Other, Similar Attractions Will Be Revised
Full disclosure: I hate scary stuff. I don’t watch horror movies; I don’t read Stephen King or Dean Koontz; and I don’t pay good cash money to visit Halloween theme park attractions featuring ghosts, ghouls, or goblins.
But a lot of people do. So, every Halloween, theme parks around the country seem to compete with each other to see who can create the scariest exhibits.
This year, two major North American theme park chains—Cedar Fair Entertainment Company and Six Flags—came up with some really terrifying concepts, featuring a creature that apparently haunts the nightmares of a lot of Americans: Me. Well, not exactly me, but people who, like me, have mental health conditions.
Spoiler alert: In a victory for the mental health advocacy community, these Halloween exhibits have either been shut down (Cedar Fair), or revamped to feature zombies (Six Flags).
The Cedar Fair exhibit involved “virtual reality,” so it would have been hard to amend; they would have had to start from scratch.
The Six Flags exhibit was easier to revise. The promotional material for one exhibit read, in part, “Wander through an abandoned asylum in small groups through tight spaces, darken (sic) corridors and forgotten cells.” So it evidently involves some sort of maze that visitors navigate IRL. (That’s web-speak for In Real Life.)
More on the original Six Flags promotion: “Our new haunted house brings you face-to-face with the world’s worst psychiatric patients. Traverse the haunted hallways of Dark Oaks Asylum and try not to bump into any of the grunting inmates around every turn. Maniacal inmates yell out from their bloodstained rooms and deranged guards wander the corridors in search of those who have escaped.”
At another Six Flags theme park, an exhibit called PSYCHO-PATH (original emphasis) Haunted Asylum was described this way: “The inmates of the Asylum have broken loose and will have you screaming in sheer terror as they taunt and torture their newest victims.”
Now, the “grunting inmates” and the creatures that “will have you screaming in sheer terror” are zombies.
Advocates became aware of the Cedar Fair exhibits after a Los Angeles Times article reported that a virtual reality (VR) show at Knott’s Berry Farm in California “admits visitors to a mental hospital where a psychiatric patient with demonic powers is on the loose.” (Knott’s Berry Farm was one of three Cedar Fair theme parks that were operating the exhibit; the others were Great America in California and Wonderland in Canada.)
An ad hoc coalition was quickly mobilized by Doris Schwartz, chief operating officer of the Mental Health Association of Westchester (New York). The nationwide coalition, including individuals with lived experience, family members, friends and allies, had come together in 2015 to work on toppling a Kenneth Cole billboard on the Henry Hudson Parkway in New York City. The billboard, which pandered to the public’s fear that individuals with mental health conditions are violent, proclaimed, “Over 40M Americans suffer from mental illness. Some can access care…all can access guns.—Kenneth Cole #GunReform #AreYouPuttingUsOn.” Our effort was joined by others, including the American Psychiatric Association, and together we won that battle.
So it wasn’t difficult to regroup and get to work when Doris became aware of the Los Angeles Times article, which called the FearVR: 5150 exhibit “immersive, captivating and scary,” as well as “impressive.”
What the reporter did not say was that the exhibit seemed calculated to exacerbate the fear and prejudice associated with mental health conditions, although he noted that 5150 is the California code for a 72-hour involuntary psychiatric commitment. “The VR experience follows a demonically possessed patient named Katie, who unleashes chaos throughout the hospital and takes mental control of the medical staff,” the reporter wrote.
Many people called and sent emails to KBF. One powerful email came from activist Katie Trombley, who has given me permission to quote from it. “I beg you,” her message concluded, “as an expatient and survivor of a suicide attempt named Katie, to please close this down…in the name of humanity.”
Responding to Katie and to the many other coalition members who called and emailed, a Knott’s Berry Farm (KBF) spokesperson claimed that the “virtual reality experience is actually built around zombie-like monsters and paranormal activity in a hospital setting.” This was hard to believe, given the LA Times reporter’s description of the exhibit and the 5150 in its name!
Following additional calls and emails, the KBF spokesperson wrote again to say, “Cedar Fair recognizes that the press depiction of our experience, while inaccurate (emphasis added), has raised concerns around the insensitivity to the stigmas surrounding mental health. Part of the confusion stems from the use of the code 5150 in the experience’s original name. For that reason, the name has been changed to FearVR.”
Still, the “experience” itself was unchanged.
Finally, after our coalition kept up the pressure, the KBF public relations representative—while still denying that the exhibit had any connection to individuals with mental health conditions—let us know that it had been cancelled in all three Cedar Fair theme parks as a result of our outreach. He or she (no name was ever attached to the emails) wrote: “Contrary to some traditional and social media accounts, the attraction’s story and presentation were never intended to portray mental illness. As it is impossible to address both concerns and misconceptions in the Halloween timeframe, at this time we have decided to close the attraction.” One down (Cedar Fair)! Or three down (the three Cedar Fair theme parks)! (It depends on how you count.)
Meanwhile, our efforts got more press coverage, including by award-winning journalist Steve Lopez. Steve had been contacted by Ron Thomas, whose son, Kelly, who had a psychiatric diagnosis, was beaten to death by police officers some five years ago. Members of NAMI in Orange and Los Angeles counties were also very active in the advocacy effort around the KBF exhibit, which was in their back yard.
Although we had succeeded, I found KBF’s disingenuous emails a little depressing. So I was heartened by the response from Six Flags.
First, Nancy Chan, communications manager at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, outside San Francisco, wrote to apologize. “We are making immediate changes to this attraction including converting the theme and will change out the references in advertising and social media to reflect the new theme. The maze will now feature zombies,” she wrote, adding, “This is a good lesson for us all about perpetuating stereotypes…” A teachable moment!
Given that Cedar Fair has closed its FearVR: 5150 attractions as a result of our advocacy, and that Six Flags is revamping its exhibits so that they feature zombies, I think the takeaway is that advocacy works! We stood up for what was right and we made a difference! “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world…”
Unfortunately, despite all our efforts over decades to educate the public, we have not made the inroads that we need to make. It just exhausts me to realize that national corporations, who should know better, think it’s okay to create Halloween “attractions” of this sort, and that reporters for mainstream news organizations, such as the Los Angeles Times, aren’t horrified by this. It makes me realize how much farther we need to go.
—
P.S. Someone (who describes herself as a psychology doctoral student) has created a petition to bring back FearVR: 5150, and the petition has gotten a couple thousand signatures. The creator of this petition thinks the advocacy community needs to lighten up. That would be easy in an ideal world. But IRL (i.e., In Real Life), we need to keep fighting the prejudice and discrimination that haunt us. Now, that’s scary.
Thanks Susan for sharing this. I had heard of the issue but wasn’t sure what to do. Makes putting a name out important and also glad to see lots of folks actually worked together and put aside their own interfering issues. I have always been disturbed by some of the entertainment and media businesses highlighting of the horror of any disability or strangeness. Do a blind Kear Lear, or a quad Othello, or any good quality rich an deep creative storyline. But just stop doing the horror themed – these people are scary- outlets! Also no more making meds as a perfect all encompassing solution ie Brilliant Mind
Report comment
Actually King Lear already features a blind character, the Earl of Gloucester, who is blinded onstage–in a very horrifying scene. It also features a “madman” or rather a character who pretends to be one to avoid public scrutiny. Edgar, the Earl’s legitimate son.
Othello is not a quad, but an ethnic minority. In the scene where he smothers Desdemona for her supposed unfaithfulness, depicting him as a quadroplegic would take some improvising, though if Othello were a muscular paraplegic that might be doable.
Report comment
Thanks so much for sharing this! I know last year there was no success preventing the highly discriminating Halloween episode from Modern Family aired (two years in a row) . Happy to hear of this success.
Report comment
This is a very powerful piece. The contrast between KBF and Six Flags responses is dramatic Loved reading this:
“Nancy Chan, communications manager at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, outside San Francisco, wrote to apologize. ‘We are making immediate changes to this attraction including converting the theme and will change out the references in advertising and social media to reflect the new theme. The maze will now feature zombies,’ she wrote, adding, ‘This is a good lesson for us all about perpetuating stereotypes…’ A teachable moment!”
Really great activism, Susan. Teaching people awareness regarding our humanity, right on!
Report comment
Yes, making entertainment which promotes the concept of mental illness and stereotypes about it, is no good. So this is good that people were able to stand up to it at these theme parks and get it stopped.
But, there are others promoting the concept of mental illness, as well as familial child scapegoating and abuse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Warren#Personal
”
Warren’s youngest son, Matthew, took his own life April 6, 2013, after years of struggling with mental illness. Almost a year after his son’s suicide, Warren launched a ministry to educate the Church on its role to help people struggling with mental illness with a Mental Illness and the Church Gathering in March 2014.[12] In the year following the suicide, Warren says that more than 10,000 people wrote to him about their struggles with mental illness within the Church.
”
I say that Warren is promoting the bogus concept of mental illness and that he is promoting what the Evangelical Churches like his are already based on, child abuse and child scapegoating.
I feel that Daniel Mackler was 100% correct when he said, “Suicide is the ultimate victory of the Family System.”
And so yes, we need to stand up to this Murphy bill. But we can’t do that by asking for pity. We need to completely reject all aspects of the concept of mental illness and mental health. And these include Psychiatry, Psychiatric Medications, Psychotherapy, and Recovery.
Instead we must show that all these things are is a cover up and legitimation for familial child abuse. And so the way to fight back is by legal and political action, not confessing on the therapist’s couch.
Murphy and his allies are helping child abusers. We must show this, and we must work for tangible results, instead of seeking therapeutic release in our therapists’ offices.
Look for my newest posts here, and please join:
http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/viewforum.php?f=2
Nomadic
Report comment
The problem here is that it looks like, once again, “stigma” is described as the problem, when we realize by now that “stigma” is simply a euphemism for bigotry directed towards the psychiatrized.
Why would NAMI and the APA support this coalition — because they’re suddenly become enlightened? Or because the tabloid stereoptypes that these “amusements” are perpetrating are in conflict with the official stereotypes that Murphy et al. wish to legitimize in the public eye?
Report comment
On second reading it’s not clear that the APA was involved in this particular effort.
It’s also not clear exactly what the what the coalition members were complaining about, as I don’t see their press statements quoted anywhere, just that they wanted the “amusements” to be stopped. Something tells me that I may not have agreed with their logic either. Like Frank, I think the more urgent issue is the real thing rather than the fantasy, nor I’m not prompted to jump to the defense of the “mentally ill”; If you don’t identify as “mentally ill” such exhibits shouldn’t traumatize you, just strike you as sort of clueless. If you’re worried about public attitudes go after those Abilify ads on TV. Not saying that people shouldn’t be offended by this, it’s just a question of priorities.
Report comment
Let me un-mangle this sentence:
I think the more urgent issue is the real thing rather than the fantasy. Nor am I prompted to jump to the defense of the “mentally ill”; If you don’t identify as “mentally ill” such exhibits shouldn’t traumatize you…
Report comment
Its obvious hatred- like racism. Blacks get hated on for being poor and powerless, because whites have all the money and got it all before the blacks could. With people in the psychiatric system they tend to be without jobs, poor, bottom feeders expecting hand outs the same as many blacks. So there is a class war and hatred for these people. Society doesn’t want to pay their way or give them handouts.
At the same time both groups are victimized so much that the victimizers- psychiatry, rich wealthy types, hospitals and even the police get off attacking and discrediting the group.
Its seen as racism or stigma both the attacks and lasting effects of the attacks.
Interestng thing is the rich make a ton of money off psychiatric patients who they maim and lock up for forced for profit ‘drugging’ .. The rich invest in the companies that sell the drugs receiving dividends and per stock payouts that are higher for each person falsely drugged and maimed, and get kick back donations (congressman/senators are totally paid off).
It’s all about the money.
oregonstatehospital.net
Report comment
Its obvious hatred- like racism.
Yes, but what’s important to realize is that psychiatric labels also represent hate speech. People here are expected to say “n-word” during discussions of racism; why aren’t they expected to say “s-word” for “schizophrenic” (or at least put it in quotes)?
Report comment
Maybe it’s all just a fabricated publicity stunt, and excuse for NAMI to get what it considers positive publicity for itself….????….
Report comment
“Murphy and his allies are helping child abusers. We must show this, and we must work for tangible results, instead of seeking therapeutic release in our therapists’ offices.”
This is an excellent point. I’d never looked at this way. But I’d agree, that’s what it boils down to in so many cases. We’re not crying about it, we want to correct it. Stop the abuse, the demeaning, the shaming, the gaslighting, the coercion, etc., damn it. At this point, unconditional kindness would be a revolutionary act that would more than likely lead to radical change. Can we handle it?
Report comment
What will stop the abuse is holding the abuser parents accountable, and in the only way they understand, taking their money away from them. Put it in a trust fund for all of their children. Do this, and they will stop trying to say that the scapegoat has a defect, because they will see that it makes them into the public example, not the scapegoat.
Again, consider the suicide of Rick Warren’s youngest son Matthew at the age of 27, and supposedly long struggling with “mental illness”, and Warren starting a mental illness ministry and getting over 10,000 letters from members of his church, detailing the struggles their families have with mental illness.
And as far as kindness, we cannot approach any of this by seeking pity. We are facing continuous mortal threat, and the way this is justified is by Social Darwinism and Eugenics. They are saying that we deserve what we get, because we are not fit to live. And they justify this by our passivity.
How else could someone be persuaded to ingest even a single psychiatric medication pill, unless they had been convinced that there was something wrong with them?
So I agree with Oldhead in saying that they are focusing on the stigma, instead of the illness, in opposing this entertainment. But then the problem is that the illness is non-existent.
We need to be life affirming, and this means organizing and standing up for ourselves, showing that we are not afraid of conflicts, and that we will act.
This is the same sort of an issue I have with the Autism Self-Advocacy Network. Saying that they don’t want others characterizing them is fine. But they are still going along with this idea of “neurological difference”, even though there is no sensible reason for believing that this exists. So they are representing themselves, but they have still accepted a fallacious identity.
So no, we don’t want people playing to negative stereotypes of the mentally ill. But we also should not be cooperating with those who want to promote the idea that mental illness is real.
And then of psych meds, the problem with them is not just that they cause side effects, cause liver damage, and may not really do all that they are intended to.
No, the problem with psych meds is that they are intended to be a cheaper and simpler way of doing what Psychotherapy does. Psychotherapy is intended to make people distrust their innate impulses, their powers of perception, and their feelings. It is intended to make people accept abuse and never try to fight back. Psychotherapy is designed to execute exactly the same types of abuse that the Middle-Class Family has been entrusted to execute.
So as Psychotherapy is wrong. It is also wrong to try and invent medications which do the same thing. And it is wrong to have discussions about whether these medications are effective, because that is legitimating the intent, and that intent is completely wrong.
So it is wrong to give people the drugs. And it is wrong to give people placebos, as that still amounts to trying to convince them that they have something wrong with them. And it is wrong to give people tests and evaluations to see if their experience has come back into some normal range, because people need to feel how they feel. If they are angry, then there must be good reason for it. If they are suicidal, well there must be good reason for that too, and they need to feel it.
It is wrong to do anything which is about developing technologies to manage people’s feelings.
I know that this is what Foucault was calling Bio-Power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biopower
And it is not just Psychotherapy and Psychiatry, it is also the Pedagogy and Child Development Manuals,
https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Sling-Real-Life-Confident-Attachment/dp/1451662181/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1475353003&sr=8-2&keywords=mayim+bialik
And it is also all the pronatalist images used by religion, commercial advertising, and the political sector. I am convinced that much of it goes right back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, his pedagogy Emile, and to his romanticizations of nature.
Please Join:
http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/free-expression-f2.html
Nomadic
Report comment
So I agree with Oldhead in saying that they are focusing on the stigma, instead of the illness, in opposing this entertainment.
Well…my main point was that opposing such overt public silliness (which is fueled in part by people’s subliminal personal fears of “going crazy”) is counterproductive if in the process even more dangerous misunderstandings are perpetuated — such as that people suffer from mental diseases.
Report comment
“And as far as kindness, we cannot approach any of this by seeking pity. ”
I don’t correlate these. The energy of kindness is healing–not born of pity, but of empathy and compassion, and the desire to feel love. I think the main issue from childhood trauma and abuse is that it creates a deprivation of love. That can cause all sorts of illness, despair, rage, bad relationship patterns, chronic frustration, etc. People need kindness more than simply more hostility.
Regardless of beliefs and perspectives having to do with “mental illness” existing or not, or whatever that means, there are people who are in psych hospitals who suffer daily, and who have been traumatized and abused in all sorts of ways. This attraction is portraying those people as monsters, which goes right along with the oppressive and socially traumatic stigma that “these people” are violent and dangerous which is so readily perpetuated in the media. So I agree with this advocacy 100%.
And I’m no PC prude. I love film and theater and there are all sorts of stereotypes that are portrayed in classic masterworks which some could find offensive and which I see simply as a reflection of the times. Stereotypes happen, different ways of dealing with it.
But in this case, I think it’s clear that this is the basis of one of the most damaging stigmas for this population. Unless you want people to continue to believe that people with diagnoses and who live in institutions are dangerous monsters. That’s already a powerful stigma out there that is causing all sorts of problems and misconceptions to perpetuate, and it’s the basis of popular thought which motivates the Murphy Bill.
This attraction is a reflection of that stigma and media-driven stereotype. I think the response from the Six Flags rep validates the advocacy, that is a victory of affecting someone’s perspective in a really positive way. She learned something important and became aware, had an awakening, around what I believed was the message we wanted people to hear–that people with diagnoses and institutionalized are human beings, and who have experienced hardships in life. They are not killer monsters, contrary to popular belief.
Report comment
And this–
“…Six Flags is revamping its exhibits so that they feature zombies, I think the takeaway is that advocacy works!”
In this case, yes, it created tangible positive change, away from negatively stereotyping people who suffer–stigma that has directly done great harm to a lot of people–based on the voices and truth of those with lived experience. That will ripple out to whomever Ms. Chan communicates about this, starting with the staff involved with the exhibit, and also the directors. Everyone will have an opportunity to reconsider their views about this.
Not everyone will change their minds or perhaps even care about this. But even one mind changed is significant. And my feeling here is that this advocacy has affected more than one person’s perception of people who live with diagnoses and in psychiatric institutions. It will make them think twice about merely echoing public sentiment, mindlessly.
I think this is the essence of advocacy–literally, the heart of it. To create change in perspective leading to raised awareness leading to change in actions, all translating to the public, one way or another, because these subliminal messages will have been ceased from that particular source. I think that’s a great achievement in advocacy, a bulls eye, in fact. Would love to see more of this.
Report comment
Alex wrote, “The energy of kindness is healing–not born of pity, but of empathy and compassion, and the desire to feel love. I think the main issue from childhood trauma and abuse is that it creates a deprivation of love. That can cause all sorts of illness, despair, rage, bad relationship patterns, chronic frustration, etc. People need kindness more than simply more hostility.”
The issue is always social and civil standing. We the Survivors of the Middle-Class Family are denied social and civil standing. And so power is used unfairly against us. We are socially marginalized. We do not have the same chances at higher education or high wage employment, and usually where it really shows up is we are delegitimated in intimate relationships.
And this creates psychological distress, so we often end up being subjected to further abuses as we confess on the couches of therapists. These commiserators will never do anything whatsoever to vindicate the survivors of the middle-class family.
So the way we restore our social and civil standing is by standing up for ourselves, and talking legal and political action, and to do this we need to organize.
Telling people that they need healing, empathy, or compassion, and especially for those who have abused them and for those who continue to denigrate them is just telling them to be Uncle Tom’s.
As long as we listen to this, its always going to be therapy, recovery, and healing, but never justice.
Do you think people should be able to have children so that they can abuse them, and then say they are right and the child is wrong, and still be able to hold on to their money? This is exactly the way it is being done in every community in the entire country.
Nomadic
Report comment
The main reason we can’t ask for pity from Murphy the Merciless is because he and his cohorts in torture have none! As far as Rick Warren goes I can’t help but marvel at his stupidity. The very fact that Matt Warren killed himself after six years of psychiatric tor-uh-treatment shows that what he underwent was ineffective at best. Why then encourage or even force other people to go through the same instead of searching for alternatives?
Supposedly the working definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect different results. This would make Rick Warren the insane one!
Report comment
Here’s the thing Susan, this attraction was geared toward adults and was for paying adults who had been warned ahead of time. Most with mental health problems would not have attended this function. On the change.org petition, many who have stated this already, they don’t agree with the decision to cancel it.
Let me repeat this, many posters who have mental issues on the change.org, DON’T AGREE with the cancelling of this event.
It amounts to censorship and a dumbing down of society because a small vocal minority.
Also, this is the only attraction that features this type of setting.
Report comment
“Rehabilitate” zombies! You can’t imagine the kind of prejudice experienced by zombies. When people start swinging chainsaws and baseball bats, and blasting away with bazookas, you know you’ve got a problem.
Also, we need to do something about ‘creepy clowns’. They, with their ‘creepy clown’ defense, are prejudicing people against legit clowns.
The place of my first psychiatric confinement, after serving a few seasons as a Halloween tour, is slated for demolition, if it hasn’t been demolished already. It’s literally missing from this years tour lineup. That’s something of an improvement, but I’d really like to see more elbow grease put into closing these institutions down than into banishing virtual reality fantasies and amusement park rides. It’s double, the public institution, is in it’s third, and most restrictively controlling incarnation. Ditto, extinguishing donut varieties. It’s the concentration camp atmosphere of the such facilities that I find really constraining.
You’ve got a point though, fantasies about loony bins, don’t help. Not when the real loony bin stands there as starkly intimidating as the slave quarters in an old plantation house. Sensationalized news stories about allegedly “mental ill” people allegedly committing gruesome and criminal acts can’t be helping much either.
Report comment
This is a good dialogue including discussion of the Murphy Bills and use of the Forum section
My thinking since in my locality there is legal action regarding the role of police in taking a woman to a supposed state of the art Psych Er actually another version of a small acute locked ward unit -designed to ensure it drives you crazy
along with the foreign male docs with their total inability to shed their birth cultures virulent sexism toward females
I would think this amusement should be seen as objectification of torture and human kinds inhumanity to humankind
Think on this and submit ute Bergen Belsen
Substitute Armenia in the massacre years of the early last century
Substitute the convent inRowanda where bodies
were hacked and children’s blood flowed
Subsitite a night with Harriet Tubman bloodhounds barking and barefooted shaved hiding in terror
If a re enactment done for educational empathic experience but is related to Halloween horror I think it is not entertainment meant but more like people in the dark ages coming to see a hanging and drawn and quatertering to boot
Until everyone is able to see how the disabled are treated in our so called great society
the UN Charter on Human Rights will never be at the forefront of our society
And if Trump wins with his personal views on disability front and center on video
I worry about the future for all
Many folks are making exit plans
Will this be possible for us?
Report comment
I’m disabled myself. Trump made fun of a disabled guy. Trump is a jerk. Everybody knows that. BUT, I do NOT believe that President Trump’s *ACTIONS* towards the disabled will be anywhere near as bad as you’re AFRAID they will be…. I’m FAR MORE scared of the bought-and-paid-for Shill Hillary….. Can’t we PLEASE keep the 2 WORST presidential candidates EVER, out of MiA….????….
Report comment
That is so cool using political correctness to bully people !
Looks like the utopia world where no one ever gets offended is right around the corner just a little more censorship and war on fun and everything will be perfect sooner than imagined.
Report comment
I think society has degenerated to the point where virtually everyone has become a bully and virtually everyone has become a victim. Goes hand in hand, two sides of the same coin. It can be almost impossible to tell the difference now.
Report comment
Check it out search = Mental Health Association of Westchester + NAMI
Business Partners | MHA – Mental Health Association of Westchester
http://www.mhawestchester.org/about-us/business-partners
The Mental Health Association of Westchester (MHA) is a leader in designing … National Alliance on Mental Illness – Westchester (NAMI – Westchester); New
NAMI Exposed: NAMI is a psycho-pharma front group
namiexposed.com/
That was just too easy.
Report comment
I’m paying attention even if some don’t know what to say.
Report comment
NAMI and APA and most groups defend against mental illness stigma not to help people- although it can help the truly disabled in a capitalism world where if you don’t work you get crapped on like we have in America- rich people don’t like to give any class even disabled free money or resources to live unless it makes them money ie sale of psych meds- but to protect profits. If you have people thinking negatively of mental health then you have less customers willing to participate and thus less money to be made. The exhibits were totally wrong: they should have featured dangerous mutilative medical staff harvesting people, their organs and bodies for a profit! Seriously the real danger is the hospitals and so called ‘treatments’ ‘experiments’ ‘brutality’ ‘use of force’ ‘population control’ ‘mind control’ ‘psychological warfare’ ‘lobotomies’ etc that go on in these ‘nut houses’ typically on healthy mostly poor people. After the operation is done you will never be the same living with true disability induced entirely by the staff. 😉
In fact the hospitals increase suicide risk by 44 times, the places and drugs induce violence, the staff cause violence with forced psychiatric care episodes where people try to self defend, people die from the treatments by the thousands, people are prevented from recovering, etc. I have an actual affidavit by an Astrazeneca big wig MD on the matter in fact. Lol.
oregonstatehospital.net
Report comment
“While in the ‘nut house’ you will become shitless as you try to escape MDs who make $500 each innocent persons brain they cut up without due process or way to protect yourself, by order of the menacing crazy judges who pocket kickbacks, benefits, luxury and job security.”
Report comment
“Learn your true place in life as a commodity to the rich and wealthy : FearVR: 5150. You ain’t nothing but a fly and laborer to them.”
Report comment
I did not know that the Nazis had many concentration camps , “about 20,000 camps” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nazi_concentration_camps
The remaining camps today are to remember the dead.
Would anyone recreate a Nazi concentration camp for Halloween?
Hundreds of thousand of people die every year from following doctors orders and their families trust of psychiatric drugs/medicine. https://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Medicines-Organised-Crime-Healthcare/dp/1846198844
The psychiatrist/Nazi’s serve the rich peoples interests keeping law and order of preventative justice.
“Involuntary mental hospitalization and the insanity defense should be seen for what they are: symmetrical symbols of psychiatric power. In the one case, the psychiatrist “accuses” the innocent; in the other, he “excuses” the guilty. Civil commitment and the insanity defense both create and confirm the impression of psychiatric expertise, where none exists. Civil commitment and the insanity defense also foster the impression that they provide a socially beneficial solution for troubling problems of human existence, when, actually both aggravate these problems.” (Szasz, 1982)
Report comment
I want to retract a statement I made to Frank B. He suggested that simply by not seeing a psychotherapist, that that constitutes Tangible Results.
Not seeing a psychotherapist, not disclosing your affairs to someone who is not a comrade, is a necessary and commendable first step. But by Tangible Results, I mean engaging in conflicts with the abusers and winning. This is how we restore our social and civil standing.
Turn the other cheek means letting the attacker see that they are not going to humiliate you into submission, and that if they want a fight, it will be a real fight.
The idea that people need “healing from the effects of child abuse” is simply wrong. It is a way of convincing survivors that the problem lies entirely within themselves and was caused by events of long ago.
But this is all bogus, the issue is social and civil standing, power, right now!
The way we get this is by standing up for ourselves and gaining Tangible Results, instead of Therapeutic Release.
Therapeutic Release sounds rather like masturbation, because that it what it means. Confessing to your therapist and punching pillows and screaming at them histrionically is a great deal like masturbation.
To obtain Tangible Results, we must organize and then escalate conflicts.
Slavery in the US ended because people made enforcement of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act extremely difficult, because John Brown organized and executed a raid on Harper’s Ferry, and because 180,000 Black men trained with rifles and bayonets and served in federal uniform.
Ending the abuses at the core of the middle-class family and letting we the survivors have social legitimacy instead of “healing” and “recovery” is going to be at least as difficult as it was to end slavery.
http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/rick-warren-first-class-creep-t351.html
This Rick Warren, founder of the Saddleback Church in Orange County California, seems to be the one who has gone the furthest, in unifying the objectives of Psychotherapy, Psychiatry, Psychiatric Medications, Recovery, Motivationalism, and Salvation Seeking. And whereas most evangelicals send out people to proselytize, this guy has a program to train “counselors”, that he sends out, and they have “donated” 50,000 hours of counseling time, as of 2011. So his trademark thesis is, “Everybody needs Recovery.”
I say this is a monumental threat to life, liberty, and happiness!
And now he also has some sort of a Mental Health Ministry.
If Warren is like other evangelicals, his sermons and his writings will be saturated with accounts of all the troubles he has had with his youngest son Matthew, and of all the Christian Pity he has shown, not unlike the writings of the Pentecostal Daughter Molester I helped to put into our state prison.
I say that Warren’s preaching and sermons are likely to contain enough to at least destroy his credibility, if not get a criminal conviction.
Imagine if instead of Recovery, Therapy, and proving that we can comply with the Self-Reliance Ethic and hence are accepting the views of our parents, we the Survivors of the Middle-Class Family finally decided to organize and stand up for ourselves. We could make substantial political and legal change.
We could organize our own foster care group home. What he have today is horrid, because otherwise it would undermine the justifications behind the middle-class family. But our group home will be superb. It would have some similarity to an Israeli Kibbutz.
You will never eradicate the middle-class family, and I would never want to try. But you can neutralize its effects, simply by making sure that children are not private property and that they have rights, and that they always have other places to go and other people looking out for them, and then by holding parents fully accountable anytime there is any kind of a problem.
Doctors who put kids on psych meds should be tried in International Court for Crimes Against Humanity. This way they cannot invoke the Adolph Eichmann defense, saying they were following the law. And doctors who market a Fix My Kid service to parents, but don’t report to CPS, should be convicted of felonies in our own courts, and incarcerated.
And we should educate everyone as to the fallacy of Psychotherapy, and how what it amounts to is people disclosing their personal affairs to someone who is not a Comrade, but is a Commiserator. What they give you is not empathy, it is pity. They are committed to the premise that it is morally superior to tune out and practice the denial system of Live and Let Live. So always, with zero exceptions, Psychotherapy is Second Rape.
And we can educate people as to the chemical assault which is Psychiatric Medications. These drugs are wrong because they are used to do the same thing which Psychotherapy does, dissociate people from their feelings. So it is wrong to manufacture and distribute the drugs. It is wrong to conduct tests with them, giving out the drugs, giving out placebos, or to be testing people for their depressive or suicidal tendencies. What the drugs and the studies do is try to convince people that the reason for their distress lies entirely between their own two ears.
So there is only one piece of information people need to know about these drugs, and that is that they are water soluble and so you can dump them into the toilet. But wait, I’ll heed Franks admonition, that flushing them down the toilet could prove a problem for our drinking water.
So instead we, the Survivors of the Middle-Class Family, which will also include the overwhelming majority of the Survivors of Psychotherapy and Psychiatry, want anyone who has been given psychiatric medications to call our legal arm, because we will act. And you should give the entire container of medications, unopened to your attorney, because it will be entered into evidence.
Nomadic
Please Join:
http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/free-expression-f2.html
Report comment
The REAL horror attraction would not be the inmates being freed from the asylum, but the participants being exposed to the psychiatrists and their procedures. Set up an “ECT” exhibit if you really want to scare the shit out of your Hallowe’en guests!
— Steve
Report comment
ECT, quiet room (solitary), 4 point restraints, goons with hypodermic needles. Great idea actually. These matters are too invisible to the general population. Instead it’s an updated spook house, the spook asylum.
What’s that big lump in the rug over there?
Shhhh! “Major mental health issues”…allegedly….Or rather, mistreatment thereof.
Report comment
Put people through some mock talk therapy sessions. They will walk out of there with their blood boiling.
Nomadic
Report comment
Wow, Susan, I had read about this but didn’t know the entire story from the “insider” point of view. The various correspondences between activists and the administrators (or PR people) of these amusement parks is especially interesting…..
As for horror literature, I can comment on that from a writer’s point of view. I personally know a few horror writers and I went to grad school with them, learned alongside them how to write this stuff, and why, exactly, horror writers choose this genre.
Good quality horror writing, like any other decent writing, is not reliant on gimmicks. There is real depth to it. Those that write horror often tell me that their aim, as writers, is exactly the same as mine: “I want to move the reader from Point A to Point B.” And in doing so, the most effective writing is bound to disturb readers, shake up what they know to be their reality. Isn’t the aim of all writing to illustrate a new way of viewing the world around us? While horror is indeed disturbing, it also does exactly what writers set out to do.
I’ve been planning for some time a sort of Halloween act. This would be scary since that’s what Halloween is for. I plan to scare people half to death, “If choose to submit to traditional ‘mental health’ care, this is the scary stuff that will happen to you!”
Wait a minute…I think I’ve been doing exactly that for years. I encourage anyone else to do the same, and commend those who have been brave enough to speak out and tell the true horror stories of what our lives have been like. Never, ever shut up.
(Susan if you could contact me via email I’d appreciate it. [email protected]. Thanks.)
Report comment
“The inmates of the Asylum have broken loose and will have you screaming in sheer terror as they taunt and torture their newest victims.”
Shouldn’t that read “The inmates of the Asylum have broken loose, got medical degrees, and will have you screaming in sheer terror as they taunt and torture their newest victims”?
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/wa/a/25091931/perth-royal-show-haunted-house-riles-mental-health-lobby/#page1
We had a similar situation here, where I believe the outcome was to make the ‘mental patients’ into zombies and that somehow fixed the problem. I guess at least it was a little more accurate when one considers what the drugs being administered by force actually do.
I also wonder if this sort of display doesn’t bring too much attention to how far psychiatry has actually come in the past 100 years or so, nowhere.
Report comment