NIMH to Host Live ECT Q&A on March 17th

So good old NIHM promoting ECT/brain damage as a compliment to drugging? Well, who is going to debunk the “myths” that ECT is “safe and effective” and is “often the last best hope”??
It is an electrical lobotomy, a form of torture, a brain disabling, lunatic relic of psychiatry at its worst. “Doctors” like Lisanby and Healy promote this bogus “procedure”, disregarding the science, the research, the thousands of victims.
Reaching out to find more victims/consumers of brain injury misrepresented as “brain stimulation” and “treatment” by using Facebook??
How is this allowed to continue in light of the testimonies of all those people decimated and destroyed by ECT?

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Propaganda from a bureaucracy that thrives on misinformation and intolerance. Worship the rectums of the rich and powerful is the message that has been coming from the elites of both Left and Right. Both mainstream Democrats and Republicans seem to believe that their rich and powerful elites will provide the answers. Neither seems to acknowledge that both are merely following an approach that parallels that of NAZI Germany.
A war is being fought in America where blissful ignorance and callous indifference are the combatants. Most of us have life experiences which fall outside the filters the rich and the politicians have imposed upon themselves – and seemingly wish to impose on all. These filters seemingly screen out the realities and the desires of most everyone, except the most greedy and controlling. We need to take an honest hard look at what America has become and stop demanding scapegoats take the blame for the abuses of power which have come to permeate the American nation.
“No crime is greater than approving of greed, No calamity is greater than discontent, No fault is greater than possessiveness. The enlightened and the good get things done only from time to time while petty bureaucrats always support one another. Once slanderers and flatters get their wishes Sages and philosophers are deterred.” (The Art of War by Sun Tzu © 2000 by Thomas Cleary pg. 183 & 191)
Abuses of power abound. Certain Republican presidential candidates as well as several Right wing radio hosts uses methods from a section of The Art of Controversy (by German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer -translated into English and published in 1896) known as the thirty eight unethical ways to win an argument. They include: “confuse the issue by changing your opponent’s words or what he or she seeks to prove; it is with victory that you are concerned, and not with truth. Make an appeal to authority rather than reason – You may also, should it be necessary, not only twist your authorities, but actually falsify them, or quote something that you have invented entirely yourself.”

But, even the U.S. Supreme Court seems to be disinterested in truth. Frazier v. Cupp (394 US
731, 739, 1969) ruled that the police can lie in order to extract a confession. Officers may lie to obtain evidence, they are permitted to fabricate evidence, and they may lie and tell a suspect that a murdered person is still alive or a living person is dead. The only place an officer cannot tell a falsehood is while testifying under oath in court, and criminal defense attorneys occasionally catch officers lying, even on the witness stand. While a seldom-used lie can work to prevent death or injury, the more officers lie, the less police in general will be believed or trusted. This has been a major problem in most large cities. Many individuals have come to the conclusion that if it is acceptable for authorities to lie to and mislead them, it is also acceptable for them to lie to police and other authorities.
It is just one of several U.S. Supreme Court decisions which have essentially re-instituted procedures from the Jim Crow era across the nation. Imbler v. Pachtman (424 U.S. 409; 1976) encourages malicious prosecutions while Bordenkircher v. Hayes (434 US 357; 1978) permits prosecutors to blackmail defendants, including threats to increase the charges if the defendant fails to accept a plea bargain. While Gideon v. Wainwright (372 U.S. 335; 1963) established the right of indigent defendants to an attorney, Miranda v. Arizona (384 U.S. 436; 1966) added substantial costs to every criminal court in the U.S. by requiring an attorney be provided for everyone facing six months or more imprisonment. Costs for trials soared as now instead of individuals telling a judge what happened, including any mitigating circumstances and having him ask questions of both police and defendants, except for the plea deal the attorneys cook up, often behind the scenes without any significant input from the defendant, the judge does nothing but sit, listen and pass sentence.

This is especially true in large metropolitan areas where a single harried defense attorney may have 40 or more clients every day who are facing trial. The justice system is not just a failure, but a farce. While repealing the mandatory minimums may be a small step in the right direction, it is insufficient. More about this in chapter six of my book Liberty & Mental Health – Towards the Dark Side – Supreme Court Decisions. My court appointed attorney refused to speak to me, and told me I was lying when I told him I had a seizure disorder. Seventy four days in solitary confinement, denied pen, pencil, access to a telephone and prescribed medication gave me the experience of having to choose between dying in jail and pleading no contest to charges when I did not believe myself to be guilty. Some time later I contacted LACES – The Los Angeles County Epilepsy Society, and they told me this was a common problem, but they were unable to find an attorney willing to help out on this matter.

While I have never used heroin or cocaine – or any hard drugs, most of my arrests stemmed from police believing my seizures were the result of drug abuse. I am one of many who have been collateral damage on the war on drugs. The incentives government provides to drug lords is the main reason for the drug problem in this nation.

Many of our bureaucracies seem to be most interested in implementing hard and fast rules which benefit none but the bureaucrats. Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations prevent people from visiting loved ones in the hospital unless they fall into certain approved categories dictated by federal bureaucrats. It is one of the reasons gay couples could not be content with living together, but needed the sanctity of marriage. These same HIPAA rules prevent many disabled from having visitors unless they are on a pre-approved list – which can expire every six months leaving them with no approved visitors – and there is no obligation to tell people that someone would like to visit – or even speak to them.
Then there is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The promotion of GMO’s and heavy pesticide use, hindering organic methods of farming, ignoring the falsification of drug trials, permitting the heavy drugging of children and promoting Electro-convulsive therapy while blocking the non-drug methods of helping people recover from the effects of trauma induced mental illness, and harassment of a Texas doctor with a promising cancer treatment, makes it perhaps the most callously indifferent of our bureaucracies. My response to the FDA’s request for comments also outlines the major changes needed in the mental health system – as opposed to what will bring the most profit to a few corporations.
“Whenever the roles of individuals within a group become specialized, it becomes both possible and easy for the individual to pass the moral buck to some other part of the group. In this way, not only does the individual forsake his conscience but the conscience of the group as a whole can become so fragmented and diluted as to be nonexistent… The plain fact of the matter is that any group will remain inevitably potentially conscienceless and evil until such time as each and every individual holds himself or herself directly responsible for the behavior of the whole group –the organism-of which he or she is a part” (People of the Lie; The Hope for Healing Human Evil by M. Scott Peck, MD (pg. 218))

In his book, The Next 100 Years – A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009), George Friedman, one of the country’s leading strategic affairs experts, recommends creating crises in order to take advantage of situations, all in the name of national security. It appears to be required reading for students of foreign policy in various nations. (I picked up my copy while in Northeast Thailand this summer.) An adjustment of views regarding the United States is ongoing. Not just those our government considers adversaries or even enemies – China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, or the leadership of ISIL and Al Qaeda, but our long standing allies as well, which Friedman proposes stabbing in the back. Indeed the current Syrian civil war – as well as the invasion of Iraq, appears to be the result of the policies advanced by Friedman. A foreign policy based on arrogance, contempt for all life and rule by corporate elites betrays all the values this nation was founded upon, not to mention earning the enmity of nations who once trusted us. A few quotes from the book:
As with all barbaric cultures, Americans are ready to fight for their self-evident truths. (pg. 29)
Rhetoric aside, the United States has no overriding interest in peace in Eurasia. (pg. 46)
The United States doesn’t need to win wars. It needs simply to disrupt things so the other side can’t build up sufficient strength to challenge it. … the twenty-first century will see even more wars than the twentieth century … (pg.5)
The United States is dangerous in its most benign state, but when it focuses down on a problem it can be devastatingly relentless. (pg. 153)
The United States will also create (quite secretly, since treaties from the last century will still be in place) missiles that can be fired from space with devastating effect…. (pg.167)

While Friedman claims he is biased in favor of America, it is clear he either has no clue as to the ideals the United States was founded upon, or seeks to destroy the nation. Apparently he wants the battle cry of the American soldier to be Kiss your bankers bottom even as the bankers – yes, people like you, plan the next fleecing of the American people to satiate their greed. As I see it, the major banks need to put a minus sign in front of the amount they claim represents good will, for they have earned not the good will of the people, but their ill will. Chapter 5 – A Short Course on Economics includes some of the lesser known fundamentals and concepts in economics – such as the lack of Pareto improvements which play a part in the nation’s unease.
(More in my book Liberty & Mental Health – You Can’t Have One without the Other http://www.libertymentalhealth.com )

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Psychiatry and the re-emergence of ECT is just a sign of how big of a desperate failure they really are. For about three decades they lied to the public and pushed pills that were no better than placebo, causing atrocious levels of harm with no real benefit and leaving the truly depressed to just suffer in agony as they couldn’t respond to the placebo effect, and then of course there’s all THE MONEY that psychiatry made in that time.

But not in the last 10 years or so, since the work of Irvin Kirsch, the medical community and a growing percentage of society have come to have negative views toward “anti-depressants”, and millions of people have been harmed or at least let down by these drugs.

But the fact that psychiatry, in its desperation, has to reach FOR ECT as its new “treatment” to try to polish in the public’s mind and for its future, just shows how despicable and horrendous that profession really is.

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Get your rhetorical questions ready! March 17th, huh?

Maybe someone could post a reminder a couple days before.

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