how subhuman the targets of psychiatric assault are viewed, that the psychiatric ‘nurses’ (apologies to real nurses) union would carry on and complain about petty assaults to the forced brain invasion squad. I don’t condone any counterattacks on those who initiate violence against us, mocha cappuccino or otherwise, the difference is you got held legally responsible for your assault, while the forced drugging goons hide behind color of law, cowards. In the outside world when a date rapist slips a drug into a drink at a bar, (engineering his target’s compliance through forced drugging) he’s seen as a heinously invasive criminal, but behind the walls of forced psychiatry, using chemicals to break the will of strangers is considered ‘ peer reviewed best practice’. Of course! when the ‘peers’ ‘reviewing’ the activities of their ‘peers’ all share the same worldview, it’s ‘SCIENCE’, don’t you know?!!! Their skin and its propensity to suffer coffee burn, is more legally protected than the blood/brain barriers of the people they enraged by initiating ESCALATORY violence against, in the first instance.
This gets back to my whole anti forced drugging thesis, forced drugging is ALWAYS escalation of violence by definition, because those targeted for forced drugging don’t have their attackers’ blood brain barriers as their target. A blow, a coffee, is the best the target could ever throw at them in such a controlled environment as a forced psychiatry facility (also known as a ‘psych ward’ for those still giving oxygen to government defined terminology). Therefore, those who stoop to entering the neuron, are always the ones playing the dirtiest. That’s irrefutable, unassailable, and the centerpiece of the human rights argument against invasive neuronal rape.
Maybe one day they will ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ about the fact they commit human rights abuses for a living. We can only hope.
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SethF, you quote from the article:
Patients were much less likely to end up back in psychiatric hospitals and were arrested less often. Use of outpatient treatment significantly increased, as did refills of medication. Costs to the mental health system and Medicaid of caring for these patients dropped by half or more.
There are a few problems with this analysis:
– Patients who go off psych meds usually do so without the support of a doctor. They tend to do it cold turkey. The resulting rebound psychosis is a well-established phenomenon. This explains a large portion of the re-hospitalized.
– This also applies to the arrest rate. As we all know from listening to NAMI, individuals that “support” patients are firmly satisfied with the medical model and view any non-medicated patient with suspicion. Thus, an action that a normal could get away with is grounds for arrest for a nutter.
– Patients who don’t participate in the system are dumped back into real life with no support. Without adequate housing and food, normals would be acting strangely too.
– Use of outpatient treatment increasing: this isn’t an improvement. Ditto refills of medication.
– Costs to the mental health system may indeed be lowered by AOT in the short term. It’s much easier to make people obedient when they’re drugged. The trouble is, though, that in the long term, this cost saving will disappear. First, there will need to be treatment of all the physical side effects of long-term use of the meds and that’s expensive. Then we’d have to factor in the relative costs of keeping someone drugged and out of the work force permanently as opposed to short-term emergency intervention and then recovery and return to self sustainability.
– Lastly, studies like this are put out by researchers like E. Fuller Torrey. Torrey is an admitted perjurer (he says surprisingly candidly in Surviving Schizophrenia that he exaggerates a patient’s dangerousness in order to commit someone — his defence is that everybody does that) and is notorious for manipulating statistics to reflect his own pro-forced drugging agenda.
All in all, this article doesn’t impress me and I believe it should be viewed skeptically.
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“It would probably be difficult to find any American Psychiatrist working with the mentally ill who has not, at a minimum, exaggerated the dangerousness of a mentally ill person’s behavior to obtain a judicial order for commitment.” – E. Fuller Torrey, M.D.
More here:
http://psychrights.org/force_of_law.htm
Duane
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Torrey’s brain bank. Innocent human beings labeled with psychiatric labels like you and me, who wound up having their remains desecrated, brains in jars, in the custody of forced drugging lobbyist E Fuller Torrey:
“From the mid-1990s to 2003, Stanley Medical Research Institute used a network of “brain harvesters” in Maine and three other states to collect hundreds of brains for use in the study of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The brains were packed in dry ice and shipped by FedEx to the institute.”
“The practices of a prestigious medical research institute that studies schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are on trial in Maine, where the organization collected at least 99 brains from organ donors.
Anne Mozingo, of York, contends that the Stanley Medical Research Institute and a man working on its behalf removed her late husband’s entire brain without her consent ”
http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2011/09/22/brain-collection-practices-on-trial/
Thomas Szasz in his take-down of Torrey from 2004 ‘Psychiatric Fraud and Force: A critique of E. Fuller Torrey’:
“That is not what Torrey advocates for patients whom he categorizes as “severely mentally ill”: He advocates deceiving them and compelling them to be drugged with chemicals he deems good for them. In short, he talks medicine but practices fraud and force— and is proud of it. The Washington Post staff writer Peter Carlson (2001) explained, In recent years, Torrey has emerged as America’s most prominent spokesman for the idea that the government should compel the insane to take the antipsychotic drugs that can relieve their illness. A million Americans who suffer from schizophrenia or manic-depressive illness are homeless, and thousands commit violent crimes, Torrey says, because they don’t take the drugs that could relieve their delusions and hallucinations. They don’t know they’re sick….Torrey says that he not only preaches forced treatment, he has practiced it. He tells the story of a homeless schizophrenic he treated in a Washington women’s shelter in 1984. Hearing voices [and so forth] . . . she refused Torrey’s offer of anti-psychotic drugs but asked him if he had any pills for her sinus problems.He gave her antipsychotic pills and told her they were sinus medicine. His subterfuge violated the code of medical ethics, he admits….“I substantially improved the quality of her life and got her into a house,” he says.
jhp.sagepub.com/content/44/4/416.full.pdf
Says it all. And we can also learn from Torrey collaborator DJ Jaffe, a person without any personal experience of the problems that get labeled ‘serious mental illness’, a person without any medical credentials, who did this…
In fact, DJ Jaffe, a collaborator of Pete Earley’s, put out a newsletter some years ago encouraging parents to ‘turn over the furniture’ before calling police, so it would look like the ‘loved one’ was more violent than they are to enable more rapid forced psychiatric commitment.
A grossly irresponsible move that could get a person with a psychiatric label shot or tasered to death. But, that’s what the forced drugging lobby does, they put the safety and lives of people labeled ‘mentally ill’ second to their fanatic desires to have government haul everyone away for forced drugging.
Here is the newsletter Mr. DJ Jaffe put out, the most reckless and disgusting NAMI newsletter ever written, it’s infamous. If you haven’t seen it, here is a copy:
http://www.patrisser.com/family/JaffeTurnOverFurniture.htm
” the fact is that some families have learned to ‘turn over the furniture’ before calling the police. Many police require individuals with neurobiological disorders to be imminently dangerous before treating the person against their will. If the police see furniture disturbed they will usually conclude that the person is imminently dangerous.”
DJ Jaffe advocates lying to police, to make the family member look ‘imminently dangerous’. What could go wrong? cops armed to the teeth with guns and tasers, and fake scenes of furniture turned over!
The forced drugging lobbyists are true fanatics.
If you want to understand more about the forced drugging lobby, see this page:
http://www.patrisser.com/family/TACandTorreyLie.html
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anonymous,
It reads like a horror novel.
Duane
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It sure does Duane… the horror of what the American forced drugging lobby has been up to. Plenty more where that came from. The lines they’ve crossed, ensure the opposition they’ll meet will be indefatigable. Few people alive today can lay claim to being so despised by the group they ostensibly exist to be ‘advocates’ for.
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Hi Duane,
That is exactly what happened to someone I know who had been on antipsychotics long term. She asked the psychiatrist she was seeing to change her medication because it was making her sick, he refused to do so and blamed in her mental illness. When she became understandably belligerent, the bleeping idiot took that as a sign of aggression and got her involuntarily committed. She did get her medication changed in the hospital but it was a disgrace it came to that
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There’s a tendency to blame everything under the sun on “mental illness”… especially strong, yet understandable emotions.
It’s as if many of these docs are unable to appreciate emotions. And they’re supposed to be experts in this area.
Go figure.
Duane
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Duane, the quote from Torrey is almost unbelievable!
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Robb3,
I agree. It’s surreal.
Duane
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Thanks, Duane. That is exactly the quote I was referring to.
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Sure.
This quote by Torrey ought to make anyone’s blood feel cold – whether they have ever been given a psychiatric diagnosis or not.
It is a threat to *everyone’s* freedom.
Duane
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“I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Duane
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Lets see and hear from some people subjected to coerced psychiatry and hear there view on this.
Coerced Depot injection robs artist of her creativity http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBJBMXw7-fw
This is what the studies don’t show. Listen to this woman.
Ryan, member of MindFreedom, describing his coercive psychiatry experience .
http://www.yourepeat.com/watch/?v=JkdaUWeausg
Children are always forced cause the adults in there lives make them take pills, listen to them speak link below.
Check it out 20/20: Generation Meds (Foster Children Being Over Medicated)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52edzID_CwA
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Barbara and Michael Biasotti , let your child tell her story of psychiatric drugging. DARE YOU.
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Looking at the comments on the “Mad in America” page I feel the outrage and shock voiced over “forced treatment” is way out of proportion to the actual number of people experiencing court – ordered drug treatment – a number which is miniscule… The orders typically run for only 6 months… and it is not only difficult , but nigh impossible to get on the “Kendra’s Law” type program in the U.S.A. , even where the program actually exists and is funded –
All the people raging against it? Were any of them actually on the program?..
. A person can even refuse medical treatment in the hospital and get released without being medicated…And do.
Most hospitals will not go through the trouble of getting a court order and prefer to just let people back out onto the street… How many homeless people are actually medicated against their will?… I’d say none. The shots are thousands of dallars a month.. And if you are not getting a shot – who is there to force you to take it?
In New York if someone is on the court ordered treatment and they run into the street… No one goes and picks them up… My girlfriend;s son , who was on the mandated treatment… just left town…
It’s actually hard to get forced treatment… So i wondler why people are so upset about it.
Emily above supports my statement that very few people, proportionately, experience forced treatment.
And the folks against it never admit that it helps some people.
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You do not have your facts correct. Many people have been on indefinite involuntary commitment orders.
Google Ray Sanford who was forced to have ECT on an outpatient against his will until Mind Freedom successfully fought to reverse that.
A friend who was admittedly belligerent when a psychiatrist wouldn’t take her complaints seriously about a med she wanted switched got her forcibly committed against her will.
People I worked with to fight my state’s involuntary commit laws who are in the mental health system were terrified. Several of them had suicidal thoughts and didn’t tell their therapists out of fear of being locked up. They knew better than anyone what these laws would look like.
Uh, if you’re in the hospital and refuse meds, most of the time, doctors will get a court order to force you to take them.
If it helps people, why haven’t there been personal testimonials? I know people don’t want to admit to having mental illness but all the success stories seem to be family members who swore it helped their loved on.
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Things are different where I live. Psychiatrist go to court each and every week to obtain court orders to keep “patients” in the hospital where I work. Twice a week they hike their butts one block from the hospital and obtain all of the court orders that they desire for stays of anywhere from 45 to 180 days.
People caught up with the law are forced to take the toxic drugs and if they don’t their mental health probation can be revoked and they have to start all over again. The progabion is for 5 years.
There is plenty to be upset about, maybe not in your state but in plenty of other states. This is why we’re upset. And if you don’t watch out, psychiatry’s net of pathology just might trap you too. They’re trying to pathologize all of human experience so eventually you’ll get your chance to end up in the system if you don’t stand up and fight for those of us who’ve been or are still in the system. It is in your best self-interest to do so.
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PsyckUps falsely claims:
“In New York if someone is on the court ordered treatment and they run into the street… No one goes and picks them up…”
A 2013 New York Post article proves you wrong…
“Mentally ill roundup plan”
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/scoop_the_nuts_TujGFMPDFLCfDgxDqmjHIL
“And the folks against it never admit that it helps some people.”
Opponents of the human rights abuse that is forced psychiatry are ready to admit that a hypothetical forced bariatric surgery law would produce at least some fat people who felt they were ‘helped’. A law forcing gamblers in Las Vegas to show financial solvency before being allowed to gamble, would produce some people who felt it was ‘helpful’ too.
We are pro human rights, pro liberty, and are not in favor of ripping away human rights on a wide scale, destroying some people’s lives, in order to produce those who you say are ‘helped’.
Proportion? Very few people are executed in the United States yet the anti death penalty movement exists. Why should it matter how many people are having their human rights abused, when it comes to the question of being opposed to human rights abuses? The government raping just one citizen’s brain, makes every citizen’s brain vulnerable to forced drugging assault.
Your misinformation spreading might work elsewhere, but not here. We actually know our stuff here. Thousands of people are being subjected to these laws in NY state annually, and thousands more nationwide.
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““And the folks against it never admit that it helps some people.””
Yeah? Alright, fine. I’ll say that being psych warded was “helpful” and I’ll be “thankful”.
Incarceration number 6 of 7. New Jersey, which I call Hell Jersey (those people got it BAD, yikes).
What was so helpful was three meals a day. THANKS! beep beep.
P.S. I gotta add that NY, the severely mentally retarded state that WENT OUT OF THEIR WAY to take my kids, accused me of being a terrorist.
NOT an exaggeration. It would take a lot of space for me to discuss what it’s like to have government “label” me as a “terrorist”. Let’s just say … I know more about TORTURE and HOMICIDALITY & WAR and HELL than I EVER needed, wanted or intended to “learn” about.
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Mental health laws may be different here in British Columbia, of course, but they don’t need a court order for forced outpatient drugging. The procedure is the same as for forced hospitalization; the doctor has to assert that someone (a) has a mental disorder; and (b) is capable of deterioration. “Capable of deterioration”??? Can you imagine a more rubbery concept? Anyway, I know Torrey et al would have you believe AOT only applies to those who are naked and running down the street with a meat cleaver. In fact, though, it can happen to anyone unfortunate enough to be psychiatrically labelled. It happened to me and it was more traumatic and soul-destroying than inpatient treatment. Your post is pretty dismissive. Maybe you should listen to some psych survivors.
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Millions of people have lost their right to own their own body under forced psychiatry laws worldwide over the past few generations. The threat is omnipresent, and it is outrageous that a spurious belief system, psychiatry, is being forced on citizens against their will.
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American society in general freely accepts psychiatry and all of its lies. They haven’t been forced to this acceptance but have been led to it like sheeple.
I can’t find anyone outside in the general public who believes that the drugs are toxic and bad and and everyone defends to the end the right of psychiatrists to drug people into oblivian. Even my friends tell me that they’re going to continue taking their antidepressants and when I ask them why they say that they’re afraid not to take them! The son of one of my friends is on a neuroleptic and when I told the parent what the drug does to people the person just sat there and finally asked what could possibly be done, other than to force the boy to take the drug?!
I think society is just fine believing all of this.
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