NY Times: Forced Outpatient Treatment “Works”

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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!

Disregard, I asked about something I had misread.

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

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.

https://www.madinamerica.com/2013/04/community-treatment-orders-forced-treatment-dont-work/

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….

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?

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..

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

I feel deeply for you

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.

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!

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.

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!

“”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.

“”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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Thanks, Duane. That is exactly the quote I was referring to.

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

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.

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.