Legislator’s Rush to Implement Increased Mental Health Services Based on No Data from Shooting at Sandy Hook

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The rush to institute increased mental health services in Connecticut, initiated in response to the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, is troubling for a number of reasons.

The most obvious problem with the rush to legislate costly mental health services, based on the horrific events at Newtown, is that there is no publicly available data to support the need for increased services.

The 6,000-page State Police Report is, well, embarrassing.  Beyond the great majority of the report having been redacted, the information that is provided about Adam Lanza’s mental health treatment ends in 2007 – five years before the shooting incident.

But, even the mental health information that was provided about Adam Lanza is limited and, based on recently released information, contradictory.  First, though, it’s important to understand what was made available in the State Police Report.

According to the report, Nancy Lanza was actively involved in getting her son all the mental health services available.  Between the ages of 5-15 Adam received extensive and continual mental health services.  During that time, Lanza had seen several psychiatrists, participated in school mental health specialty programs, was prescribed psychiatric drugs and was even treated at two hospitals, Lehey Hospital in Massachusetts, and the psychiatric department at Danbury Hospital.

In fact, anyone reviewing the limited number of records available would agree that Adam Lanza was not a child who fell through the cracks of mental health services. On the contrary, it appears that Lanza received the best mental health treatment money could buy.

The question that one cannot help but ask is, if Lanza received the best mental health could offer, did that mental health “treatment” contribute to Lanza’s violent behavior?  Let me explain.

According to the Police Report of the incident, between October of 2006 and February of 2007, Lanza was treated at the Yale Child Study Center where he was diagnosed by Dr. Robert King as suffering from a “profound Autism Spectrum Disorder” and “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.”

A nurse at the Yale Child Study Center, Kathleen Koenig, prescribed “a small dose” of Celexa (an antidepressant) to Adam. Immediately after taking the drug, Nancy Lanza contacted Koenig to report that she believed Adam was experiencing an adverse reaction to the drug, telling Koenig that Adam was “unable to raise his arm.”

Rather than advise Nancy Lanza to discontinue the mind-altering drug, Koenig told investigators that she “attempted to convince Nancy Lanza that the medication was not causing any purported symptoms.” Koenig further told investigators that to her reasoning Nancy Lanza was “not receptive.”

After reviewing the adverse reactions associated with Celexa, it appears that it is Koenig who is being unreasonable and completely uninformed. According to the side effects associated with Celexa, “stiff, rigid muscles” is listed as one of the serious side effects, which certainly appears to be what Nancy Lanza was trying to explain to Koenig.

Because Nancy Lanza chose to discontinue the Celexa and never returned to the Yale Child Study Center, Koenig labeled Nancy Lanza as “non-compliant.”

Until a few weeks ago, the above was the extent of the detailed information available about Lanza’s mental health treatment.  On March 17th, The New Yorker magazine ran an article by Andrew Solomon titled The Reckoning.  Solomon had landed the first interview with Peter Lanza, Adam’s father.

Although there was very little in the way of new information, the author did reveal that Adam Lanza had been prescribed a second antidepressant, Lexapro.  This is important information as it conflicts with information provided by Yale Child Study Center’s Kathleen Koenig.

According to Solomon, while seeing Koenig, “Adam tried Lexapro,” which had been prescribed by his primary psychiatrist, Paul Fox.  Solomon reports that Nancy Lanza also contacted Koenig about this adverse reaction, complaining that “on the third morning he complained of dizziness. By that afternoon he was disoriented, his speech was disjointed, he couldn’t even figure out how to open his cereal box. He was sweating profusely…it was actually dripping off his hands. He said he couldn’t think…he was practically vegetative.” Nancy Lanza also wrote later that same day “he did nothing but sit in his dark room staring at nothing.”

Wow, certainly sounds like an adverse reaction to a drug and, after reviewing the side effects associated with Lexapro, dizziness and sweating are, in fact, adverse reactions to the drug. But what did Koenig have to say about Nancy Lanza’s concerns?

According to Solomon, “Adam stopped taking Lexapro and never took psychotropics again, which worried Koenig.”  Solomon reports that Koenig wrote, “while Adam likes to believe that he’s completely logical, in fact, he’s not all, and I’ve called him on it.” Solomon further reports that Koenig told him “he had a biological disorder and needed medication.” “I’ve told him,” said Koenig, “he’s living in a box right now, and the box will only get smaller over time if he doesn’t get some treatment.”

There are several problems with the information provided in Solomon’s article. First, recall that after Adam’s adverse reaction to Celexa Koenig told investigators that Adam did not return for treatment to the Yale Child Study Center.  Now, Solomon is reporting that Adam not only was prescribed Celexa, but also Lexapro and had adverse reactions to both.

Why, if Koenig was involved in Adam’s follow-up treatment, did she fail to provide investigators with the information about the adverse reaction to the prescribed Lexapro?

Additionally, while Koenig believed Adam had “a biological disorder” there is no scientific/medical data to support that any psychiatric disorder is an objective, confirmable abnormality.  Apparently Koenig is unfamiliar with the adverse reactions of prescribed psychiatric drugs, and also the subjective nature of psychiatric diagnosing.

As an interesting side note The New Yorker’s Solomon, although writing about the serious adverse reactions associated with the antidepressant, Lexapro, failed to disclose that his father, Howard Solomon, is the CEO of Forest Laboratories, the pharmaceutical company that makes Lexapro and Celexa.

At the end of the day, the argument comes full circle. That Adam Lanza was prescribed and taking two psychiatric mind-altering drugs in 2007 does little to explain his murderous actions five years later.  But based just on this limited information, it appears that Lanza had an extensive psychiatric drug history one which the powers that be don’t want made public.

It also is abundantly clear, despite the media’s attempts to somehow demonize Nancy Lanza, this was a mother fully engaged in finding help for her son’s obvious behavioral and emotional problems.  Frankly, what is becoming clear is that Nancy Lanza tried to work with the mental health “guessperts,” only to be repeatedly dismissed for raising concerns about Adam’s “treatment.”

Given that the last five years of Adam Lanza’s mental health records still are being withheld, Legislators in Connecticut and throughout the nation have no information that would signal a need for costly increased mental health services.

Based on what little information has been provided about Adam Lanza’s mental health care, it appears that he had access to the best.  And if Adam Lanza was receiving the best mental health care services, what, then, does that suggest about the kind of psychiatric treatment available?

Of course, without full disclosure of his medical/mental health records, there is no way to fully understand what, if any, changes to mental health services are needed.  This is a disservice to the people of Connecticut and any other state legislating increased mental health services in response to the Sandy Hook shooting.

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

45 COMMENTS

  1. Sheila, Thank you for this great article and all the hard efforts you and your colleagues have made to fight for children preyed on by biopsychiatry with bogus DSM stigmas and toxic drugs both individually and through Able Child.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/03/who-is-ivan-lopez_n_5084315.html?ir=Crime&utm_campaign=040314&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Alert-crime&utm_content=Title#65_boehner-no-question-mentally-ill-people-shouldnt-have-guns

    As with the latest Fort Hood shooting, the first question that comes to anyone who has any awareness of this horrible trend when another school/public shooting occurs, is what toxic psychiatric drugs was the shooter taking?

    That’s what makes it so vile when Obama and other government officials focus on the bogus mental illness scapegoating ploy to refuse to investigate biopsychiatry (or rather admit the truth) and its life destroying stigmas and lethal drugs and/or the NRA and its insistence on making guns available to one and all except those targeted by biopsychiatry as scapegoats because it’s all about the billions made that help line their campaign donations and individual pockets while leading to more lucrative jobs in business for our so called elected officials.

    The latest shooting shows that psychiatrists cannot predict who will be violent per the articles at MIA and elsewhere since the latest shooter was judged to not be violent despite the dangerous drugs he was on by a psychiatrist! Note, how they are all retrospectively trying to make him out to be very mentally ill when he was sad because of the death of his mother. Oh, I forgot, grieving the death of a loved one is a mental illness in the vile, junk science DSM 5, declared invalid pseudoscience even by Dr. Thomas Insel, Head of the NIMH. The fact that these fraudulent stigmas can still be doled out to push lucrative lethal drugs and used to rob Americans of all their human, civil, democratic rights is so outrageous, pernicious and evil, it boggles my mind.

    But, the state of affairs in so called democracies should be no surprise given that fascist governments like the U.S. controlled by psychopaths now have created biopsychiatry to be our pretend moral arbitrators to push their malignant, sadistic, murderous agenda on one and all. This is what Dr. Thomas Szasz warned about in his book, The Therapeutic State, so they no longer make any real pretense that biopsychiatry has anything to do with health at all, but rather about using their own violence and weapons of poison pills/ECT, brain washing/damaging “treatments” in general, discrediting, silencing, ostracizing and destroying any dissidents just like China and Soviet Russia under Mao Tse Tung and Stalin!

    Anyway, despite the never ending bad news for anyone familiar with the mental death profession, your dedication to fighting for the right to be free from this evil menace for our children and parents is a very noble endeavor and I greatly appreciate it. This is especially true as the therapeutic state is becoming so oppressive it is robbing children from their parents based on bogus psychiatric claims and kidnappings as described in other MIA articles here.

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  2. Sheila, Thank You
    ” ……..it appears that Lanza had an extensive psychiatric drug history one which the powers that be don’t want made public.”
    Is that psychiatric drug history sealed with all the power the governing pharma psychiatric medical gulag maker foot soldiers can muster . Can heaven and earth be moved to find it ? Is there no whistle blower that cares about humanity ??? Is this another to big to fail ?
    Does it warrant scapegoating and selling down the river a growing population of diagnosed treated and formerly treated human beings unjustly subjecting them to increasing rigor while a brainwashed general population helps serve up more victims even their children while they feel immune to this civilizations man made living nightmare maker Moloch Idol while its designers count money and crave power as the people not so gently sleep. Do we want to be deceived. Are we helpless.??????? Should not truth be the light that sweeps this nightmare away ? But if most all the people reading about what is true are afraid or paid off or overly drugged or fantasizing what then ?
    Fred

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  3. Hi, Sheila!

    Good to see you blogging for MIA! I remember communicating with you years ago on the “Ritalin Death” website – you have been a great advocate and helped a lot of people come to grips with this huge mass of corruption and propaganda.

    I’ve had very similar thoughts about Adam and many of the shooters – the call is always for more “mental health care,” and yet almost all of them have had extensive mental health care prior to the event. What’s that definition of insanity: repeating the same action and expecting a different result? But our culture has been so mesmerized with this mythology of magical cures for “mental illness” (whatever THAT means!) that even the most obvious manifestations of this “treatment’s” ineffectiveness (and at times dangerousness) is instantly and instinctively suppressed. It really is more like a religion than a medical specialty.

    Great article – I hope your viewpoint gets the public airing it deserves.

    —- Steve

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  4. Slowly but surely the news about the real dangers of psychiatric medication is seeping out. Today’s or rather yesterday’s shooter was on Ambien among other drugs. In the past twenty years I have not been able to find a single bit of evidence that these drugs have been of any real substantial value to persons. So the rush should actually be to decrease this kind of mental health care.
    You can not give people drugs with the sorts of counter-indications these drugs have and not have the strange and violent events we have seen. They can take someone who is just depressed and turn him or her into a suicide or a mass killer. Of course, “they” know but the billions of $ are way too tempting.
    We need to go back to talk therapy which is either worthless or of some value but really rarely dangerous.

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    • Also back to or towards no vaccinations (homeopathy instead) ,No metal dental restorations (high tech ceramics instead) ( no root canals) (non faso constrictors for dental extractions) Hal Huggins DDS protocol dental training for regular dentists. Energy Healing systems like Yuen Method, Traditional Naturopathy, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Cranial Ostepathy, and there are more .I could go on. The question is how to build a tool box of stuff and wisdom that First Causes No Harm and that really works. It definitely can be done with a little help from nature and from the people that work with her. Pick the wisest most honest people you can find.

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      • Yes, we need to generally get better at natural therapies. And yes, the psychiatric drug scam ruins the credibility of the other pharmaceutical products that are controversial. I am not sure we should move toward no vaccinations, but I am sure that the credibility of vaccinations has been hugely damaged by the demonstrable fact that the psychiatric drugs are completely a scam. Peter Gotzsche and Grace Jackson have done a great job exposing that. Knowing that, one doesn’t trust the pharmaceutical companies with anything, ever. I don’t know what the truth is, with vaccinations. Maybe they are a good thing and we are not open to that possibility because we’re so burned by psycho-pharmaceuticals. Maybe they are a bad thing. I don’t have any illusion we’ll ever find out the truth. OK then why would I put anything in my body that I know I won’t ever hear the truth about? The vaccine question is such an important question to get right, with all these immunocompromised cancer survivors mixed in to our society, and yet we know that the pharmaceutical companies are lying crooks.

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        • Well, the vaccinations have a well proven benefit like the fact that polio is basically non-existent in the developed world and smallpox was completely eradicated. You can’t say the same about psych drugs, in fact the reverse seems to be true: the more they’re used the more “mental illnesses” are diagnosed. But to look the pharmaceutical companies at their hands with any new drug or vaccine is a good idea since profit motif is too often a road to bad science.

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          • HH andB,
            Traditional Naturopathy teaches us that sanitation and refrigeration are the 2 main factors in stopping epidemics. The Queen Mother of England (Billionaire) lived to be 102 years old ,her primary care physician was a Homeopath. Obamas children don’t get vaccinated . Google{ Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Simpsonwood }
            Also Retired Nuero-surgeon Google{Russell Blaylock MD on Vaccines}
            He has much of vital importance to teach on this subject.
            Also Type in {TheTruthAboutVaccinesAndModernMedicine} not the brackets
            By the way check out http://www.MercuryJustice.org
            In solidarity,
            Fred

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          • Fred, vaccines do work. That’s just a fact. Denying all the modern medicine because some parts of it are faulty is a road to crazy land in itself.

            One can ask if there is a good reason to vaccinate everyone against the flu every year but the vaccines did and are saving lives to this day. I have received multiple vaccines during my lifetime and neither me nor anyone I know has had any aversive effects to them except maybe occasional swelling of the injection site. In fact I’d be still suffering from recurrent tonsil inflammation if I did not ask my doctor for it.

            Also, you’ll get more mercury from the air you breath than from a vaccine. The paper about link between vaccination and autism (which diagnosis in itself is problematic) was shown to be a fraud precipitated by a guy who was paid by a law firm which wanted to profit of lawsuits and the research was conducted multiple times to check these claims – no correlation was found.

            Homeopathy does not work either except as a placebo (that’s why I’m not actually opposed to it, a placebo effect is something that’s often very useful). There is no such thing as “water memory”. A lot of the natural treatments are OK as long as there is bounds of reason. When I am sick if first take a few days to lay down and eat bucket-loads of fresh garlic and honey but sometimes that’s not enough and you need an occasional antibiotic. I am not even 100% opposed to psych drugs, as long as they are not being forced and prescribed for fictional diseases and their use is limited to what they really do like tranquilize people and for shot periods of time. Prozac may actually have some effects on the immune system which may be beneficial (I’ve seen some studies on the lymphoma induced by viral infections) and it has helped me to recover from chronic fatigue (giving me anxiety problems in the same time but as I only took it for a month I was OK with it).

            So we should look at the actual good science and the evidence and not just make blanket claims about going back to nature. Nature is cool but it won’t cure everything. Let’s not slip into denying medicine as a whole, this is slippery slope and it’s unscientific.

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          • B
            I’ll give my reply to your comment below here. Probably we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
            I should have added that modern medicine is only at most 35% effective and mostly that is in trauma, and that has happened only because of the desire to return wounded soldiers back to the battlefield. If your auto mechanic was 35% effective how confident would you be ? But then again the auto mechanic can’t drug you before you leave his shop.
            Have you looked at the sources I sited? Modern medicine is interested in managing illnesses ,not cure , just like psychiatry for life. Our experiences have been different .
            BTW , ADA dentistry is also bogus most especially its use of Mercury.Check out Paracelsus Klinic .Yes with a K. Also read Robert Young’s book if you wish “Sick and Tired”. Long term, things are not what they at first appear to be especially in the medical field AMA,APA,andADA.
            Peace be with you
            Fred

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  5. We cannot even conclude Adam Lanza was the perpetrator. Another lone gun man story–Ithink Adam Lanza was a “PATSY,” to use tghe immortal term of Leee HarveyOswald. The official story strains credibility. We are to believe that Adam Lanza was such an expert marksman– he shot off numerous bullets in record time and almost every one was lethal. Furthermore we are to disregard the other suspect who was originally picked up and released by the police. The most suspicious feature was the absence of any footage of the bodies. Anybody who does not have complete faith in our government, press, intelligence agencies etc will not conclude Adam Lanza shot over 20 people and then himself. This was some kind of psych-ops operation–the motives (I don’t buy that the purpose was to create groundswell of support for “gun control”) and the reasons are unclear. We live in a strange country where the population–at least the majority who relies upon mainstream media– is kept in the dark about most matters. But this is not unprecedented.(See MK-Ultra.) Here is a short video that raises the most important question. On the right there are many others. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3aYQEJXJfo
    Seth Farber, Ph.D.
    http://www.sethHfarber.com

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  6. I should add that these incidents ARE being used to justify forced treatment and that although I don’t believe the Adam Lanza story there is copious evidence that SSRIs–eg Lexapro—cause Jekyl and Hyde reactions (see Breggin, Healy,Ann Blake Tracy), that the majority of school shooters were on SSRIs. The EFFECT of these false flag incidents is to create support for greater surveillance
    and control of the population.
    Thus I agree of course with the author: “This is a disservice to the people of Connecticut and any other state legislating increased mental health services in response to the Sandy Hook shooting.”
    SF

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  7. “As previously reported by The Times, friends of the family said he suffered from Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism. As early as age 10, Adam Lanza was taking medication, according to his former baby sitter, Ryan Kraft, now an aerospace engineer in Hermosa Beach.”

    http://web.archive.org/web/20131213041634/http://articles.latimes.com/2012/dec/20/nation/la-na-nn-hairstylist-adam-lanza-20121220

    http://articles.latimes.com/2012/dec/20/nation/la-na-nn-hairstylist-adam-lanza-20121220

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  8. Two main American media and oligarchic considerations presently are getting rid of gun and medicating people who are different. Very Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc. You become your enemy. The Cold War turned the USA into a Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation into a Republic. Psychologically quite understandable.
    Currently America is doing quite a good job of creating mentally ill persons and putting them into the grand pill program. Now consider: if we were to drop the terms mental health and mental illness, what language might we find ourselves using? Let’s also drop the term depression which makes me always think of meteorology. Who is in charge? Concepts and words or people?

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  9. AgniYoga
    Your comments are insightful (although overstated) but your second paragraph contradicts your first.
    The concepts are used because they serve the needs of power, of “the oligarchy.” It’s not purely a matter of everyone being a victim of concepts. The medical model serves the goal of social control, of surveillance and control (Foucault) and of profit. (The industry wants permanent customers, as Bob Whitaker points out.)
    Again there is no reason to believe the official story. no reason to believer Adam Lanza was anything other than a patsy.
    SF

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  10. I have some trouble understanding your comment. In any case in the second paragraph I am pointing to the danger of our words and concepts. I would like to find a book the goes into the language used by the Greeks, The Romans, and the ancient Indians and Chinese. When it comes to people out of joint modern and post modern society seem to have fallen back into a great ignorance. It seems obvious that we feel according to our past actions and reactions. We may need to make a radical change in our lives to escape for example from depression and anxiety. This would be taking human action. Denying the machine analogy and using will to forge a new life out of the old one. And this sounds a bit spiritual to me.
    Also I want to draw attention to society’s role in creating the mental illness plague. Having a great con man as president is part of this. Lies. Deception. The works. The lack of jobs helps this enterprise as it allows the conservatives to criticize people out of work–‘they could find jobs if they really wanted to’. The personal and the political are entwined especially at present.

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  11. AgniYoga
    You write: “I have some trouble understanding your comment.” Well now you’ve added more theories.
    There is nothing ambiguous about my comment. You ask rhetorically in 2nd paragraph of first statement, “Who is in charge? Concepts and words or people?” You reiterate that “[i]n any case in the second paragraph I am pointing to the danger of our words and concepts” I agree with you that the words used (e.g.”mental illness”) are oppressive, mystifying, but you implication is that humanity AS A WHOLE is the victim of these words and concepts. That is too vague an explanation. It contradicts what you imply in first paragraph in which you use the SU as an analogy–the power of the oligarchy, the elite is turned against the people, particularly those who are different.

    You cannot understand the oppression of the so called mentally ill without examining the stratification of wealth and deployment of power. While the medical model is used to obscure these realities it persists because SOME people benefit. Thomas Szasz always asked “Cui bono?” The beneficiaries today of an ever increasing population of chronic psych drug users are the members of the psychiatric-pharmaceutical industrial complex. The metaphors that mystify don’t just float in the air like viruses that might afflict anyone. They are sustained because certain people benefit from them. And before the victims will reject these concepts and assert their autonomy they must first understand that those who pose as their benefactors are profiting from their suffering.
    SF
    http://www.sethHfarber.com

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    • We have different perspectives. Mine includes the idea of past lives. It also has the idea that whatever a person is doing it is exactly what they want to do despite the surface dispute with that fact. The present is the constant summation of all past moments. So while on one level the person is a victim, on another level the person has created the present circumstance in order to learn something from it. Solzhenitsyn is an excellent example of a person transforming a terrible situation into great literature and becoming perhaps the most historically significant author of the 20th century!

      This is why a Tibetan monk can not only survive for years in a Chinese gulag but maintain a feeling of compassion for the Chinese. ‘Adversity creates men; prosperity creates monsters.’ –Balzac

      So the “mentally ill” person can fight their condition or they can accept the challenge of these dark thoughts and emotions. If they do the former they fall into the hands of the psychiatrist and his mechanical model of the human being. If they do the latter to educate themselves and gradually transition to a different condition and eventually the illness is in the past. This is not a theory.

      The prevalent notion is that feeling certain ways must be an illness like jaundice or cholera; the doctor must come on the scene and prescribe. No one should be depressed or anxious. This is a rather utopian view. The depressed person has some work to do. Their life has run out of gas. They have been perhaps negligent of important things their life needs. The so called illness is the warning sign. They need to get busy. If you smell smoke, look around and find the fire. Otherwise, the whole building may burn down with you in it.

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  12. I also believe in reincarnation, but I don’t see how it vitiates my point: That the idea of “mental illness exists because there is an industry which profits from it. I agree on a deeper level they do not really profit from it because one can never attain true spiritual well being at the expenses of others. Nonetheless those who are profiting financially from this system are attached to it. There are rare
    dissidents, whistleblowers etc–like Szasz, Breggin etc–but they are a very small group. So this system which destroys bodies and souls will continue to exist. It remains as an impediment to individual and collective growth.

    If you were to ask Solzhenitsyn if it were worth it so that he could become the greatest historical. writer of the 20th century he would not hesitate for a
    moment: No. Was Auschwitz worth it also –l so that Primo Levi and Elie Weisel would write their books?

    You write:
    “So the “mentally ill” person can fight their condition or they can accept the challenge of these dark thoughts and emotions. If they do the former they fall into the hands of the psychiatrist and his mechanical model of the human being. If they do the latter to educate themselves and gradually transition to a different condition and eventually the illness is in the past. This is not a theory. ” What does it mean “to accept the challenge of these dark thoughts” ?
    You might be right, but I’m not sure what you mean. If you mean that there can be growth through overcoming adversity and understanding one is partially responsible–perhaps over many life times–for attracting certain difficult situations, I agree. If you mean they have more power than they think I agree. But one can take that too far.
    For example you say they should not “fight their condition”? They should certainly fight against being locked up and forced- drugged. They should join with others in fighting to destroy or at least expose the system. If you think there is “growth” from succumbing to domination I think you are wrong. Change must be both individual and collective.
    SF

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    • You seem to both agree and disagree with what I have written; and it is not easy for me to follow either. Sorry. My real point is very simple: accept your situation and do your best to work through it. A good book is HEALING THROUGH THE DARK EMOTIONS. Obviously no one asks us if we want to suffer.
      As long as an alternative exists to doing this work with the dark aspects people will be inclined to take it.
      The less one subscribes to dualism the easier life becomes. If there is an another, then there is someone to struggle with.
      A.S. might well have said yes knowing all the good his books would do.
      I think E.W. is a fraud. And I found P.L.’s books boring.
      I think it is time to give the Nazis and Jews a rest. Many other peoples have also suffered, and the Holocaust has become an industry. Fallujah could use some attention. The Armenians and the Ukrainians of the 1930’s. Certainly the Syrians. The Palestinians. Etc. Last but not least the native Americans deserve attention; and they are still around dealing with uranium miners.
      Good luck.

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  13. You do not stick to a point but jump around from topic to topic. It’s irrelevant whether you like Primo Levi–that wasn’t my point. I don’t like Elie Weisel either and I wrote a book attacking Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians. And what do you think of UFO’s and ETs? Is there a government cover-up?
    Come on. Stick to the topic.
    My point was simple. I agree with you about dealing with the emotional pain “psychotics” experience—before they become entangled with the mental health system. You make some perceptive observations. But I do not agree with you regarding patients’ treatment BY the mental health system. It is NOT helpful to obscure and deny the power dynamic. We need to expose the function and destructiveness of the psychiatric pharmaceutical industrial complex. Survivors need to protest injustice and demand their rights. To deny Psychiatry’s responsibility for the oppression of “mental patients” is analogous to denying Nazis’ responsibility for the German holocaust. You are confusing the political and the metaphysical, the victim and the oppressor–this is not education, it is not metaphysical, it is mystification.
    Seth

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    • “But I do not agree with you regarding patients’ treatment BY the mental health system.” I think people should avoid the mental health system as it tends to mislead and harm them. Likewise dialing 911 is extremely dangerous and a last resort. In both cases there are unreliable people involved.

      My approach is for people to get help from friends and relatives as well as from practices provided by Buddhism and Yoga (or Sufism). If the mental health services has fewer and fewer customers it will either change or fade out of existence. Or people whose dharma it is to go through that experience will continue to use it.

      The problem with repeated use of the words Nazi and Holocaust is that they have become buzz words. The citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan have as much right as anyone “to protest injustice and demand their rights”. There is nothing unique about the Jews except that they have advertised their suffering more than anyone else. Really to the point of nausea. The Vietnamese also have a claim. It would take centuries for the USA to pay all the reparations due according to justice. We need to update and leave WWII to a long absence.

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      • Agni,
        You should read ” The Light and Fire of the Baal Shem Tov” by Yitzhak Buxbaum also” Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity” by Abraham Joshua Heschel
        Everyone whose serious goal it is to free the oppressed , in order to understand actual recent American history in regard to our issues , needs definitely to read Edwin Black’s book “War Against the Weak” without any doubt.

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      • While I agree that some of these terms have lost their meaning with the cavalier way we tend to associate them more, I have found that Americans can define dehumanization, most of them just can’t fathom the reality of it. The closest comparison I could make was the concentration camps when I set out to explain the difference between the definition and the experience. I’ll try to convey what brought the comparison to mind to me, but I’m not sure I have the eloquence to describe it the way I saw it. When Willard hospital was shut down following years of tumor of abuse and cruelty, the main hall was crowded with suitcases. The patients had long ago left, but the suitcases were still unopened. Everything was carefully and lovingly packed because there was the Radisson that being committed meant you’d likely never leave the institution unless they didn’t have a cemetery onthe grounds, but most usually did. So, patients brought everything they considered valuable in any way, but even though Willard had been operating at nearly twice it’s capacity and with a skeleton staff, the suitcases has never been opened. Patients sat across the hall largely unsupervised, but to afraid to even sneak a last look at their family pictures. Dehumanization is more than just the capacity to view people as nothing more than objects. It’s more than the deliberate and cruel murder of many… because the patient no longer sees themselves as human either. The power of the mental institutions is that they don’t require walls to keep you inside after a while. The fear stays with you no matter how far away you get. It’s this feeling of being trapped inside a box three sixes to small for a human being… like you need to stretch, but the feeling is so deep you feel it in your stomach and your crest and not just your muscles, and there’s a perpetual feeling of being on the edge of hysteria, but even now, and I still dream about it twenty years after the fact, even now that fear is so powerful I can’t let myself call out. Always, when I dream I’m back inside, they end with sleep paralysis, and eventually, it feels forever, this quaking sound wakes me up. The whistling is caused by trying to scream oe move, and finding that while I’m mostly awake, I can’t do either.

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        • The techniques used by psychiatry to control the inmates are torture. And torture can lead to insanity in any sane person so it is a vicious cycle. I remember reading the first chapter of Naomi Klein’s book Shock Doctrine, which describes some cruel experiments done by psychiatrists working for the CIA. They basically used patients to develop more effective torture methods, ones which were (still are?) used in Guantanamo and CIA black sites. How can this profession seriously claim to be in the realm of medicine?

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  14. You do not stick to a point but jump around from topic to topic. It’s irrelevant whether you like Primo Levi–that wasn’t my point. I don’t like Elie Weisel either and I wrote a book attacking Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians. And what do you think of UFO’s and ETs? Is there a government cover-up?
    Come on. Stick to the topic.

    My point was simple. I agree with you about dealing with the emotional pain “psychotics” experience—before they become entangled with the mental health system. You make some perceptive observations. But I do not agree with you regarding patients’ treatment BY the mental health system. It is NOT helpful to obscure and deny the power dynamic. We need to expose the function and destructiveness of the psychiatric pharmaceutical industrial complex. Survivors need to protest injustice and demand their rights. To deny Psychiatry’s responsibility for the oppression of “mental patients” is analogous to denying Nazis’ responsibility for the German holocaust. You are confusing the political and the metaphysical, the victim and the oppressor–this is not education, it is not metaphysical, it is mystification.
    Seth

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    • I am not aware of letting psychiatrists off the hook. Psychiatry and the drug business are criminal enterprises. But I doubt they will ever be prosecuted. That is not the American way. They are too big and rich for that. But America can only be changed from the inside out. Otherwise we are fighting fire with fire.

      “You are confusing the political and the metaphysical, the victim and the oppressor–this is not education, it is not metaphysical, it is mystification.” This is a nice statement but it does not seem at all related to me or my position.

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    • Here, Seth, it a well written article which I believe lays out the great complexities of dealing with oppression, and why I disincline to dwell on things like Holocaust and Nazis.

      A Century of Deceit: Iraq, the World Wars, Holocaust and Zionist Militarism
      http://mycatbirdseat.com/2014/04/a-century-of-deceit-iraq-the-world-wars-holocaust-and-zionist-militarism

      Fortunately in the world of mental health things are not quite so complex. But I think operating on a local level with people we know is best. The minute something becomes national the interests involved are innumerable.

      As far as I can determine the Sandy Hook affair was a hoax. No children were killed. The school was inactive at the time. One hundred million dollars came into the lamenting parents . . . and the state of CT has acted very suspiciously by hiding all the records, even the death certificates. That the Federal Gov. would conceive and pull off this sort of thing tells me that at this time one wants to take care in one’s dealings. Trust is elusive. We live in a low dishonest time.

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  15. AgniYoga, This article “A Century of Deceit: Iraq, the World Wars, Holocaust and Zionist Militarism” is misleading.While I agree with much of it characterization of Zionism it repeats anti-Semitic canards and essentially seeks to minimize and justify the Nazi holocaust. It denies the virulent anti-Semitism of Hitler, and claims the internment of Jews was merely a measure taken
    to help Germany win the war. It denies the obvious–the racialist ideology of the Nazis and their intention of eliminating “inferior races.”

    I agree with one of its main points–the interest of Zionists and Nazis were complementary. Ben Gurion knew that the rise of Nazis would gain support for the Zionist cause –which was highly unpopular among Jews. The overwhelming majority of German Jews were anti-Zionists (a point omitted in this article) and saw themselves as Germans who happened to be Jews. That was the Reform Jewish position then–in America also until the rise of the Nazis.. It was right-wing Zionists like Jabotinsky who actually wrote letters to Nazis proposing collaboration with the German war effort in exchange for Nazi support for Jewish state. (See Zionism in the Age of Dictators by Lenni Brunner) Both the Zionist and the Nazis believed Jews did not belong in Germany or other democratic states. The Nazis believed the Jews, among others, were an inferior race who threatened to contaminate the purity of the Aryans. THe German holocaust was based on a racial purity paradigm that led to “ethnic cleansing” and then genocide. Tragically Israel today is based on the same paradigm, and thus it contains the Palestinians in open air prisons, subjects them to apartheid and starvation and regards them with the same contempt of which Jews were once victims. By denying the injustice done to European Jewry by Nazis, you are endorsing the same paradigm you claim to decry. You are as guilty as American and Israeli Zionists.
    I suggest you read my 2005 book
    Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers: Conversations with Jewish Critics of Israel which includes conversations with anti-Zionists like Chomsky, Finkelstein, and Rabbi Dovid Weiss among others.
    http://www.amazon.com/Radicals-Rabbis-Peacemakers-Conversations-Critics/dp/1567513263/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396856926&sr=1-1&keywords=farber+peacemakers
    Seth

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    • Seth,
      Have you read any of Edwin Black’s books ? I don’t know of anyone who does more thorough research before releasing a book to the public. I believe his book “War Against The Weak ” is as important for our movement as anything Robert Whitaker or anyone else has written.There is now a feature film of the same name which I have not seen yet.
      Fred

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    • I am not denying that Germany persecuted Jews or that that was an injustice. I did not write the article as you know. We will never know for certain what happened back then just as the pasts of our own lives live on as mysteries. It only takes one small turn of a kaleidoscope to change the whole pattern. So with history and our lives. In a sense everything is misleading. The world is an on going illusion. Remember we have to learn how to judge the size of things with experience. Without illusion there would be no possibility of a world. So who knows? Socrates was the wisest man according to the Oracle because he knew that he knew nothing.

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      • A final note: I hope you can imagine the conflict and heated discussion that followed the Civil War in American. This went on decade after decade. My grandmother’s mother lived in Missouri and mentioned it endlessly to her children, how the British betrayed the South, etc. Do you think anything ever written about the Civil War has not been misleading? I don’t. I am sure there were many fights and many murders connected with that endless dispute. The Jews and Germany are similar. It like civil wars will never end. They may cease on the physical plane, but they go on for centuries in the minds of people. A lot of what happened in Yugoslavia in the 1990″s was related to the conflict between the Orthodox and the Catholic Churches during WWII. Would you care to disentangle that? Of course not. T. S. Eliot maintained that the English Civil War of the 17th century was still a factor in English life 300 years later. And that is my whole point. The minute the Holocaust is brought up for any or no reason it is like dropping a smoke bomb or tear gas into the room. It gets used to justify anything and everything. Any one who questions it is attacked irrationally. All hell breaks loose. Thus, it is one of those things which in polite company should never be mentioned unless one knows in advance that everyone is on the same page. I am sure in Washington, D.C. even now that people are a little careful not to mention the Civil War. Some southern Congressmen or women might just fulminate and cause a scene. Thus again, nothing written about highly contentious subjects should be brought up in mixed company by which I mean where some present are very heated about the matter. It makes enemies quickly and dissolves friendships. I hope you can see my point. Least said, least mended! Why IT is such a big topic in America is not clear. The USA was not a participant in Jewish oppression. We are not good people when it comes to foreign affairs as should be obvious. Call it isolationism but for Americans it is the best solution. Jews have been very fortunate in the USA. They have no reason to attack Americans about something that totally involved Europe and centuries even before America existed as place on the map. I think you might want to address this from a professional point of view as a therapist and PhD in psychology. Great for another book since you write books. If I were a political writer I might write How Political Problems Belonging To Other Nations Were Given To The USA After WWII. Or philosophically, Plato Hit The Nail On The Head Over Two Thousand Years Ago And The USA Has Yet To Figure That Out. A shorter title might be Let The Dead Bury The Dead. Best of luck.

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    • As Americans I think we should dwell on the treatment the native Americans received. To the best of my knowledge they are the only people’s in recent history where the gov actually had the official policy of eliminating them. And they are still here. “The only good Indian is a dead one.” This came after the Civil War which was itself another great crime. As for the Jews, the Nazis, etc. that is really a European problem and best left to them to work out. Americans have a great difficulty with foreign affairs and are very much locked in their own language and culture or lack there of. So, then Seth. what about the native Americans? What is your thinking regarding the mining of uranium on their land and poisoning their wells and the air they breath? This is our problem now. We may be able to do something about it. We clearly can not do anything about Israel and the Palestinians. But as citizens the way the remnant of native Americans are treated is our responsibility. If we fail to act then we are complicit. Have you read Rolling Thunder? Mad Bear? Or any other books related to their situation? Do you know any native Americans? As far as I can determine the gov would still like to eliminate these people and take their land. In Brussels a trial is now in progress regarding the murder of 50,000 native children by the church schools in Canada. Have you been following that? America would rather fiddle with Ukraine or Syria than put its own house in order. No wonder so many Americans are suffering from mental illness. James Hillman had a lot to say about this. Best of luck.

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  16. You are right about Sandy Hook–as I keep saying.
    If children were killed there is no evidence
    “and the state of CT has acted very suspiciously by hiding all the records, even the death certificates.”
    Furthermore as I stated(See link above) it looks as if Adam Lanski was a patsy.
    SF

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  17. I don’t have all the answers. But many people have commented how odd these “parents” were. most did NOT manifest the kind of grief that is typical after losing a child. Some seemed to lack emotion. Others laughed in inappropriate manner considering the context.. Maybe some kids died. But we were not shown any bodies. Not even any ambulances. Only one shot of unharmed survivors leaving school. You obviously did not look at brief video to which I linked–above.
    Adam Lanza is supposed to have been gone to this school, walked past security system with a gun
    and then in record time shot 24 or so children, every bullet lethal but one. Amazing sharpshooting for a autistic kid. He was not even a student in that school. Neighbors had not seen him in over 3 yrs. Has the state presented compelling evidence–on the media–that Adam Lanza was guilty of multiple homicides? They have not even presented bodies. Or death certificates They could never have proved their case if Adam were alive. There is one obvious victim.,
    People who accept the official version are inclined to trust authorities.
    I am not.
    I think it was SOME kind of psych-ops. MK-Ultra never ended–it went “dark.”
    Seth Farber, Ph.D.

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  18. I have followed this, and I agree with you. The evidence against it being a real event are over whelming. The fact that a medical helicopter was waiting to fly there and never ordered to do so was extremely out of protocol as well as letting unqualified personnel determine that people were dead. The whole thing violated numerous state and federal laws.
    Part of this is oddly enough a faith undeservedly placed in the educated intellect and especially the scientific one. Unfortunately the intellect deals in the past, information gathered here and there and put together in various ways. ‘Reason makes a good servant but a bad master’. When people were less well educated formally they relied on other modes of knowing. Intuition for example. Rural people had and still may have an advantage here over city folk. In rural Nebraska where I grew up in the 1940’s and 1950’s there was little to no mental illness. Very little crime and no murder. Lots of guns and only the rare accident. Surprisingly even the occasional homosexual was accepted. There was some prejudice against blacks but no blacks around! People worried about rain. If there was ever a shooting of anyone I never heard of it. One angry woman once sent a bullet to her lover by mail. She was not arrested or threatened with arrest. It became a local joke! People for the most part had common sense. The police were local guys and knew better than to abuse people. The main crime was getting drunk and causing a disturbance. It was not utopia but a good place and time to be a kid. And few of us were ever sick. We had good food. Good air. And good water. And jobs were plentiful for teenagers. I delivered papers and mowed lawns. I had dogs and a horse. I loved school. And reading. Already in the 1960’s the urban coasts were becoming nihilistic. Vietnam helped this destructive tendency really take off and fly. Now the nation is headed for ruin as nations do that put money in the place of honor.

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