To feel as if I was doing something to stop the expansion of state-sponsored organized psychiatric industries, I attended the United States House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee Hearings on HR 2646, the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2015 and HR 2690, the Including Families in Mental Health Recovery Act of 2015.
On June 16, 2015, I arrived at the Rayburn House Office Building early. Only three people were on line to enter the hearing room. In my estimation, over the next two hours more than one hundred people eventually congregated to form the line. When the hearing room filled, remaining onlookers were left in the hallway, as the doors closed.
I was glad I arrived early for the hearing; it meant I got my choice of seat. As staff workers maintain a position of privilege in the front row, as a witness to what I hoped would be a balanced hearing, I chose the seat next to the rear exit, stage right. I sat directly across from where Congressman Murphy sat, save the rows of people and space between us.
Yes, I chose the seat next to the door as a quick escape if I felt I had to scream and run. No, I did not scream and run.
I am sure that my silence did not help the situation one bit.
I consistently feel like I have to do something about the Murphy bill. Unfortunately, what I do most often is chase my tail and try to find ways to grab the public’s attention about the horror show that is occurring in the name of democracy about legislation that is sure to threaten foundational premises of American life such as freedom.
During the hearing, I felt as if Congressman Tim Murphy (R), Pennsylvania, consistently asked the panelists who were there to testify about the bill, ‘Are you assuaged now?’
To my dismay, those who positioned themselves as opposition to the HR 2646, offered support for the bill during the hearings. There is video footage of the testimony. You can watch the repeated betrayals yourself.
I do not think it is that people are unaware, but, if people are unaware, there are survivors and allies, who are opposed to these bills entirely. Murphy shut down any hint of criticism of any aspect of the proposed bill, such as the involuntary outpatient commitment laws.
Why is the opposition not getting a voice in the hearings? What is American about that? Nothing and it is my opinion that there is nothing American about these bills.
Matsui slashes privacy rights for all adults under HR 2690. HR 2646 extends the age of childhood to 26 years of age. Mental Health America said they were opposed to the Murphy bill (Westberg, 2014), however all I heard was support for it and promotion of their newest campaign, aligning psychiatric diagnosis with an actual physical, provable illness, which could actually terminate one’s life, is disgusting. Campaigns such as what was described are part of the fear mongering perpetrated by the organization as an overt ploy for screening, with half a million Americans have already been targeted by their deceit.
A growing concern, I have to air: why is no one speaking out for young people, and young adults? Why is everyone applauding a focus on early intervention and prevention of involving children and young people in this fraud?
Are you, like me, concerned that targeted psychiatric attention on minors and young adults is acceptable in this country? If the United States is not going to protect the rights of the child, we must. If for no other reason, so many of us entered this psychiatric mess as children, teens, or young adults. But, reader, be sure, there were some people who entered this nightmare of psychiatric torture upon birth, at 10 days old, and several months old, and so on. The legislative efforts hide behind incidents of mass violence used as leverage to convince the public to infringe on our civil liberties, our constitutional and human rights, all the while, lying to us about the evidence of harm and long term negative ramifications of psychiatric involvement. The public never for a moment realizing, they are at any moment one of us, someone psychiatrized.
Sadly, it is no surprise that the new codes are designed to go after children. It is easier, via state power, to force a minor’s compliance and convince them young, with Patrick Kennedy lies, that s/he has a brain illness, and have that forever etched into each individual electronic medical record. It is easier and cheaper to focus on minors because it creates more jobs and less of a court proceeding, etc. needs to take place to gain compliance because all that is required, amicably, is a parents’ permission to subject a child to psychiatry. Of course, if parents or guardians object, the government interrupts their custody—if not entirely strips it from them. A response to parents who refuse their child’s involvement with psychiatry often includes the parents or guardians also being mandated into some type of program, or to comply with some type of psychiatric product. Sometimes, a child’s involvement with the system was rooted in the fact that their parents were some way involved with psychiatry or some other state-sponsored arrangement. You get my point. This can be a devastating situation for both parent/guardian and child immersed within power dynamics with durable negative consequences.
My passions for protecting people from abuse and torture in the name of psychiatric ‘help’ are as strong as they have ever been.
My passion for keeping me out of the grips of state-sponsored organized psychiatry is stronger than it ever was.
When people share with me the horror stories they experience with activities such as court-ordered psychiatric drugs, I often think, if it were myself, they would not let me out. I would not be able to tolerate this kind of inspection. Could you imagine the State’s Prosecutor exclaiming to a judge—in an open court—that you are mad and institutionalization or constant supervision in the community is required?
I could imagine it.
I know I would not be able to silently sit and accept a psychiatric sentence.
I make an argument that the public awards its support of forced psychiatry to the State based on Whitaker and Cosgrove’s (2015:156-159) discussion of the illegitimacy of institutional informed consent, because of the fraud perpetrated by psychiatry.
What I saw at the hearings on June 16, 2015, was the State knowingly perpetuating the fraud and further using psychiatry positioned as a legitimate science to defraud the public, gain support for faulty legislation with huge overreach at great taxpayer expense, and more significantly, the cost of human life.
It was not until after I tried to see Congressman Tim Murphy’s Twitter page that I realized someone in his administration blocked me from being able to see his page or twitter feed. Remarkably, I can still Tweet @RepTimMurphy, so he was in a manner, electronically delivered this Open Letter to the US Congress House of Energy and Commerce Committee I wrote on June 18, 2015. Blocking outspoken advocates is a trend on Murphy’s page, and I am only one of many unable to see the twits of Murphy.
There I am boiling over with anger at the hearings. I am sending out Facebook posts on a moment-to-moment basis, trying to feel like I have a voice in the supposed democratic process, produced, enacted, and fabricated in front of me. It truly was the theater of psychiatry.
Nowhere in the hearings, has there been truth. Worse than an obfuscation of the truth, there have been scripted, blatant and uncorrected lies—most notably, that “mental illness” is a “brain illness”. Multiple members of the Committee—and those who testified—repeated the lies set out by Congressman Murphy as the talking points of the day. Some of the Committee members even included use of statistics from the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Fabricated data based on fabricated diseases justifies the reach of government that will undoubtedly occur if HR 2646 and HR 2690 pass.
The level of applaud Congressman Tim Murphy received during the hearings for his tireless efforts to control the American populous is nauseating.
Everyone in that room knew that there is a research base that shows nothing but dangers of psychiatry; misuse of power of psychiatric workers; psychiatry used in ways that meet criteria for torture under the Convention Against Torture; and the plain fraud that psychiatry and psychiatric industries have something to offer. Why do they all act this way? Why do they not speak out?
June 29th is the American Launch of Psychiatry and the Business of Madness, Bonnie Burstow’s (2015) newest publication and it deserves attention for exposing some of the most horrific human rights violations perpetrated by psychiatry, including the drugging and electroshock of people via the illusion of medicine. Recently a person who survived electroshock asked me if electroshock is a supported practice in HR 2646. To the naked eye, is not. No specific psychiatric thing was, except of course the re-appropriated “peer” industry. Murphy and cohorts used the broadest brush ever imagined to design this bill and what Americans will be forced to comply with if it passes.
I responded to this person that since we know electroshock has been used in involuntary outpatient commitment, as well as institutionalization, and as leverage to get out of either of these situations, we can assume our fight to ban electroshock, and as urgently, forced, court-ordered, coerced, or uninformed electroshock must continue.
Certainly, the bill makes no hesitation that the State ought to be able to give power to psychiatry to control someone who is unlikely to comply with any suggested psychiatric protocol.
I am near out of space here, and perhaps for a next entry, I want to discuss the willingness of organizations to support, or seem to support HR 2646 and HR 2690.
The issues presented by people testifying and supporting something, which they inherently do not support, are not like fake monsters looming under the bed. Do not whisk this away.
If the organization thought to be the opposition to the bill publicly supports the bill under duress, based on fear that Murphy et al will strip things important to the organization from the bill, what kind of opposition is that? This is particularly troublesome when the organization positions itself as a proponent of rights for people with psychiatric histories.
So, I wrote an Open Letter to the entire US House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, because I thought that perhaps, Chairman Upton, or one of the other members, not on or involved with the Health Subcommittee might be interested to know of the false testimonies routinely provided during the hearings on June 16, 2015.
I concluded the open letter:
When, in the past, has the committee heard the charges of those who oppose the field of psychiatry on the grounds of fraud? When will the committee hear from people who are survivors of electroshock, drugging, restraint, seclusion, aversive behavior modification, invasive psychological inspection, and a host of other dehumanizing horrors psychiatry has the audacity to refer to as “medicine”?
I ask again, when will the House Committee on Energy and Commerce schedule and hear (and let the public hear) the testimony of people directly affected by and opposed to psychiatry?
You can see the full text of the letter here:
http://laurentenney.us/open-letter.html
* * * * *
References:
Burstow, B. (2015). Psychiatry and the business of madness: An ethical and epistemological accounting. Palgrave Macmillan.
Matsui, D. O. (2015). HR2690 Including families in mental health recovery act 2015. Retrieved on June 22, 2015 from https://www.congress.gov/search?q={%22congress%22%3A%22114%22%2C%22source%22%3A%22legislation%22%2C%22search%22%3A%222690%22.
Murphy, T., et al. (2015). HR 2646 Helping families in mental health crisis act 2015. Retrieved on June 22, 2015 from https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/2646/text.
Tenney, L. J. (2015). With a public defrauded illegitimacy of forced psychiatry crystalized. Psychiatry, State Power, and Capitalism Blog. Mad in America. Retrieved on June 23, 2015 from https://www.madinamerica.com/2015/06/with-a-public-defrauded-illegitimacy-of-forced-psychiatry-crystalizes/.
United States House of Representative House and Energy Committee Health Subcommittee Hearings on HR 2646 and HR 2690, June 16, 2015. Retrieved on June 23, 2015 from http://energycommerce.house.gov/hearing/examining-hr-2646-helping-families-mental-health-crisis-act#video.
Westberg, J. (July 15, 2014). Mental Health America says they are against the Murphy bill but some doubt it. Examiner. http://www.examiner.com/article/mental-health-america-says-they-re-against-the-murphy-bill-but-some-doubt-it.
Whitaker, R. and Cosgrove, L. (2015). Psychiatry under the influence: Institutional corruption, social injury, and prescriptions for reform. Palgrave Macmillan.
