Torture often has a straightforward goal—to break the victim’s will and to intimidate others who fear that torture will also be inflicted on them. Anyone who has worked or been a patient on a psychiatric ward has witnessed daily attempts to break the will of patients by limiting their freedom and activities, treating them like children, making threats, using physical restraint and isolation, and ultimately inflicting drugs and electroshocks that render the individual helpless. The most profound impact of neuroleptic (antipsychotic) drugs is to render the individual indifferent, apathetic and docile; but the drugs commonly continue to inflict physical and mental torment.
In my decades of clinical experience, many if not most victims of involuntary treatment experience it as torture. They know it aims at breaking their will and they physically and mentally resist, resulting in even more dire consequences. Involuntary treatment humiliates and demoralizes people, reinforcing their feelings of being worthless, powerless, and helpless. It leads to outrage, which is then crushed by psychiatric drugs. The neuroleptic drugs cause a confusing combination of emotional numbing and apathy along with feelings of acute physical discomfort and agonizing akathisia and agitation; but they inevitably produce docility with a chemically lobotomizing disruption of the brain.
I have opposed involuntary treatment for my entire career and first began criticizing it in the medical literature in 1964. As Thomas Szasz originally taught, involuntary psychiatric treatment is unconstitutional and an assault on basic human rights. I am also against it on scientific grounds, because after hundreds of years, this violation of human rights has generated no scientific studies to show that it benefits its victims.
I am encouraged by the excellent blog by Peter C. Gøtzsche on MadinAmerica.com, which inspired me to put a new section, Psychiatric Coercion and Involuntary Treatment, on my website, and to compose these further observations of my own.
Since finishing my training, I have never treated or incarcerated anyone against his or her will. During this period in private practice extending back to 1968, no patients in treatment with me have committed suicide or a perpetrated a serious act of violence. Any good psychiatrist or therapist could have a patient commit suicide or perpetrate violence; but coercion, drug treatment, and hospitalization increases the likelihood. I believe that my refusal to coerce patients, my efforts to prevent hospitalization, and my practice of not starting patients on psychiatric drugs have contributed to the good fortune that my patients have not committed suicide or extreme violence. People in deep distress do not need incarceration or the inevitable drugs that follow; they need caring help from friends, family, and professionals.
Someone in an out-of-control manic episode or someone threatening to do harm in a psychotic episode presents difficult problems to civil libertarians and to those of us who wish to help people in distress while protecting others from them. There are no easy solutions, especially when some of these people reject all offers of voluntary help. However, there are many reasons not to use these examples as a justification for laws that allow involuntary treatment—locking up people on the say-so of judges and healthcare professionals. In addition to the human rights and Constitutional reasons, here are some further reasons to do away with involuntary treatment:
First, very few people labelled “mentally ill” actually become violent. Rates of criminal violence in this group do not exceed the general population. Those who do become violent are usually reacting against the oppressive, antagonizing conditions on hospital wards. As described in my book Medication Madness, when patients do commit extreme violence, it is usually the result of psychiatric drug-induced brain dysfunction and/or drug withdrawal. Psychiatric drugs frequently cause irritability, hostility, aggression, disinhibition and mania, leading to violence, especially when starting or during drug dose changes.
Second, there is no evidence that psychiatrists, judges, or others empowered to commit or certify people have any reliable knowledge or skill for determining who is acutely dangerous and who is not, and when they have recovered.
Third, there is no scientific evidence that psychiatrically incarcerating people reduces their violent tendencies or protects the public from them. In my clinical experience and study of violent perpetrators, involuntary incarceration increases the likelihood of future violence by adding the humiliation and abuse of forced treatment to the individual’s list of reasons to feel humiliated, outraged and retaliatory. In addition, they become exposed to psychiatric drugs, many of which can cause or worsen violence. [Moore et al., 2010]
Fourth, fear of involuntary treatment hangs over the head of everyone labelled a mental patient. Going to a psychiatrist, or to other healthcare providers, exposes the already distressed individual to the risk of incarceration and forced treatment with little or no due process. When feeling helpless and overwhelmed, seeking psychiatric treatment can turn into the most dangerous mistake of a person’s life. People often avoid seeking help for fear of being locked up and/or forced to take drugs, when voluntary psychotherapeutic interventions can be lifesaving.
Fifth, psychiatry’s capacity to force treatment upon its most challenging patients means that psychiatrists have little motivation to develop genuinely helpful treatments. Psychiatrists can and do get away with compulsively repeating the same old oppressive approaches—hospitalization, mind-numbing drugs, and ECT—without any evidence for their effectiveness. Why explore better approaches, when they can simply lock up people, while making believe they are doing the best that they can do? Involuntary treatment becomes the easy way, without the necessity of psychotherapeutic interventions that require thoughtfulness, empathy, hard work, and devotion.
We know that there are excellent treatment interventions for even the most distressed people, acutely disturbed people having breakdowns diagnosed as schizophrenia. Robert Whitaker, Loren Mosher, as well as myself and many others, have described them. Yet these approaches remain outside the psychiatric establishment because it is so easy to lock up people who “do not respond to treatment.”
Sixth, even if involuntary treatment could prevent a few instances of violence, the cost is too high. The use of psychiatric coercion for centuries has led to the wretched incarceration and horrendous abuse of millions of people throughout the world. All the most violent treatments, such as neuroleptic drugs, electroshock and lobotomy, grew out of unethical, unprincipled mass experimentation on involuntary inmates. Many of the worst abuses I continue to witness as a medical expert have been perpetrated upon helpless, incarcerated patients.
Today in America, while long-term psychiatric incarcerations have gone down, civil commitment of people in the community is escalating. Imagine someone forcing you to take long-acting injections of neuroleptic drugs like Risperdal and Zyprexa while living at home? Imagine refusing to go the clinic for your shots, so that the police or other agents of the state come knocking down your door?
Undergoing forcibly injected psychiatric drugs is worse than drug-free imprisonment in jail where at least your mind and spirit are free. The neuroleptic drugs crush the mind and spirit, in the extreme producing a zombie–like existence. Your will can be so broken by the drugs that you cannot find the strength or motivation to resist, or to run away and hide from the authorities.
There is a reason for the complex, cumbersome protections of the criminal justice system. People in authority, such as judges, prosecuting attorneys, psychiatrists and police officers need the restraint of Constitutional protections, especially the Bill of Rights. Civil commitment bypasses these protections, resulting in devastating outcomes for the individual and society. As cumbersome as the criminal justice system can be, we are better off as a society if we rely upon it, rather than coercive psychiatry, to protect us from violence. If an individual cannot forcibly be detained under existing criminal laws, then we must tolerate their freedom, if only to protect our own. If they are jailed, they must still have the right to refuse psychiatric treatment that imposes shackles on the brain, mind and spirit.
The call to abolish involuntary treatment has become more controversial and threatening since the mass shootings perpetrated by individuals who at times seem emotionally disturbed, including some who are ideologically and religiously motivated. As I discuss in my book Medication Madness: The Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Cases of Violence, Suicide, and Crime, organized psychiatry and involuntary treatment has not protected society from them. Nearly all of the non-Jihadists have been through the mental health system, which has failed to respond to their threats of violence. Many have received psychiatric drugs that have worsened or even caused their violence. On the other hand, the psychiatrist system will never get hold of most Jihadists, and if and when it does, it will provide us no protection, while continuing to trample on individual rights.
Practical experience demonstrates that involuntary treatment does not protect society while it abuses many innocent people. Many of the mass murderers, especially Jihadists, could have been deterred by the current criminal justice system if they had been investigated and prosecuted more rigorously.
Abolishing involuntary treatment is easily justified under the Bill of Rights, including sections that pertain to due process, protection from cruel and unusual punishments, and the protection of freedom of speech. Involuntary treatment has no place in a society that values the rights of the individual. Nor is it “humane” or “kind” to lock up and drug people against their will. If these people thought psychiatric treatment was humane and kind, they would have chosen it. To superimpose upon them the will of professionals devoted to psychiatric theories and practices that do more harm than good is neither human nor kind; it is simply oppressive.
Thank you for the article, Dr. Breggin. I’m very demoralized now because of the Murphy Bill passage and the continual demonizing of the “mentally ill” by the media. I wonder if they have something to gain by hurting us.
Right now I’m trying to taper off the drugs, which I’m doing alone and lying about. No support from anyone. Just praying I don’t get found out.
I’m seriously considering leaving America for some third-world country with “poor mental health services” where I won’t be imprisoned and tortured for the crime of existing.
Report comment
The Murphy Bill has NOT yet been passed, it is however through the committee process and presumably will be scheduled for a full vote . I don’t know how soon, I’m not an expert on this. But this is the point where a full-scale campaign to stop passage needs to be initiated and to be made everyone’s priority.
P.S. Is there a way for you to at least find some phone support or something via the MIA drug withdrawal pages?
Report comment
Yes. Thank you, Oldhead. Mindfreedom has some numbers. The medicine or drug giving me real problems is effexor. It makes me violently ill when I try to taper it. Last time, I tried tapering by 10% till I got down to 30%, then I became very suicidal and had to be admitted to the hospital for relief–which came in the form of the old dose of effexor. I cold turkeyed off the lamictal and hope to come off abilify in 6 more weeks.
Report comment
RachelE, I was actually weaned off the “bipolar” drugs (antipsychotics, antidepressants, and mood stabilizers) twice by psychiatrists. And both times I was weaned off the antipsychotic first (Amblify), then the antidepressant (Effexor), then the mood stabilizer (lamictal), in that order.
I can’t say it was the best approach, since I did end up suffering from a drug withdrawal induced super sensitivity manic “psychosis” / awakening to my dreams, both times. But I’ve been drug free for seven years now, so that approach did eventually work. And there is possibly some wisdom in going off the strongest drug (the antipsychotic) first, then the antidepressant, then the mood stabilizer.
Although, Peter Breggin wrote a book about withdrawaling from the psych meds, I’m certain his book would be very helpful to you. Best of luck to you in your healing journey, and I hope you can find some sort of support system – people who might be willing to read and learn about the common withdrawal symptoms of the psych drugs – who might assist you in avoiding future hospitalizations. Although, like you, I did it largely on my own, and without the support or warnings of what to expect. So best wishes, you can do it too, especially since you have more information than I had.
Report comment
I’m so sorry and angry to think of you having to do this without support. The process is hard on the body physically, as well as emotionally.
I struggled and gave up quickly the first time I tried to discontinue Effexor so, the next time, I took a planned three-month break between two stages. It gave me some breathing space and time to prepare for the last part, which is the hardest for most people, it seems.
Tiny reductions over a long time seem to be helpful for those who really struggle, and even tinier ones towards the end stages. I tried to think of discontinuation as being a bit like fitness training. If you suddenly get up after years sat on the couch and try to run a marathon, you will burn out quickly (ask me how I know….. 😉 ) Small steps are more sustainable and tend to cause less damage, when you look at the reports of others’ experience that are out there.
Remember there is no shame in taking medication in the first place, and discontinuation is not a race. You are already fabulous right now, and just as you are. The drug discontinuation is just a project that will take as long as it takes. It doesn’t define you. Your inner fabulousness defines you. Take really good care of yourself Rachel and know that people out here care about you and are rooting you on. xxxx
Report comment
Thank you TenaciousMe.
Report comment
Hi Rachel E,
Abilify must be among the most misrepresented and unpredictable drug around. I hope you feel better when it’s gone. I was worse on it than off it, that’s for sure. I had distressing akathisia for far too long, which the doctor thought was mania.
It sounds like you’re well on your way, but thinking about this, it occurred to me that almost everyone tapers off one drug at a time. rather than by a series of small reductions across the board. I wonder how that would work. It might feel less even than expected, given that some drugs have very different affects at low does than high doses.
Best of luck,
Report comment
Old head with young heart? Can you explain the Murphy Bill?
Report comment
Not really. Forced drugging at home and shrinks crawling in & out of every orifice pretty much sums it up.
Surely there are others capable of doing a better analysis, come out wherever you are.
You can read the bill here:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/2646/text
Report comment
It makes it possible for your family to learn your medical/psychiatric history and decide things for you, as I recall. Given how often the “patient” is the only sane one in a sick family, that’s a creepy proposition.
Report comment
I’m sorry for your needless suffering, Rachel. I wonder if you were gaslighted too? I had a doctor tell me I wasn’t crazy, however prescribed Abilify for sleep issues! So, I had to follow up with a psychiatrist who said he would never prescribe Abilify because it has so many side effects. He also said I can give you something for sleep but if you wake up during the night you won’t remember what happened. Watch out for hypnotic Benzo’s! Dr. Breggin, think he’s had it with his profession and the experimentation that’s not only going on with these drugs but with what’s creating a “need for psychotropic drugs”?
Rachel, there are support groups online that can help you taper if you can’t find a humane physician to get you off of them. Best wishes
Report comment
I barely made it through high school due to constant bullying and sexual harassment. In college I saw a couple therapists and one sent me to a shrink. Big mistake. At first it wasn’t too bad except he put me on Stellazine in a small dose and I felt numb and less creative. I used the numbness to become less shy, kind of like alcohol.
In my junior year I kept having thoughts I didn’t like and my shrink put me on a new drug called Anafranil. Worse mistake! I didn’t sleep for three weeks. I begged the creepy pdoc to take me off and he told me to keep taking it. Finally he let me go off, but I was already a psychotic wreck. I went to the hospital where they put me on “heroic” or villainous doses of Haldol. Mom told everyone at the college about my diagnosis–which had to be done to explain my seizures. A few months later I was asked to leave campus on the grounds that I wasn’t taking my medicine. That was simply not true at the time! I took the brain drugs religiously!! After all the doctor ALWAYS knows best!!! Right?
I decided to find a way to come off the drugs sooner or later five years ago. Robert Whitaker wasn’t the one who showed me the error of my ways–I didn’t read him till much later. I read William Glasser’s “Warning: Psychiatry can be hazardous to your mental health!” A light went on in my head and I realized the role that brain drugs had played in my life had been essentially a negative one.
Unfortunately no one I know offline has the time or mental energy to read Whitaker or Glasser.
Report comment
RachelE: Here’s 2 websites that you will enjoy, I think:
>beyondmeds.comkellybroganmd.com<
Sorry it took me a couple days to reply….
And, I think June is "Mental Health Month", or some such horseradish,
so I think that's why there's a lot of news "stories" about so-called "mental illness". My position is, that *sometimes*, *some* folks do better on *some* drugs, for some usually short period of time. But that's not how the "system" works….as you have so painfully found out! Thanks for commenting here! Good luck!
And please keep posting! ~B./
Report comment
Hi RachelE,
You might want to try http://survivingantidepressants.org/. Also, look at this thread for tapering Effexor:
http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/272-tips-for-tapering-off-effexor-and-effexor-xr-venlafaxine/
Report comment
I have never been involuntarily or even voluntarily hospitalized or treated myself for any mental illnesses but I highly oppose involuntary treatment. Anyone who actually understands it, even someone like me has never experienced it, just makes them want to kill the people who do this. It’s not a mental illness to want to kill people who commit themselves to forcing people treatment. It’s like pedophiles, you want to murder them for what they do. It makes me sick to my fucking stomach to see that people feel fine with themselves doing this.
Report comment
Thank you Dr. Breggin,
This particularly resonates with me:
“Going to a psychiatrist, or to other healthcare providers, exposes the already distressed individual to the risk of incarceration and forced treatment with little or no due process…… People often avoid seeking help for fear of being locked up and/or forced to take drugs, when voluntary psychotherapeutic interventions can be lifesaving”.
As a family member trying to provide a healing environment outside of the traditional mental health system we found the ‘threat of involuntary treatment’ seriously impeded our efforts. We needed to be constantly vigilant that “helpful citizens” did not call for ambulance etc. that could put our loved one at risk of being forcibly medicated. The stress of this was enormous, not to mention that it seriously limited our ability to hire/find other people to help us in our efforts. Luckily we survived the ‘intense period’ and our loved one has moved away from that stage. Even now, though, his recovery process is limited by this ‘threat’ as we can’t encourage or support his independence as much as we would like to (going for walks alone, allowing him to express himself loudly and in whatever way he needs to at home for fear of others overhearing etc.etc.).
In my responses I often make the distinction between ‘forced safety’ and ‘forced treatment’. I wonder what you think about having ‘Forced safety’ as an option for those very difficult situations? (to be used very carefully in situations such as helping someone avoid jail, or hurting themselves, or as a way to help more people support the end of involuntary treatment)
Report comment
A well timed and much needed article, but we need more such statements from more & more people with system “credentials.” Thank you again Dr. Breggin!
Unfortunately I don’t see a discussion of abolishing forced “treatment” anywhere on the public radar right now; even normally progressive people confuse us with Scientology when these issues come up. If people don’t somehow put this discussion on the radar damn soon this shit will be so entrenched it could take us decades to root it out.
Report comment
Except here at Mad In America of course, and that’s not unfortunate at all, as these pieces, and the discussions surrounding them, are being picked up “on the public radar”.
Report comment
“A well timed and much needed article, but we need more such statements from more & more people with system “credentials.” Thank you again Dr. Breggin!”
I agree but, also, I think those of us service users with “system credentials” (ie, those of us who benefited from positive interventions and are coming through the other side) need to speak out too, and let political leaders and service providers know exactly what worked and what didn’t work for us, and why. Psychiatry and mental health services aren’t quite as scary for some of us as they are for others, for various reasons, perhaps because of economic and educational privilege, or by accident of birth, or by virtue of what services are available in our home towns.
I live in a country privileged to have a National Health Service that was largely driven forward by one very angry, working class man with a troubled childhood, who nurtured a “burning hatred” of the political ruling class of his day and allowed it to fuel the creation of a universal healthcare system that, for all its fragility, has served generations who would otherwise have been excluded from anywhere near adequate care.
My local mental health service only exists because Aneurin Bevan was outraged by inequality, and relentless in the pursuit of justice. All of its staff owe their livelihoods to a man who, if he had been born in this time and place, might well have been put on a CTO and had sedatives delivered to his Welsh Valley home by a nice nurse wanting to help to “calm him down”. Lucky them and us that he entered politics and not a psychiatric institution during his angry youth….
As the good man said himself: “The purpose of getting power is to be able to give it away”. And I think those of us within the system, in relative positions of power and privilege, have to decide for ourselves whether to cling onto our privilege for fear of reprisals, or to speak out in order to create a better future.
Report comment
Fab article, thank you so much.
“Fear of involuntary treatment hangs over the head of everyone labelled a mental patient. Going to a psychiatrist, or to other healthcare providers, exposes the already distressed individual to the risk of incarceration and forced treatment with little or no due process.”
More than this though, in an increasingly ageing population that has not so far found a cure for the dementias and similar conditions, the possibility of involuntary treatment hangs over the head of every single one of us, whether we are aware of it, or fear it, or not.
It is common and quite understandable that survivors of a minor stroke or TIA will report feeling afraid to close their eyes at night for fear they may never again wake up. Sadly, something far more sobering should be the possibility of waking up one day on a ward for the “elderly mentally ill” for one reason or another… but understanding around mental capacity legislation seems to be as locked away from mainstream society as is that section of our population that is being involuntarily detained under mental health legislation.
I struggle to understand the justification of involuntary treatment for all the humanitarian reasons you articulate here but, really, there is also a significant amount of self-interest at stake here, if people will only wake up to the reality of what the ageing process may mean for them. Most people simply can’t or won’t imagine the possibility of the police coming to their door to escort them to a “place of safety”, but surely everyone has thought about how they would like to spend their retirement?
Report comment
That’s most insightful. I have just seen it happen to an elderly woman who’d fallen and had a 1.25″ cut on her head. Through a colossal set of mistakes by others, she ended up in an emergency room, and was admitted for observation because she didn’t know her birthday or what city she was in. She hadn’t known her birthday in years and she’d never been to that hospital. Observation devolved into haloperidol and restraints and a forced catheterization, and she has not bounced back.
She talks about killing herself now, whereas before, even at 82, she was always involved in something and there was always something she was going to do next. Her notion of the future is a black void now.
She could have walked out the door at any time, but didn’t know it. She was impaired by Haloperidol. If I allowed myself to fully feel what I feel about it all, I’d be arrested for thought crimes.
I am reporting it to the relevant agencies and working up to reporting it as a crime. I want to expose the fancy research hospital for the scumatorium it is. They picked the wrong little old lady to neglect and abuse. She has an advocate who sees them for what they are: violent criminals.
Report comment
Terrific post with many on-the-mark points and a right-on conclusion. Thank you, Dr. Breggin, for drafting it, and let’s hope that there are people who are receptive to it, and that it, in contrast to non-consensual coercive (mis)treatment, may manage to do some good.
Report comment
Involuntary treatment benefits the people who are forced to live with the patient.
Report comment
Obligated, perhaps. Forced, not so much. People often wind up incarcerated in the hospital because families don’t feel so obligated, and then, not having a home to return to, there is much more distress, discomfort, and red tape involved in the process hopefully leading to discharge.
Report comment
In many states, parents can still be arrested for not continuing to take care of severely mentally ill/developmentally disabled offspring after they become adults. You can’t always just drop them off at the hospital without being charged with neglect of a dependent person. Yet the waiting list for placement in mental institutions for these people who will never be able to care for themselves gets longer and longer. Hence, the expression “forced”.
Nearly all of the old state hospitals are gone. They should have been revamped, not shut down.
Report comment
“Nearly all of the old state hospitals are gone.”
I wish!
“They should have been revamped, not shut down.”
Some of them have been “revamped” as you put it, but not in a positive direction. My old alma mater, Western State Hospital, in Staunton, Virginia, is now in it’s 3rd carnation, and things there are more totalitarian than ever before. Inmates wear electronic bracelets that identify them by their case histories and mark their status at all times. I’d have to call such procedures completely incompatible with living in a free society.
The original hospital, later a minimum security prison, is on it’s way to becoming condominiums if it is not already there. The second incarnation has been scrapped for a third smaller, but more restrictive facility. I think there comes a point when we have to recognize the people housed within for people. It is not like they are being quarantined due to some contagious disease, is it? Instead, on the account of behavior that is not illegal but still not tolerated, they have been segregated into these lunatic colonies away from the rest of society. I live in the south, and these lunatic colonies have a way of resembling these ‘nigger towns’ you used to see in the center of every southern town. Full integration into the community, and participation in it’s life, must mean something else.
Report comment
Excellent piece; thanks Dr. Breggin. Please continue to speak out about this loudly and clearly… your voice is inspiring!
Report comment
I’ve seen both sides of the coin.
One time, while locked up, they kept drugging a WW2 veteran, saying he was making sexual comments to them. He was not. I called the abuse hotline. I was real popular after that.
I was wild without medicine. I get scared, which is why I don’t own a firearm. It’s just so confusing in my head.
If they would not have dragged me in and taken care of me, I’d be dead. I stopped eating and drinking, bashed my head, screamed in the middle of the bad part of town. I couldn’t think.
If I stop taking medicine, I get confused and start fighting agitation. I always think someone is after me.
Report comment
As Will Hall stated in his new book, there are a few people whom the drugs seem to help. We can’t explain why or how it happens. Perhaps you are one of those few.
However, for many of the people who are forced to take these drugs the drugs cause more problems and harm than they ever take care of, over a long period of time. Many of us call for the judicious use of small amounts of these drugs, over a very sort period of time, for people who want them and have been given true informed consent. If people want to take them, knowing what the end result will probably be, then I say let them take them, as long as they’ve been informed about what the drugs do and don’t do. For many people the drugs are harmful and often cause the very things that they’re supposed to take care of, but they have no choice and are forced to take them. This is wrong, plain and simple. People should have a choice and they need to be informed. They’re not given the choice and true informed consent is nonexistent.
Many people get off the drugs after titrating down over long periods of time. You can’t go could turkey. And even then, the road to recovery from these things is often long and difficult.
Report comment
Hi Dr. Breggin. I was trying to taper off a neuroleptic drug 4 years ago and experienced “spellbinding” as a withdrawal reaction. As a result, I was hospitalized several times and force medicated. i can attest to the fact that forced hospitalization and treatment is torture, and a means of breaking one’s will. I fought it at first by making comments to the staff that their treatment was a human rights violation, only be attacked by hospital attendants and injected several times. In order to be discharged from the hospital I was forced by a Judge to be in the Assisted Outpatient Treatment program in my state and forced to be injected in my home for two years with very high doses of neuroleptics which made me very physically sick and which was literally killing me.
I finally found a good holistic doctor who agreed to help me get off the drugs after “graduating” AOT (graduating was a euphemism for being completely docile and letting the AOT team come into my somewhen ever they wanted and also to inject me every month, without telling them what I really felt about their treatment.) I have been reducing the drug for over two years, and now I am at a very low dose, reducing at 1 percent of each dose per month. This process will take me several years to be off the drug completely. I have lost over 33 years of my life to this torture, when all that I really needed was good nutrition! I am doing very well now. I live alone. I meditate regularly and spend my time cooking healthy meals and doing food shopping at the Greenmarket. I have no mental issues. ZERO. Being put on psych drugs when i was 24 years old was the worst mistake of my life. And I paid for it by being labeled a mental patient all these years and treated with lobotomizing drugs without looking at the underlying problem of a poor diet.
Report comment
I agree with this for the most part. However, I had a schitzophrenic neighbor that decided to flush all his meds. Within 2 weeks of flushing his meds he ripped the jaw off his puppy, tackled a teenage girl, and asked his neighbor if the could sacrifice her to the mothership. At that point you can’t just let a person walk around the neighborhood. He was a danger to others and he was in danger of being hurt by others. He was so out of touch with reality that when 2 cops pulled up in a marked police car he ran out and asked them if he could ride in their spaceship. They opened the back door and he hopped right in. I’m assuming he was committed. He would have gotten killed in a regular jail unless he was kept in solitary and that’s damaging too. I generally think that adults can do what they wish even if its self-destructive but for those few mentally ill individuals who are violent (like my former neighbor) committing them may be the best option.
Report comment
That’s what happens sometimes when you detox cold turkey. Criminally violent people should be incarcerated if there’s no better means of control, no matter what the “cause.”
Report comment
I was given permission to withdraw from slow release drugs in October and I ended up in hospital in December. I had a suicide attempt in February and another suicidal hospitalization in April. And then I decided to taper.
Report comment
Withdrawal psychosis. Horrible stories like that can’t be used to defend drugs unless we know what the person was like before he took them.
Report comment
http://unabashedlystupendousbeliever.tumblr.com/post/142086408588/the-dark-side-of-psychiatric-drugs
The dark side of psychiatric drugs
In 1987, Kathleen Gannon, of Tempe, Ariz., stabbed her mother to death with garden shears and beat her-father to death with the butt of a rifle. According to a source who examined her, Gannon believed that, when her parents were dead, “she would then somehow become a normal person.” The day before Gannon murdered her parents, she was injected with a major tranquilizer and given a prescription for the same drug in pill form.
I’ve heard an endless amount of anecdotal stories from people saying they became uncharacteristically violent and saw a nightmarish increase in their “psychosis” while ON neurolpetics. NEUROLEPTICS have never been proven to have any “anti psychotic” properties. “Psychosis” and “schizophrenia” were seen as temporary stats of mind that people very often recovered from and never experienced ever again. Soteria and Open Dialogue has already shown that “psychosis” can be temporary and “treated” with kind understand people who let them go through these states. Therefore it stands to reason that these “anti psychotics” are nothing more than brain damaging placebos that takes the credit for something which they only worsen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardive_psychosis
NEUROLPETICS cause an unbearable sort of neurological brain damage called Akathisia. Our resident saintly “Critical psychiatrists”(Healy etc.) have already shown that this brain damage has a connection to violence and suicide and “psychosis” in people given ssris. But since these people pay for their fancy houses and cars by continuing to prescribe NEUROLEPTICS they expect us to believe that akathisia is now harmless when experienced by “Schizophrenics.”
When you withdraw from neuroleptics it causes dopamine to suddenly surge into the places where it has been unnaturally been “turned off” including the motor region of the brain which causes a nightmarish increase in AKATHISIA. It’s also impossible to sleep because of the brain damage.
I was on halidol for 3 weeks and it was impossible to stop. I think if the akathisia had gone of any longer I would’ve had a stroke/heart attack or jumped in front of a car to stop the torture.
I found it easier to get off Seroquel and there was no akathisia. And I took benzos and trazodone to sleep.
As for your “neighbor” I have some questions. How did you find out out the details of his story? Were they in a newspaper ? Did you talk to a police officer? Neighborhood gossip? I ask because I didn’t know that “schizophrenia” gave people super human strength and can’t eve imagine how someone would “rip the jaw off” an animal.
If this “neighbor” actually exists, have you ever even wondered or cared enough to wonder what happened to him?
My guess is that his “psychosis” only worsened on the drugs.
I’m sure that he was treated with the same sadistic hatred in his “mental hospital” that he would be treated with in jail. This website is filled with those stores of people being mistreated in “mental hospitals” and people die from mysterious violent deaths there every year.
http://www.tampabay.com/projects/2015/investigations/florida-mental-health-hospitals/14-patients-died/
Also by the way, I looked though your comment history. It seems you are here at madinamerica because of your obsession with your “add.”
You must know of course that your daily use of stimulants which mimic cocaine makes you at risk for psychosis. Just know that if that happens, the attention and pity you get for your “Add” will go away. After your stimulant induced breakdown you’ll be as hated and feared by psychiatry/anyone else who knows about your new “diagnosis” as your “neighbor” in your little story.
Report comment
Thank you, Dr. Breggin, for speaking out against forced psychiatric “treatment.” I’d like to touch on one point you didn’t make, in regards to why forced treatment is legal, despite it being unconstitutional, torture, and thus morally indefensible.
Forced psychiatric treatment is also very profitable. It fills hospital beds that need to be filled, for the profit motives of (even the non-profit) hospitals and doctors, like the one who had me medically unnecessarily shipped a long distance to himself. And has since been arrested and convicted for doing the same, and worse, to many Medicare and Medicaid patients. My private insurance company was defrauded out of $30,000.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndil/pr/oak-brook-doctor-convicted-kickback-scheme-sacred-heart-hospital
And I was being drugged by doctors who wanted to cover up easily recognized and complex iatrogenesis, plus the medical evidence of the sexual abuse of my small child, according to all my family’s medical records. As an ethical subsequent pastor described my situation, “you dealt with the dirty little secret of the two original educated professions.”
And the medical evidence is now coming in proving that misdiagnosing / denying / covering up child abuse does seem to be the number one etiology of today’s “major mental illnesses.” But likely proactively preventing potential malpractice suits for incompetent and unethical doctors may be another high “etiology” of the “major mental illnesses,” if it were to ever be researched. I know I had a client, who knew nothing about my situation, spend a couple hours telling me about how it had almost happened to her, too.
My point is forced psychiatric treatment needs to be outlawed, since today it is being utilized by the mainstream medical community, and ‘elite,’ for illegal and greed inspired reasons. We must not forget, forced psychiatric treatment is staggeringly profitable, from many perspectives.
Report comment
“- fear of involuntary treatment hangs over the head of everyone labelled a mental patient.” Isn’t it slander to be labeled by a physician you didn’t seek mental health from?
Keep up the good work, Dr. Breggin.
Report comment
“As Thomas Szasz originally taught, involuntary psychiatric treatment is unconstitutional and an assault on basic human rights.” It is an assault on basic human rights, but it is not unconstitutional–the 13th Amendment never abolished slavery.
“Yet these approaches remain outside the psychiatric establishment because it is so easy to lock people up who ‘do not respond to treatment.'” It is so easy because the 13th Amendment makes it so easy.
“Today in America, while long-term psychiatric incarcerations have gone down, civil commitment of people in the community is escalating.” Just another way of adding to the mass incarceration already going on, as allowed by the 13th Amendment.
“People in authority…need the restraint of Constitutional protections…” “Civil commitment bypasses these protections…” The Constitution doesn’t protect anyone from anything, including slavery.
“As cumbersome as the criminal justice system can be, we are better off as a society if we rely on it, rather than coercive psychiatry, to protect us from violence.” When that justice is based on the supreme law of the land that allows slavery, it is not going to protect anyone from anything.
“Abolishing involuntary treatment is easily justified under the Bill of Rights…” Too easily–that is why it is allowed in the Constitution, which trumps the Bill of Rights.
“…including sections that pertain to due process, protection from cruel and unusual punishments, and the protection of freedom of speech.” The 13th Amendment gives the authorities the right to strip you of all your rights and freedoms and treat you like a piece of the State’s property. That was the point of putting slavery under the control of Congress.
“To superimpose upon them the will of professionals devoted to psychiatric theories and practices that do more harm than good is neither human or kind; it is simply oppressive.” Slavery is a very specific form of oppression. It lessens the value of a person’s life, making him a fraction of a human, therefore easy to prey upon.
Long story short–we need to abolish slavery.
Report comment
Peter, you are the conscience of psychiatry and have been for many decades. Your fearless truth telling as in this article on torture is a moral challenge to us all to take a stand or deny the truth before us.
Thank you again,
Michael
Report comment
but everyone knows the bullshit, this is the reason why school shooting exists, because of this shit, involuntary treatment
Report comment
Great article Dr Breggin, You write;
“Involuntary treatment has no place in a society that values the rights of the individual. Nor is it “humane” or “kind” to lock up and drug people against their will.”
Invol. treatment gets a lot of space in a Police State though. In my State it is possible for police to simply ‘verbal’ a weapon into a persons pocket in their own home and can then make a referral to Mental Health Services (“reasonable grounds” standard met). Duly baited the person is then injected with a cocktail of drugs before even being examined by a psychiatrist. Is there any wonder we find no need for a police watchdog anymore? All corruption is a ‘mental illness’.
And in such a State it seems there is little concern about “humane” or “kind”, it’s simply “convenient” to use these questionable treatments for political purposes.
Oh for a Bill of Rights lol
Report comment
I take psych meds and they are a helpful part of my treatment which also includes a therapist. I think sometimes we focus too much on the medication part and forget that it’s not going to solve our problems. The right medication at the right doses can be a useful part of managing symptoms as we learn coping skills and really work on things that will actually help change our problems and situations. Through therapy and through the support of friends and family I have been able to greatly reduce the number of medications and the doses of medications that I am on. For me personally this way has worked but I do understand that for some people medication isn’t something that they want and that is their choice to make
Report comment
The point is, not everyone has a choice. Not everyone is in control of their drug regime.
And when you are sick, or confused, or displaying “non-standard” behaviour, you are drugged to the gills in order to force compliance to what feels “safe” for society.
Informed consent. Consent. The right to say NO is a vital part of human rights.
Likewise, you have the right to say Yes, if you so choose. But many of us have struggled with the right to say No.
Report comment
“There is a reason for the complex, cumbersome protections of the criminal justice system.” The criminal justice system protects the government only. The government builds and runs the state hospitals where the torture you speak of takes place. It also pays the doctors and staff to carry out the torture, as well as the pharmaceutical companies and insurance that aid and abet said torture. It also supports the universities where people are trained how to practice that torture. The government’s refusal to support any kind of help that is non-coercive and healing is what prevents the desperately needed services of Soteria House and Open Dialogue from happening. It is the government’s refusal to provide help with getting off drugs that can make the mental imprisonment they cause a life sentence, in effect torturing people for their entire lives. The government and its criminal justice system are all about control through imprisonment–mental and physical. We are not talking about mental “health,” we are talking about mental imprisonment and mass incarceration.
Report comment
I survived years of psychiatry benzos and ADHD pill dependency addiction they caused and Remeron and wicked Zyprexa withdrawal after I trusted the doctors words “don’t worry its safe” for insomnia.
Got off all of it but managed to make myself sick drinking alcohol a year or so later and ended up inpatient psych after deciding to go to the ER and ask for detox instead of buying more alcohol that day to avoid withdrawals again. I got sent to a UHS psychiatric hellhole and my stay started with goons demanding I get naked stand barefoot on the nasty hospital floor and squat and cough, GO TO HELL UHS.
After all the crap I went through getting off benzos and Zyprexa that was a worse worse withdrawal, that inpatient psych doctor pulled that take these drugs or be forcefully injected threat on me. No that crap never helped me no thanks, booze is my problem.
Gunna stick me with a needle and assault me ? How will you like it when I see you on the street when this is all over and stick a needle inside of YOU ??? or just kick your butt really really badly ? I also told that pill pushing staff to be nice, you guys all park in that parking lot out back right ??
What the hell I go for some alcohol withdrawal detox and instead of getting any detox treatment I am supposed to ingest 2 anti psychotics and these epilepsy drug mood pills or be ASSAULTED !!!? Assaulted they put their hands on me ? Swallow all these pills that make your nerves and mind malfunction, it was frightening how that crap feels so I refused that wicked high dose of three drugs at once.
Dangerous pills or an even more dangerous injection ???? Somebody reading this isn’t going to like the idea retaliating later outside thes hospital if they abuse you but unwanted needles into a persons body that’s RAPE. Unwanted penetration is rape, a persons body is sacred, the only thing that is really really yours and only yours. Of course my fear of the threatened impending needle rape assault was charted as a “symptom of my illness”. Anxiety is my problem so they added threats.
I never got injected, that was empty threat to try and coerce the pills or they took my counter threats serious because YOU CANT RAPE ME without a nasty bad *ss payback. Rape me I will find you and hurt you in future. I thought it all out , I hurt that doctor bad get caught and convicted for assault get a year be out in 8 months. That is what was going to happen if I was needle raped assaulted.
There was no reason for me to have been treated the way I was in that place, maybe I am a stupid person for getting so sick on alcohol and needing to go to a hospital but I wanted help but instead got a month long nightmare, people making threats to assault and penetrate my body with needles and dangerous drugs…. Unnecessary absolutely uncalled for nightmare so they could collect insurance money.
If you want to believe my behavior was responsible for the way they treated me no mix of words or explanation can change that. The writer was in the hospital because he was sick and “needed” the treatment… Thats what many people think when they read these inpatient abuse testimonials, I know that. Thats how they get away with it. No I was just a stupid person who should have put down the booze, manned up and walked it off and sweated it out instead of trying to take the easy way with Atavan and a hospital bed 3 meals a day. Stupid move.
All this crap I went through is why I donate time and write on this website, the stuff I saw going on in that hospital I swore when it was over I was going to speak out. They screw people up , pump all full of drugs and hold them as long as they can to get that insurance money. People that actually wanted to stay kicked out others in much better shape held hostage for insurance money.
The worst part of it was making friends then watching them get assaulted and or made worse with toxic drug cocktails. I am a good friend to people but if I stepped in to stop an assault I would just get assaulted too, a punch I can take that Haldol needle could be neurological damage for life so I had to just watch. All I wanted was help with alcohol detox and got to live all this why ? No reason.
Universal Health Services patient abuse , link to Google search > http://www.google.com/search?q=universal+health+services+patient+abuse
I believe the reason the worst time for suicide is after the hospital is because people find out “help” is an abusive nightmare so they chose suicide over so called “help”. And also I don’t do the suicidal thing, I kind of like being on the surface and have a never say die attitude, always have, but these UHS CRIMINALS write suicidal on my medical records to defraud my insurance company. “Suicidal” no, underground in a box terrifies me, always has. After its over they wouldn’t send my medical records so I spent $100 to get a paralegal to do it all official and force them.
Keep exposing these criminals MIA. Its so bad whats going on.
Report comment
Still thinking about this, how or what could I write to explain to the public that people that end up in psychiatric hospitals may be troubled but they don’t “need” that drug torture they call help.
Those drugs get you stuck in a predicament where after a wile you either take them and live a life of anhedoinia zombie or try and quit and get rebound withdrawal can’t sleep anxiety ridden “mania” worse than ever before even if you never had it before. Anti psychotics and mood pills, its the worlds most evil drug dependency cause there is no feel good part, zombie anhedoina or withdrawals. A rock or hard-place thing.
That Murphy Bill is coming and I think it will be a good thing for human rights in mental health because it will create a culture of resistance among people caught up in psychiatry. The more authoritarian psychiatry becomes with this Murphy Bill the more an us Vs them mentality will grow and cause many problems for the system they did not anticipate.
I still don’t know how to properly write my story of what happened in that hospital well enough to overcome that thinking many people have of if a person is ‘sick’ enough to be inpatient they “need” that drug torture they call help. I used to think it too, those crazy people need drugs.
Report comment
Thanks for writing this, Peter.
May you live forever.
Report comment
I was logging off, when I saw another “madinamerica.com” story, while scrolling down through the usual tabloid-type faux news stories on Yahoo!…. wanted to give MiA the ‘click”, and the eyeballs…..
Then, I saw *WHO* wrote this story, and what it’s about…..
I first read Dr. Breggin’s “Toxic Psychiatry” well over 20 years ago….
And, as I read this piece, above, I actually began to cry HEALING TEARS of GRATITUDE….
I’m so grateful I’m alive, free of psych drugs, and *happy*….
The local “CMHC”, and the LIES of the pseudoscience DRUG RACKET known as “biopsychiatry”
continue to cloud the sunny skies of life, and the evils of “NAMI” persist, but still……
I whole-heartedly support and endorse the ideas and work of Dr. Peter Breggin, MD….
Thank-you, Dr. Breggin. Maybe I’ll have more to say later….
Report comment
Wow, Peter thank you for that
I have no mental illness but got myself in a situation when I was on purpose misdiagnosed after saving a 65 year old women from a brutal assault by a inpatient and was also injured doing so.
I wanted police and said I would go to media as I did not realize who theses people are and that they have the power of a Nazi SS gestapo.
My reward for saving the women’s life was a long two week of hell which is exactly what you wrote, but because I am a human rights activist I bit the bullet and become the fly on the wall.
Now I am sung theses monsters for $750.000 and are the representing lawyer, which unfortunately for them I am in China and out of their reach designing, developing and manufacturing for over 2000 http://www.kickstarter.com backers, I can file my writ and statement of claims and fax to the WA Perth’s District courts, who the courts administration said soon as I pay the $700 AUD filing fee, court proceeding time will start, also said I can place as many names on the one writ I want and can sue the psychiatrist, doctors nurses, social workers and directors personally, if no court settlement before hand I then have a televised court trial from China and are entitled to cross examine each of the filth for example that held me down while raping my body with injections from hell.
If I was in Australia right now, I would be kidnaped and several injected just on say so to make sure I had no human right and no court action cold take place.
I have been writing a book about how to DIY sue monsters and what they do including their lawyers and insurance company also the sham agencies that say they are a complaints system which all are worthless and are actually part of the monsters organization who fear of losing their high paid salary’s, I am also going public while suing them as secrecy is their weapon, but I am in China and they can not get their hands on me to shut me up and are squealing like a suck pig.
Regards
Denis Stewart
Report comment
Hi Denis,
I can’t help but wonder if you have ever been involved in any human rights activism relating to Falun Gong? Western Australian Govt doing a bit of ‘outsourced’ work for the Chinese Govt?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Falun_Gong
The section on psychiatric abuse reads like a training manual. And many Falun Gong people have sought refuge here in WA.
Report comment
Hey, boans! – good to see your comments again!
I know you’re down in Australia, but not everybody will know that.
So, when you write about “…here in WA.”, I know you mean “Western Australia”, right? Well, here in America, “WA” is the abbreviation for the State of Washington.
(Not Washington, D.C., – that’s 3,000 miles from Washington State!…)…. I know, this is kinda petty, but it is a good example of how language can be confusing!
Keep up the good work, my friend! ~B./
Report comment
squealing like a stuck pig.
Report comment
Perhaps I can get this threads opinion on what I have come to see as something of an impasse in completely avoiding force/forced treatment?
I live in Denmark where we at present have a rather turbulent discussion about forced treatment. The background is that there has been several instances recently, where employees at psychiatric units or semi-psychiatric housing facilities have been attacked and even killed by people (patients) receiving treatment or support for daily living.
This has led to a call for a more uncomplicated access to the use of force in both psychiatry proper and especially in the semi-psychiatric housing facilities which often have severe problems with illegal drug use.
I generally agree with dr. Breggin about the use of forced treatment. It is a really nasty experience for people undergoing it and ideally it should not take place. But I have difficulty seeing how any use of force can be completely avoided at all times. Sometimes people end up in states where they can do themselves or somebody else harm – and do things they will regret later if not stopped.
How to tackle this problem? As I read dr. Breggin – he primarily writes about forced treatment with antipsychotics – a type of medication that is meant to be taken continuously, where there is risk of severe collateral damage (side effects…), and of which the long-term benefit has not been documented (perhaps even the contrary).
Should it in some cases be allowed to use antipsychotics short-term? Should other drugs – perhaps sedatives – be used instead? Or some other solution?
I hope I don’t offend anybody by posing these questions – but I think they are important, also if things are to improve gradually it will be important to point to the next good step to take in order to avoid the kind of forced treatment described in the post. The discussion here in Denmark also hinges on coming up with some good answers to these questions, because these are the kind of examples that the advocates of more forced treatment pull into the debate.
Best
Jonathan
Report comment
I also would love to have this very difficult discussion discussed more, and I would if both Dr. Breggin wrote more about their opinions and feelings on this issue. I often talk about differentiating between ‘forced safety’ and ‘forced treatment’ but I understand there are so many ways people can feel traumatized, and I am sure ‘forced safety’ would look very different depending on how much respect/understanding someone had towards the person.
Based on our family’s situation, I would argue that forced treatment by antipsychotics should never happen even in the short term due to the lack of science behind the long term effects of even short term use; because of the potentially very severe side effects, but mostly because it is our belief that the introduction of antipsychotic medication set our family member on a much more severe course of illness.
Report comment
If a person breaks the law they can be arrested.
The first time I went to see a Psychiatrist I thought I would be getting the Talking Treatments. By that stage I had lived with myself for 20 years and was not desperate for tranquillisation.
But after 3 years and on the “medications” (and on disability) I could not go without them – so I had been turned into a psychiatric patient by the psychiatric treatments.
Ultimately I did recover through the Talking Treatments (and carefully weaning myself off the drugs).
Report comment
Hi Fiachra
If you mean, that people in extreme mental states should be handled by the police, there are certain risks in that as well. Again here in Denmark we regularly have episodes where police officers hurt or kill mentally unstable people who react in supposedly threatening ways.
In order to reduce these risks, som cities have made teams consisting of both police and mental health professionals – I’m not sure how it is working out in practice…
Report comment
Hi Jonathan,
I think it’s too easy to claim someone as a safety risk and have their freedom taken from them on the basis of medical opinion. This option can be used as a means of control and intimidation.
In an extreme situation I’d honestly sooner take my chances on “Police manhandling” than “Psychiatric solutions”.
(Then again, how many people are in such an extreme situation).
Report comment
@Fiachra
In Denmark there are a number of protocols that have to be fulfilled in order to have someone committed and forced treatment demands further procedures. But, as you point out, it still rests on a certain medical type of thinking.
I think these types of situations are common – especially in larger cities, where people in extreme states are directed towards the acute psychiatric units. Sometimes it is connected to mental anguish/life events/life history, in some cases it is caused by drug use and in quite a few cases by a combination of both.
I think it is very important to be clear about, how we envision these situations handled without force if possible. And with the most benign form of force if the first option is not possible. Because these situations exist, and they will be used as examples in order to give more room for forced treatment.
Report comment
Just another example of police, not knowing how to deal with those in mentally extreme states:
http://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/crime/police-shoot-and-kill-knifeman-at-westfield-hornsby/news-story/09e98074a9f0534020686a76ebee783c
Report comment
Hi Sa
Thx for the reply – it makes sense to differentiate between ‘forced safety’ and ‘forced treatment’ I think, although, as you point out, it is no simple feat to offer ‘safety’ in a forced format…
I think these nuances are important to bring out, but I fear it is too subtle to make these distinctions count in the public debate, unfortunately. There would certainly need to be clear alternatives to present practice to make an impact.
Best of luck with your family situation!
Report comment
There’s one aspect I think you need to consider very carefully, Jonathan. In many cases, psychiatric drugs actually CAUSE violent behavior. Too many times, people are as “crazy” as they are, *BECAUSE* of the psych drugs, and not *in*spite* of the psych drugs. This inconvenient truth is routinely ignored and covered up by the medical-industrial-complex. For example, ALL of the so-called “mass-casualty school shooters”, from Columbine, to Virginia Tech, to Newtown, Ct., were either receiving psych drugs, or psych “treatment”, and usually BOTH. Also, claiming to be “mental” has become a go-to strategy for many petty criminals. By arguing “mental illness”, the criminals & their lawyers hope to receive more lenient sentences & treatment from the Judge & Courts. That dynamic is one reason for the huge spike in “civil commitments” and police involvement in so-called “mental health”/”mental illness” involved situations. A few years ago, here in New Hampshire, a “patient” had his “conditional discharge” revoked, and the police showed up to his home, to return him to the State Mental Hospital. He didn’t want to go, so the police shot and killed him. Obviously, that’s a VERY shortened version of the story, but basically accurate. I don’t think there’s a good, simple answer to a complex problem, but MORE psychs & psych drugs is NOT the answer. Yes, when a person has actually committed a real crime, police involvement is justified. But, too often, the cops are used by the system as “errand boys”, and “taxi drivers”, and that’s when tragedy too often occurs…. Denmark & America are the same, as regards this issue, I believe…. THANK-YOU!~B./
Report comment
Hi Bradford
Good point – it ties in with the general discussion about the efficacy of antipsychotic and other medication for mental health problems, i think. In a major danish newspaper there was an opinion-piece yesterday written by the sister of a mental health patient receiving forced treatment. The title was: ‘My sister has been sentenced to lethal medicine’ (In danish: http://politiken.dk/debat/kroniken/premium/ECE3282654/min-soester-er-doemt-til-livsfarlig-medicin/)
I think it points to a central dilemma that – among others – the media should address more forcefully: What is really meant by the ‘treatment’-part of forced treatment: Is it a cure? Is it helpful for the patient or for the surroundings? What documentation is there for short-term benefit? For long-term benefit?
In the online comments to the mentioned article commentators voiced the opinion, that forced treatment was not to make things better for the patient, but in order to protect society from the patient.
As you point out this may be an illusion. But it also illuminates that ‘treatment’ in this context has a different meaning than we usually assume.
Report comment
employees at psychiatric units or semi-psychiatric housing facilities have been attacked and even killed by people (patients) receiving treatment or support for daily living.
This has led to a call for a more uncomplicated access to the use of force in both psychiatry proper and especially in the semi-psychiatric housing facilities
It sounds like they’re labelling criminals and violent people as “mentally ill” then putting them in “treatment” rather than incarcerating them until they no longer pose a threat.
Public safety supersedes (though it can go together with) “understanding” whatever proclivity anyone may have towards random, impulsive or criminal violence; dealing with its causes must always take a back seat to physically preventing it from happening to innocent people in the first place.
Report comment
According to your own logic mentally people defending themselves from force treatment who become violent in that defense, are justified.
So how could you in good conscience call them criminals or try to separate criminals from the mentally ill?
I agree with you about working to abolish forced treatment, and try to use more compassionate approaches that don’t involve medications are electric shocks, but be genuine in your positions.
We should work to guarantee the freedom and independence of anyone experiencing emotional distress, or persistent and extreme mental illness that is literally biological in nature like schizophrenia.
That can be accomplished by finding someone’s self awareness and accurately pin pointing what is their desire in the pursuit of their happiness, and work towards that goal with them. If that includes medications let it be, but be objective in the prescription when looking at their needs and the needs of society.
The only rule in life is to do no harm, and that is how we should approach it.
Report comment
So stop doing harm by calling people “mentally ill.” Sooner or later I hope MIA will start treating the term as a slur.
Report comment
They are mentally ill, it is a sickness not to be happy.
It is how we treat that sickness is how we will be judged by love for ourselves and others.
Report comment
Stop talking to me asshole.
Report comment
Hi oldhead
You could be right in some instances. I think it is very difficult to be meaningfully categorical in these matters.
In your post you write:
“It sounds like they’re labelling criminals and violent people as “mentally ill” then putting them in “treatment” rather than incarcerating them until they no longer pose a threat.”
Do we not again end with a similar problem to the question of forced treatment, because on what grounds can we incarcerate someone ‘until they no longer pose a threat’? Who would be qualified to judge this, and what rights should the prisoner have?
Report comment
I guess that remains to be seen — first we need a democratic system or it’s pretty much academic. At least the situation would be more clearly defined as social control in the interest of public safety.
Report comment
I agree. There seems to be a hidden agenda about control that is camouflaged by the use of the word ‘treatment’.
Report comment
Additionally, they are labelling prisoners “mentally ill” so that our tax dollars can pay corporate prison providers money for corporate drugs to be administered & cause chronic long term illnesses sending them into the hands of corporate medicine while in the corporate prison.
Heaven forbid that someone should have been self-medicating with something and end up in prison with “dual diagnosis.” I think LA County says that something like 30% of the prison intakes are diagnosed…..
Report comment
Thank you both, Dr. Gøtzsche and Dr. Breggin. You both help me to keep motivated in the field, because I certainly have had regrets with what has been going on. Dr. Gotzsche’s video presentation and article show great integrity. Dr. Breggin is a also such an example, truly courageous to be so honest amongst his own colleagues. I used Dr. Breggin’s “Empathic Therapy” video in a class I recently talk at graduate school. The students loved it. I hope we can get back to teaching therapy instead of understanding DSM V. Forced treatment just does not work, period. We want people to find treatment that is helpful and nurturing. Empathic, nonjudgmental listening works, EMDR, hypnosis, CBT, DBT, sandtray therapy, psychoanalysis, expressive therapy, music therapy, peer to peer counseling, family and individual therapy, pet therapy, WRAP plans, volunteering, working, eating right, meditation, sleep and getting regular medical workups all work. We want people to heal and not be re-traumatized by abusive, violent and coercive treatment. If mental health professionals do not stand up against forced treatment, then we are part of the problem, not the solution to healing. Let’s not go along to get along.
Report comment
Dr Breggin, thank you very much for this article.
I believe people diagnosed with mental illness are lower risk in terms of violence than the general population – bar psychiatric drug induced violence.
I have experienced akathesia myself, and nearly every hospitalization I had after the first one was a suicidal event, until I stopped the treatment.
There’s an Epidemic of suicide/homicide in Ireland at the moment and “…nobody can understand why this is ..” (because the evidence is routinely suppressed).
Report comment
DEADLY MEDICINES AND CRIME.
The UK NHS have been using a *1986 Irish Record Summary to promote Severe Mental Illness with me (without telling me); even though I have not suffered from Mental Illness, in the 30 years I have been in the UK.
On April 24, 2016 I sent in to the NHS a **copy of my 1986 Adverse Drug Reaction Warning Request Letter that had prompted the 1986 Irish Record Summary – as evidence of Malpractice from Ireland.
The NHS told me to ask my doctor to put a note in on my records. I told the NHS that (in a situation like this ) I would expect more than a note to the records. They told me that they were not able (as administrators) to do any more.
*The November 24, 1986 Irish Record Summary had included NO Adverse Drug Reaction Warning (the drugs had been causing neurological disability and suicidal reaction).
**The November 8, 1986 ADR Warning Request Letter was at the back of my FOI requested Irish notes.
Report comment
DEADLY MEDICINES AND THE NHS.
…open the newspaper any day of the week in the UK to see people exposed to “medicines” – Acting Out…
Report comment
Involuntary treatment is good if it functioned as intended, you mention that voluntary psychotherapist is the answer but many people don’t voluntary help themselves or their situations.
This is dated back to when Ronald Reagan shut down the mental hospitals because they were under funded and mentally ill people were treated badly in them and literally tortured in the true sense of the word with neglect and abuse.
Your position is a quick fix to a broken system that medicates people involuntarily, but it is the wrong way to the solution.
We need to involuntarily commit people to introduce them to them competent therapists, the problem is that the therapists who work at hospitals are incompetent and abusive themselves at the sheer magnitude of the failure of society.
They don’t know how to provide quality psychotherapy that is based on compassion because they are more concerned with making money by over scheduling patients, rather than spending quality time with them which is the whole reason their profession exists since psychiatrists have left their original roles to focus on prescribing medications to quickly treat as many mentally ill people as they can to make money, instead of showing love to them by hearing their problems and offering rational solutions.
The whole system is a mess and you removing involuntary commitments is just going to make it worse, because the mentally ill will not even be able to begin their journey toward understanding how they want to be helped.
The ideal is a loving therapist who shows compassion and rational advice, and most would choose that. The problem is there aren’t many of those out there, so they need the medications and the incompetent therapists to function sanely in a sane society, or maybe insanely in an insane society depending on how you see it.
Report comment
To website please introduce an edit comment feature if financially possible, so I can correct my grammar after the post.
Report comment
Dude, why don’t you just READ your post, **BEFORE** you click the “Post Comment” button….????…. And, honestly, it isn’t your *grammar* that’s the problem, as *I* see it…. From MY reading of your comments, you might actually *believe* what you’re saying, but I don’t think you really have a clue what you’re talking about. I doubt you have any actual LIVED EXPERIENCE as a drugged-out zombie of the the LIES of the pseudoscience DRUG RACKET known as “biopsychiatry”. As the direct result of mis-diagnosis, over-diagnosis, and consequent mis-drugging, and OVER-drugging, I was in the State Loony Bin in 1977, 1986-87, and 1994. So, yeah, that’s where *I* am coming from when I say I think you’re clueless. But I’m glad to read what you write. We need the challenge.
You seem to me to have a rose-colored, Pollyanna view of the horrors and civil and human rights abuses which are endemic in the so-called “mental health system”.~B./
Report comment
You are a victim of Ronald Reagan, he stopped funding mental health in the eighties and you must have endured a lot of abuse as a result during your stays.
I must enlighten you to the fact that mental health can function properly if it was properly funded, and had the right motives like compassion instead of making money.
There is a place for making money, but it has to be done to lift others up not bring others down.
Report comment
I’m not a “victim” of Ronald Reagan, at all. My first trip to the “State Hospital” was in the 1970’s, and it wasn’t the State of California. Reagan had NOTHING to do with it. Reagan often gets wrongly blamed by your ilk for that. The whole “State Mental Hospital” system was disassembled over decades, beginning in the 1950’s when Thorazine&etc. was introduced. The “Community Mental Health Center” SCAM was a Kennedy/Johnson debacle, invented to dramatically increase the NUMBERS of persons on psych DRUGS. The obscene “War On(some)DRUGS(sometimes)” was a parallel effort. The public “mental health system” exists to create employment for “mental health workers”, make $$$ for PhRMA, and act as agents of social control. The so-called “mentally ill” are always (usually) “those people”. It’s never “WE PEOPLE”. There’s no money in “lifting others up”. The MONEY is made by oppressing people. If people were truly “lifted up”, then they wouldn’t need any more help, right?….
Yes, I’ve endured my share of abuse. Some of it is ongoing. But none of it is “Reagan’s fault”. It’s endemic in human society, and it results from fear, ignorance, greed, hatred, anger, envy, jealousy, dishonesty, etc., etc.,…. If you really want to “enlighten” me, “jackdaniels”, you’re gonna have to first crawl out from that DARK, unenlightened space you’ve crawled into. Or maybe Reagan put you there?…. True COMPASSION can’t be bought and sold for money. There’s no coin slot on a womb. Sperm and an ATM card have no physical interface. My Social Security Disability payment will not increase because of my time which I’ve wasted here writing this comment in a hopefully-not-vain attempt to ENLIGHTEN YOU. In the end, “mental health”, as you put it in your comment above, is far more about playing social head games, and power and control. How else do you explain vulnerable abuse victims being transported against their will, needlessly, in handcuffs and shackles? That still happens, but we don’t call it SLAVERY any more. We call it the “mental health system”. What’s the difference? /~B./
Report comment
Some issues.
1. Why is there a need for forced treatment at all? People who are emotionally overwhelmed are usually aware that they need help. Even the most disturbed, out of touch person might accept treatment if what was offered was helpful.
2. Why is psychiatry the only `medical discipline’ permitted to force people to accept its singular form of treatment? If a diabetic refuses to take insulin, his doctors may not force him to take it even if death is the result. If a religious individual refuses blood transfusions, that is considered his right.
3. Why is psychiatry the only medical discipline with a large and growing movement dedicated to destroying it?
4. Trust in the therapist is known to be the major factor in helping people in overwhelmed states of mind. How is it possible to trust someone who forces his/her opinions and will on you whether you like it or not? Without trust the doctor will do no better than control.
Report comment
Thanks, deeeo42, for good comments. Regarding #1: Danger to self, others or so mentally impaired cannot care for self are the criteria for Section 12. There are some individuals that I served as a director in the community that just could not stop getting into trouble with the community everything from minor disturbing the peace, being a public nuisance, panhandling to drug dealing to threatening people. Police certainly need to be called if serious issues and were but really public did not like having people sleeping on the sidewalks, asking for money, littering, being unkempt, as well as occasional sexual offenses from minor to severe. Most of this was due to use of substances in addition to mental health challenges which always increases risk level. In order to avoid overpopulating the jails and prisons, forced treatment is thought by many to be an alternative but what we need is incentives to get help not punishment. Having community centers to go to and have a meal and provide resources and help if want it is much better than forcing someone to get help. I am all about setting limits and reminding people about community level of behavior and giving warnings. 2) I agree with your point in theory. There are lots of people who are in our medical units who are here because of unhealthy behaviors, from not managing their medical illnesses by eating unhealthy, drinking excessively, not getting exercise, not attending regular medical appts. , etc. We certainly send people to nursing homes if no safe discharge and need 24 hour care. We do Section 35s on people with uncontrollable drinking and drug use. We do Section 12 those who are here for trying to commit suicide into inpt psychiatric units because of risk of harm to self. Insurance companies put caremanagers on frequent ER users. These individuals are seen to be exhausting resources. The question is how do we motivate people to stay healthy and behave in societally acceptable safe ways? In U.S. it is the right to pursue happiness as long as it does not infringe about the rights of others to do the same. Once get into a hospital, police take notice or family starts asking for their family member to get help do they get on the radar. We are talking about here is community mental health for basically those in the lower economic class, those on SSI and perhaps SSDI as well. The proponents of forced treatment are not evil people to me, just trying to find a solution to the above issues. It just does not work.
Report comment
Forced treatment like court ordered therapy is much better than jail for one thing, and two there is a fear of psychiatry that resulted from the Reagan era, where the hospitals to the mentally ill were under funded and real torture and neglect happened.
The solution is competent therapists who are not over burdened and driven by filling their days with many patients for more money.
The psychiatric model can be run for greed and money, or love and compassion since their first rule is to do no harm. You don’t need many years in college to teach you how to help someone solve their problems so they aren’t very sad or angry and can’t function.
The medications are reserved for the absolute hardest cases where you can literally see they can’t function because their seeing things or yelling uncontrollably, but even then there is a ethical line that shouldn’t be crossed between greed and compassion in the treatment.
We failed as a society due to this simple quote, “Money is human happiness in the abstract; he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money.” Arthur Schopenhauer
Their happiness is dependent on the unhappiness or mental illness of others. The pursuit of happiness should be shared not taken.
Report comment
I suspect this person is some kind of low-level mh worker.
Report comment
Many authors and probably the people owning and running this website have some type of profession in the mental health industry.
We need more ethical mental health workers who come from a place of compassion to be advocates for the mentally ill, and less who come from a place of just doing their job as stated by the book.
Report comment
Many mental health professionals are doing it for the money rather than passion for helping others, but that is in every industry and it just very harmful to the mentally sick in this case.
Report comment
I think that’s a “yes.”
(DKJ et. al. — this guy illustrates why the psychiatric inmates liberation movement didn’t allow non-psychiatrized people to attend their meetings.)
Report comment
Oldhead, they (the jackdaniels) aren’t the problem. It wasn’t people like this who coopted the anti-psychiatry movement. It was people who thought of themselves as part of the movement, and thought, and still think, of themselves as good people, as do most around them, I’m sure.
Report comment
Where oh where are you going to find these wonderful “competent therapists” that you’re always speaking about? They are not out there and the few that I’ve seen refuse to work in the “mental health” system.
The “medications” are toxic drugs that are harmful in so many ways to the people who are forced to take them. They are not medications since they do nothing but chemically lobotomize people forced to take them. Fact is, most people experiencing serious issues with seeing and hearing things in an alternate reality can make it through those experiences and out the other side if they have good social support, rather than the “medications” that you prattle on about all the time. The “medications” often cause the very things that they’re supposed to take care of.
Report comment
Compassionate therapists are a minority in an industry that has been taken over by greed, just as all other industries.
I only recommend medications for the worse cases where people want to function outside of their social support systems.
For example if they want a part time job, a medication will help control seeing and hearing things that aren’t there so they can focus on interacting with the world on a different level than their accustomed.
Report comment
And do these people that you recommend “medications” for get true informed consent? I don’t care if people choose to take the drugs, as long as they’ve been informed about EVERYTHING concerning the toxic drugs. Informed consent never happens where I work; people are just told that they will take the drugs and if they don’t they will be spending a long time at the facility. I call that threatening people but who am I to quibble about things like this since, after all, I’m only a former “mental patient” myself.
Report comment
There was one really good Doctor who said only tell me you’re hearing and seeing things that aren’t there, and the patients were able to function without medications outside without anyone knowing.
Report comment
That statement you just made there pretty much proves what some of us have been saying for years now. Psych drugs usually do more harm than good. Except for the drug companies bank accounts……
Report comment
How do you get consent from someone who can’t distinguish reality from fiction?
You have for forcibly treat some people, the problem is many are forcibly treated who don’t need to be for convenience to society.
Report comment
“The “medications” often cause the very things that they’re supposed to take care of.”(Stephen) So true, and if they are prescribed off label, without consent, then you will not know why you are experiencing these life altering negative effects –
Report comment
No they don’t for capitalism to thrive it must profit, there are many people happy to be on medications.
We shouldn’t deny the ones who consent to medications to protect the ones who don’t consent to them.
It is our responsibility to tell people all the risks associated with medications, and let them make an informed free choice without biased information.
Report comment
Jack, you speak as if torture and abuse no longer happen in mental health facilities, which you can see by reading the comments here is just not true. Also, you say that “medications are reserved for the absolute hardest cases,” but that’s not true, either – they’re handed out like M&Ms in most facilities I’m aware of – in fact, it’s hardly possible to escape a psych ward or even a voluntary visit to a psychiatrist without a prescription in your hand. These pills are given out absolutely in lieu of any kind of psychosocial interventions, however inept they might end up being. I can share a number of stories of folks who were told they had a “chemical imbalance” or “needed medication” when just one good therapy session with me or another competent therapist was enough to put them on a much better pathway.
I am afraid you have a somewhat rose-colored view of what happens to most people who enter the mental health system. Few receive the kind of help they need, and many deteriorate under the “care” of the mental health professionals. I agree that most are not evil people, but they work for a dangerously ineffective and flawed system that ends up turning their good intentions to damaging interventions.
—- Steve
Report comment
I have stated many times the medications are over prescribed, but we can’t generalize and be dishonest that medications don’t have a place.
You must have seen people who are too far away from reality, that medications would help them.
Report comment
Can we please stop calling it “treatment” and acting like this is a complicated issue?
Report comment
Yes, it is ‘chemical assault’, ‘electro-shock assault’, and attempted brain washing when they talk to you.
And when it comes to children, there really is very little treatment, because it is all assault.
This is why I don’t look at any of it as malpractice, I look at it as felony crime.
Thank you OldHead
Nomadic
http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/index.php
Report comment
Drugging Kids
Louis Theroux – America’s Medicated Kids
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjR1PH41Vkg
Do you think it right to stigmatize a child because he or she doesn’t look people in the eye or exchange greetings? Do you think it right to use that to justify their drugging?
Do you think a therapist who focuses on these things as problems to be solved via treatment is engaging in child abuse? Psychological child abuse? Medical child abuse?
Do you think this should result in a felony conviction and state prison time?
Do you think the children featured in the above video are being used as family scapegoats?
Do you think CPS and the Court should be involved?
Do you think the parents should be convicted of felonies and imprisoned? Do you think that sort of penalty is sufficient?
Do you think a therapist who tells children that they have to accept that their parents are loving and hence blameless, is engaging in child abuse? Felonious child abuse?
How about a therapist who markets himself and his services by presenting this interpretation, along with lots of counter culture credentials. Do you think he is simply hiring himself out as an assistant abuser for the parents?
Felony conviction and incarceration?
Do you think the children shown in the above video are displaying traits which suggest that they have been, or are under, extreme stress, such as commonly found in wars and in concentration camps?
Do you think CPS should be notified so that they can do a well being check, independent of any therapists hired by the parents?
Do you think these situations are indicative of some sort of negative parent v child relationship?
Who do you think should be examining this, therapists hired by the well off parents, or therapists appointed by the court and backed up by court authority?
Do you think any of this should trigger the mandatory reporting laws, as now written, “suspected cases of child abuse or neglect”?
If a therapist does not make the report, do you think they should be convicted of a felony and imprisoned.
Do you think some private practice therapists decline to make the report because that would likely mean losing a paying client? Do you think it is an implicit understanding between the therapist and the parents that no such report will ever be filed, so long as they keep coming to sessions and keep paying?
What do you think should be done with therapists who operate this way?
Do you think that these parents are taking out their frustrations in life on their children?
Do you think that the original reason they even had children was to give themselves a legitimated adult identity?
Do you think the parents are not taking responsibilities for their own lives and not admitting that they have choices, and do you think their children are the victims of this?
Do you think that Munchausen’s By Proxy is a good way of describing these situations, given that we understand now that we are not actually saying that the parent has a mental illness, but rather we are describing a common pattern of exaggerating and inducing behaviors in a child which will result doctors and therapists stepping in? Do you think this should result in a felony conviction and incarceration?
What sort of a life can such a child have, when everyone is saying that they are the problem and that no one else is wrong other than themselves?
Now I ask this of those who have specific experience in these realms, do the cases get reported to CPS? Does CPS act? What happens to the parents? What happens to the doctors and therapists who are accomplices? And to those who do not report?
And so for everyone, are you willing to get involved and try to make sure that these cases result in felony convictions and civil judgments?
Are you willing to make sure that there is intervention into families and that children have escape routes and alternate places to go and other people to connect with?
Are you able to watch a video like the above without being enraged? If it was happening right in front of you, would you intercede? Would you act upon people involuntarily?
http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/drugging-kids-t265.html
Nomadic
Report comment
Yes, Nomadic it is criminal for a child to be prescribed these drugs. I call ADD A Daddy’s Drama. There is always a reason however drugs are not the answer or the cover up. It’s also criminal for a woman to be drugged off label to stay in an abusive situation. This isn’t a game. It’s destructive to human life.
Report comment
Oldhead, who are you referring to? I have worked and known some really good line staff who are front-line mental health counselors who are great with clients, kind and generous. They often get to know patients in hospital more than the more experienced, “professional” staff as they spend more time with patients.
Report comment
@”knowledgeispower”: You’re free to defend those “line staff” & “front-line mental health counselors” all you want. Even if they are BETTER than you say – that still doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t really mean anything. As long as the so-called “medical model” is used, the ABUSES will continue. Human rights abuses, and civil rights abuses. As long as the DSM-5 – which is nothing more than a CATALOG of BILLING CODES – continues to be used to “diagnose” bogus “mental illnesses”, and people are TORTURED by FORCED DRUGGING under COURT ORDERS, for that long the abuse will continue. As long as the LIES of the PSEUDOSCIENCE DRUGS RACKET known as “biopsychiatry” hold legal and cultural sway – for that long will the ABUSE continue, and the PROFIT$ for PhRMa continue…. The few “good ones” that YOU know – don’t begin to balance out the BAD ONES. And the BAD ONES includes most shrinks…. Until we realize that real people have real problems, and that imaginary “mental illnesses” shouldn’t be part of that – that’s how long forced treatment will continue to be torture. You’re free to play APOLOGIST for a corrupt industry, but please don’t delude yourself that *I*, or most here will agree with you. We’ve been too badly damaged by those “good ones”….~B./
Report comment
Bradford, how did I miss this comment? You are right on my friend. People have problems and abuse and drugs are not their solution. In my sweet home state you can have someone court ordered to a mental health facility for just about anything. Taken by squad car, interrogated by judge and attorney, strip searched at said place, money stolen, antibiotic taken away supposedly to be dispensed but replaced with psychotropic, later denied. Psychiatrists who say “there’s nothing wrong with you. Your civil rights are being violated.” Who are the delusional?
Report comment
There is nothing wrong with having people involuntarily committed for posing a danger to themselves or others, as long as the person who is making the accusations is held accountable and helped as well.
Most of the time the people who have someone involuntarily committed have mental issues themselves, so this is a good way to get the whole family treated.
Report comment
Oldhead, This is why I posted my comment about “good” people right below your comment about the Murphy Bill sailing through committee last week (Dr. Gotzsche’s post 6/18/16 1:25 pm). What you are calling fascist legislation is being supported by people who definitely see themselves as good people. On my comment I listed some of these good people, this person is telling you about more good people. The problem is NOT the disturbed and disturbing people, but those who see themselves as good people who are helping(?) them. I began that comment with, “Bad things happen in this world, and they can only get worse when the traumatized people the bad things happened to are met with more bad things being done to them by “good” people…”
Report comment
Which is why the petty-bourgeois “left” has become more problematic than the talk-show “right” — their whole agenda is “more money for mental health.”
Report comment
….some of us have moved beyond the damaging imaginings of the imaginary “left-right political spectrum”….There IS NO “political spectrum”! It’s an imaginary construct of mental concepts. Just like the DSM-5 is a catalog of billing codes purporting to be legitimate “diagnoses”.
Happy Friday, “oldhead”! ~B./ ***Can we please stop playing “right-left” word & head games?….
Report comment
Who am I referring to by what? What’s your point? If you’re talking about “low-level mh worker” I’m referring to “jack daniels.” Maybe I should have said “low intelligence” instead of “low-level”?
Report comment
Oldhead, you were referring to “jackdaniels;” I was referring to the comment by “knowledgeispower.” If all the people who believe they are good and doing good work were against the Murphy Bill, and anything like it, and supported things like Soteria House and Open Dialogue, we would not have the Murphy Bill, and we would have many Soteria Houses, and Open Dialogue would be spreading rapidly throughout the U.S.
Report comment
I got what you meant, no confusion. It’s hard to decipher who’s responding to whom sometimes, but not this one.
Report comment
I was wondering, does anybody know if a physician or hospital worker can be sued for putting voluntary medical patient for an illegal psychiatric hold? (52/50). The physician was likely on drugs, and social worker was clearly a patient abuser. I would think that malpractice would be unlikely, since there was no “physical injury” but who knows. Money is not an issue though, I know that many others are being abused by these people, and I would like to help bringing them to justice, or getting their licenses revoked. Any insight would be great.
Report comment
If you read the literature you will get the picture, and it is a pretty bleak one at that. We don’t have many legal protections. I saw an article recently on this very subject, and the text was along these lines, malpractice cases are very hard to win in the mental health field, winning there is rare, and when they are won, the award tends to be less than with other medical specialties.
I don’t know what you mean by “illegal hold”, and the fact is, someone else might disagree with your idea of ‘illegality’. I do know a person who was released once under habeas corpus (false imprisonment), but the same person, on a later occasion, making the same plea, wasn’t released due to parens patriae (guardianship of state). People can make complaints to their respective state P & As, with enough of those you’ve got a federal investigation, but you’d need a really good, air-tight, malpractice case to get anywhere with it, and usually this isn’t possibility because the mental health authorities hold all the cards.
Report comment
Negligence, fraud and slander are the three pillars of psychiatry. And you want to sue people for doing their job? lol.
Seriously though Jim Gottstien has written some articles here at MiA which might be of assistance.
Report comment
All psychiatrists need to say is that you (or the patient) is POTENTIALLY dangerous and you have lost every human and legal right and protection available. They don’t have to prove it and you can’t disprove it (how do you disprove “potentially dangerous”). Kafkaesque.
Doesn’t matter that they are lying, or drunk, or drugged, or abusers. There are NO protections for anyone who becomes, voluntarily or otherwise, a psychiatric patient.
…remember folks, you take ANY of their meds at any stage in your life, and you can be labelled “mentally ill” and potentially have all of your rights removed.
Report comment
“There are NO protections for anyone who becomes, voluntarily or otherwise, a psychiatric patient.”
And given that police can jump a person in their bed, and a community nurse can then make up a ‘mental illness’ on the spot and make a person their ‘patient’ who requires incarceration and forced drugging, there is NO protection for ANYONE. Home delivered human and civil rights removal. Should work well for the corrupt when being a Jehovah Witness or a Muslim is a mental illness according to our States “reasonable grounds” standard
Report comment
Actually, there is protection, according to Human Rights, you cannot force treatment on a person who does not want it. For instance, I would never personally take any antipsychotic medication or benzodiazepine and I have my reasons, I would take other medications such as antibiotics if and only if required of course. If however another person forces medications down my throat or injects them, that is clearly a violation of my human rights!!!! I have never had the thought of hurting myself or anyone else, but I have noticed that people tend to exaggerate and to stereotype.
Report comment
And also forced treatment is definitely worse than torture, not to mention violation of human rights. Anyone can label you anything nowadays, its corrupt. Place yourself in the shoes of another person and then see everything.
Report comment
I was given a hypnotic benzo for sleep at a time I felt desperate for lack of it and had no support. Ask me prior, I would say I’d never take a med for sleep or a psychotropic drug. If I had been informed of the side effects, memory issues, and addictive nature I never would have consented! The people you expected to help you, hurt you with their unethical practices. How can the system get away with court ordering you to mental health facility only to have a psychiatrist tell you what you already know; “There’s nothing wrong with you your civil rights are being violated?” No agency or attorney would touch it and statutes of limitations run out. We only have a story to remember so that we can warn others in similar situations.
Report comment
Pts have the absolute right to know what medications they are being given and when, even if the pts display less competency. This is the supposed rule, I am not sure how often it is followed. The real mentally ill people are the ones that see other people as less of humans aka sociopaths. You would rather live with a schizophrenic than a sociopath. Sociopaths don’t get labelled, they spread them.
Report comment
“Pts have the absolute right to know what medications they are being given and when” This is true, however if you consider taking a prescription, you should check every reason it is prescribed. Some doctors are prescribing off label so they can prescribe something for a rash and it affects you similar to a pschotropic drug. How are you to know when the side affects come? Sick of the psycho’s labeling and destroying lives. If the truth were known they are the ones causing the problems in the first place. So tell an abusive woman take drugs and stay with the man? Tell a bullied child to take this drug and stay in a school that doesn’t address this issue? How about the child pumped up school meals, sugar and sodas who can’t sit still? In many of these situations, I see control and money –
Report comment
We are not living under the bloody nazis!
Report comment
When its your body and other people violate your privacy because in “their opinion” you are deemed abnormal, they purposely try to drive you insane and then prove you insane, they make your life miserable purposely using your tax money. Do you see how satanic this is, only pure satanic bastards are capable of such evil! But they don’t care, they are satanic bastards incapable of empathizing. I just want to be left alone, its hard for these satanic bastards to understand. I hope one day they suffer what they have made me go through!
Report comment
Well, Joe it’s called Gaslighting. How do they know how you behave or what you say in your own home, car, phone etc? I know people who are such busy bodies and gossips that it isn’t possible for them to make judgments in that dilussional state.They constantly violate relationship when they sneak up behind you and listen to private conversation. Of course some people argue loudly in apartment setting or on cell phone and I think they are asking permission to listen!
Report comment
Sociopathy is an underdiagnosed illness that is epidemic across the world . People nowadays lack empathy, they are okay with violations of the rights of others. Its a mad world! And I am the kind of quiet, honest, decent person, I am disgusted by how people have created this torture scenario for me and for no reason that I can see. They gang stalk me, engage in name calling etc. Its all gaslighting, you are correct.
Report comment
The cause of mental illness is brain damage either as a result from genes and/or enviornment. These medications just heavily sedate you, they do not fix the underlying problem and in fact make it worse. To fix the underlying problem, neurons would have to be created probably through stem cells. This is my opinion, please seek the advice of a medical professional.
Report comment
Recently read oppression causes anger; at least when you start to see it in my opinion. Environment would include interpersonal relationships as well; henceforth the ups and downs if oppressive. Music has also been studied to create new neural pathways.
Student Blogger @http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/student-blogger/influence-music-neurons.” Well, I say if music be the food for new neural pathways and increased intellectual abilities, by all means, play on.”
http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n15/mente/musica.html ; Music and the Brain
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi? db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=17315101&query_hl=22&itool=pubmed_docsum ; Music and Neurology
Report comment
IF you are a racial/ethnic minority, then you will have no rights, only the allusion of them. They will make up whatever excuses to exploit. I have learned that there is a lot of racism but it is all covert, behind the curtains.
Report comment
The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act and the brain initiative are the worst scams ever perpetrated on the American people. Former U. S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin Warns: Biochips Hazardous to Your Health: Warning, biochips may cause behavioral changes and high suicide rates. State Attorney Generals are to revoke the licenses of doctors and dentists that implant chips in patients. Chip used illegally for GPS, tracking, organized crime, communication and torture. Virginia state police have been implanting citizens without their knowledge and consent for years and they are dying! Check out William and Mary’s site to see the torture enabled by the biochip and the Active Denial System. See Terrorism and Mental Health by Amin Gadit or A Note on Uberveillance by MG & Katina Michael or Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence by Springer or Mind Control, Microchip Implants and Cybernetics. Check out the audio spotlight by Holosonics. The truth is the biochip works like a sim card. It received pulsed modulated laser beams and millimeter wave which it converts into electromagnetic waves that your brain interprets into digital images and sound. It then takes what your brain sees and hears and converts electromagnetic waves into digital and acoustic waves that a computer translates into audio and video. In other words, it allows law enforcement to see what you see, hear what you hear and communicate directly with your brain.
“Former Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) director and now Google Executive, Regina E. Dugan, has unveiled a super small, ingestible microchip that we can all be expected to swallow by 2017. “A means of authentication,” she calls it, also called an electronic tattoo, which takes NSA spying to whole new levels. She talks of the ‘mechanical mismatch problem between machines and humans,’ and specifically targets 10 – 20 year olds in her rant about the wonderful qualities of this new technology that can stretch in the human body and still be functional. Hailed as a ‘critical shift for research and medicine,’ these biochips would not only allow full access to insurance companies and government agencies to our pharmaceutical med-taking compliancy (or lack thereof), but also a host of other aspects of our lives which are truly none of their business, and certainly an extension of the removal of our freedoms and rights.” Google News
The ARRA authorizes payments to the states in an effort to encourage Medicaid Providers to adopt and use “certified EHR technology” aka biochips. ARRA will match Medicaid $5 for every $1 a state provides. Hospitals are paid $2 million to create “crisis stabilization wards” (Gitmo’s) where state police torture people – even unto death. They stopped my heart 90 times in 6 hours. Virginia Beach EMT’s were called to the scene. Mary E. Schloendorff, v. The Society of New York Hospital 105 N. E. 92, 93 (N. Y. 1914) Justice Cardozo states, “every human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body; and a surgeon who performs an operation without his patient’s consent, commits an assault, for which he is liable in damages. (Pratt v Davis, 224 Ill. 300; Mohr v Williams, 95 Minn. 261.) This case precedent requires police to falsely arrest you or kidnap you and call you a mental health patient in order to force the implant on you. You can also be forced to have a biochip if you have an infectious disease – like Eboli or Aids.
Coalition of Justice vs the City of Hampton, VA settled a case out of court for $500,000 and removal of the biochip. Torture is punishable by $1,000 per day up to $2 million; Medical battery is worth $2.05 million. They told my family it was the brain initiative. I checked with the oversight board, and it is not! Mark Warner told me it was research with the Active Denial System by the College of William and Mary, the USAF, and state and local law enforcement. It is called IBEX and it is excruciating. I have had 3 surgeries at the site of the implant and need another. It causes cancer! I’ve been tortured for 8 years by Virginia law enforcement. Thousands of innocent Virginians are being tortured and murdered by criminal cops. Please help us get the word out to end these heinous atrocities. The pain is 24/7. The VA DCJS sent me a letter stating cops can get keys to anyone’s home and steal anything they please. The governor knows and takes his cut. Senator Kaine said the FBI is not involved so he can’t help. Check out Virginia’s Casual Disregard for the Constitution at forbes dot com. Check out Richard Cain’s case. They are torturing infants and children. The active denial system comes in rifle form and can murder without leaving a mark. Now the Richmond Medical examiner Dr. Whaley blows the whistle on the cover-up of murders by law enforcement and selling brains for $6,260 each to the NIH. I have had two heart attacks and am blessed to be alive. We need to make the nation aware to stop these thugs. Please help us.
Report comment
I just pray to God because thats all we can do! Look I am not some evil person, I have never thought of hurting myself or anyone else, I may have said crazy things at times, but who doesn’t? For some reason, they have picked us and trapped us, now I read the bible/vedas/any other holy book hoping God can save me.
Report comment
Are you ok Joe? You sounded desperate. God uses people and telling us your story shows no one is alone.
Report comment
I just wanted to say that I apologize for the earlier comments, if you need to take your medications, please do so. Please take your medications, thanks. I know all of you out there are suffering, I will pray for you and pray for myself as well. Please stay strong my friends.
Report comment
Don’t tell people to take these drugs! I never would have taken a psychotropic drug or one that works like it. Most of us had serious problems that weren’t resolved and instead of help got drugs, side effects and addictions and because it was off label, I only understand now after I suffered. No more drugs for me.
Report comment
Take those medications please. If you are sick, you need God and you need your medications unless God can cure you.
Report comment
Hey, “fat_joe”, I’m gonna accept your apology and forgive you, ok? But really, I’m not sure which of your comments you’re apologizing for. I’ve read a LOT worse on here from others.
Your comments are pretty normal, and if that’s what you think, then that’s ok. Some of us on here are against ALL drugs – (“meds”) – but I always say that SOMETIMES, SOME people do better on SOME small dose of drugs for SOME short length of time. But that’s not what the psychs and the “mental health industry” does. They put people on lots of drugs for life, and that’s always worse. Sometimes this site can be good, and sometimes hard and difficult. Comments are like that. But this is some TRUTH, and that’s what we ALL need. I’m glad you’re posting here. Keep coming back. There’s lots of GOOD TRUTH here….~B./
Report comment
I just want to live a normal peaceful life, I don’t need a car, I don’t need fancy stuff, I just need some food on my table and live a normal peaceful life with a family. For some reason, all the people out there are after me, literally they are, you wont believe it until you see it, its madness out here.
Report comment
I believe it. I hope you can get everything that you need.
Report comment
http://www.livescience.com/55166-celiac-disease-gluten-psychosis.html
Certain foods can trigger psychosis or so I read.
Report comment
The solution to this rubbish would be to allow all “convicted” “mentally ill” and criminal cons the right to a dignified death instead of “serving their time”.
Some things just make life not worth living, and while religion is a load of crap hell is definitely real. Its name is “other people”. I guess all we really have to be glad for is that at least our prisons aren’t as torturous as Japan’s..
Report comment