“Still Crazy After All These Years: Psychiatric Lock-Down Returns To The US”

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For Activist Post, Janet Phelan reports on the new psychiatric hospitals being built in droves across the US.  She connects the increase in psychiatric hospitalizations to the mental health “Murphy Bill” which just passed the House of Representatives. “Not only does HR 2646 provide for more inpatient hospitalization. The Murphy bill will re-enable centralization in mental health planning and forced treatment and in so doing will also gut many of the legal protections for tho­se with mental problems.”

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  1. Great article! Glad to see something in the broader progressive or “radical” press that recognizes what a bad deal the Murphy bill is. Too many people hear “more money for mental health” and don’t look deeper.

    One thing folks should know about that “IMD Exclusion” and why it’s important to keep it: It does not apply only to acute-care psychiatric hospitals. IMD stands for “institutes for mental disease.” Here in Illinois that includes many large nursing homes that house people diagnosed with mental illnesses, either exclusively or together with physically disabled folks. These private for-profit nursing homes have become the default option for housing people whose problems are serious enough for them to wind up on Social Security disability. They deprive thousands of people of their freedom and dignity — and are crap places to live in as well. Short-staffed, with lousy food and facilities, clustered in the poorest neighborhoods with the highest crime rates. A landmark lawsuit called the Williams case has allowed hundreds of people to escape these places for apartments of their own where they can come & go as they please.

    Mental-health “advocacy” groups frame the IMD Exclusion as just a bureaucratic policy that keeps patients from getting adequate physical healthcare. It’s not. It’s a vital protection against ever-increasing institutionalization, often for private profit. Getting rid of the IMD Exclusion is one of the biggest steps backward in the Murphy bill.

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    • Illinois is filled with criminal doctors, and their corrupt lawyers and judges. Read all about the now FBI arrested doctor with whom I was medically unnecessarily forced to deal.

      http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-sacred-heart-hospital-verdict-met-20160304-story.html

      And I dealt with a lot of other criminal doctors who were not arrested, too. They forge your signature on documents, so they may illegally hold and “snow” people, while defrauding your health insurance company out of as much money as they can. Then, when your insurance refuses to pay for any more, you’re released. But sent to deal with another psychiatrist, who claims the massive poisonings and other maltreatment were an “odd delusion.” Today’s “mental health” industry is completely corrupt already.

      It’s a shame this bill passed. The British seem to have realized that today’s mental health treatments don’t work, so changing the nature of the mental health system is needed. While our government officials seem to want to increase the power of this already corrupt and scientifically fraudulent industry. Upside down and backwards, USA.

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