It’s been a long time since I posted on this site. Now that my LLM program is finished, I am back at CRPD (Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) absolute prohibition work full time. Two exciting developments are here to warm us up through the northern hemisphere winter.
Absolute Prohibition â Next Steps
You may remember last year’s Campaign to Support the CRPD Absolute Prohibition of Commitment and Forced Treatment. MIA provided space to promote the campaign and was a collaborating site for bloggers. We had good participation from survivors and non-survivors, from activists, researchers and lawyers, from relatives of people who died in psychiatry. Through the Campaign I was able to connect with people who hadn’t been active on these issues before in a human rights framework, and strengthened connections with long-time activists who are willing to come out in support of absolute prohibition.
People were asking about next steps as soon as the Campaign reached its conclusion, and now that is bearing fruit. Starting in December, some of us have been networking by email and in audio/video/written chats to discuss strategies and share information. If you are working for the absolute prohibition of commitment, forced treatment and substitute decision-making, or want to work for this aim, please send an email expressing interest to [email protected].
CRPD Course
For a long time I have been interested in offering a course on CRPD, to pass on my knowledge to other activists and allow more people to take up the frustrating and passionate responsibility of human rights work. Finally I have come up with a plan that is doable and it feels right to move forward.
The course will be geared to issues of greatest concern to survivors of psychiatry, and it is open to everyone who is interested. This time it is free of charge to everyone, and will always be free to survivors and to those who are unable to pay.
Materials will be posted on a dedicated website, there will be audio or video conference calls for real-time lectures and discussions, and there will be a list-serve for additional discussion.
The course will begin on March 1 and will run through June, with a change in topic every two weeks. Please see the course website for more information.
Yes, we must prohibit all forced psychiatric procedures. I won’t even call them treatments. If I were to call them anything, it would be Crimes Against Humanity.
I would just like to add a few other points:
1. Any procedures done on juveniles should always be considered as forced. A juvenile should not be considered able to consent. So no drugs ever given to juveniles.
2. Subjecting a juvenile to psychotherapy or family counseling, is also non-consensual. If a therapist is doing sessions with a juvenile, just the fact that the juvenile is in their office suggests a strong possibility of ongoing child abuse. Enforce the Child Abuse and Neglect Act as written. Failure to report, in say a case of suspected emotional child abuse, is a felony.
So what this means is that child therapy procedures will end up under the authority of the juvenile dependency court. And this indeed is the only way to make it safe. The therapist is a party hired by the parents, and as we have seen on this forum, these guys market their services to the parents by putting out their doctrine that the parents are “loving”. So then, therapy is just more emotional child abuse.
3. In fighting to abolish forced procedures, we must not do so by further denigrating those being subjected to them. We must not ask for pity on their behalf. We must not be Uncle Toms. So in particular we must never endorse Psychotherapy, Life Coaching, Recovery, or Healing. All these things do is just further put the blame on the victim. We must not do this. And it is over this issue that I will never have anything to do with Mind Freedom.
And thank you Tina for posting here. I see your ‘Esq’, just what we need! We need lawyers, not psychotherapists, psychiatrists, life coaches, or recovery program leaders.
http://www.chrusp.org/
Nomadic
We need to organize an Anti-Mental Health and Anti-Recovery Forum. Reclaiming our social and civil standing will not happen in private restricted spaces, it requires public political contests and open debate. So no posts will be censored as the conversation unfolds. Please Join:
http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/index.php
Report comment
I’ll be there! YES!!!!! Thanks for doing this and I will be in touch, Tina. I’m wicked thrilled.
Julie and Puzzle
Report comment
Tina, upon further reviewing your website, I am most pleased to find strong endorsement for the concept of reparations.
http://www.chrusp.org/media/AA/AG/chrusp-biz/downloads/254413/Open_Minds_Reparations_article.docx
This is the way we must proceed. Otherwise it all amounts to just asking for pity. No one has reason to fear us, or to even get out of our way, unless we are demanding reparations and consequences for the perpetrators.
And you are right to be looking at this in the context of international law. This is the only way we get around backwards US law and get the benefit of principle #2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_principles#Principle_II
And as it is not that far back that Germany got itself handed a new Constitution, their law now allows for non-profits to bring international criminal indictments. There are already a couple of prominent Americans who won’t be going to Oktoberfest, ever.
I mean, so many on this forum are promoting Psychotherapy, Recovery, and Life Coaching as the remedy for Psychiatry. That is about as crazy as if they were promoting such things as the remedy for rape.
And just what is it that lands people, adults or children, in the Psychiatric System?
So much of what enables the middle-class family is simply the fact that whereas in other industrialized countries the law makes it very hard to disinherit one’s child, in the United States, what protection we did have was in only in the Civil Law influenced Constitution of Louisiana. And in the mid-90’s, even that was eliminated.
So in British Columbia, the remedy for the child exploitation and abuses of the middle-class family is found simply by calling Trevor Todd Esq. in Vancouver.
http://disinherited.com/dysfunctional-families/
And then most of Europe, Latin America and increasingly the Pacific Rim, follow Civil Law conventions, where you don’t even need a lawyer to solve the problem.
But in the United States, the survivors live in silence, as they are then shunted into Therapy, Recovery, Life Coaching, Healing, and Evangelical Christianity, and while todays children continue to be exploited and abused in very similar ways.
And as I have seen first hand, even in completely clear cut cases of paternal sexual abuse, getting a jury to convict can be extremely difficult, because our culture still does not understand that the way to make familial child abuse stop is to enforce the law. People still want to turn it back on the child, and so we have lots and lots of psychotherapists and recovery groups.
I do have to raise one issue about your website. You have some material about stopping disability profiling, and we need to do this. But your website talks about disability rights and “Users of Psychiatry”. I would discourage this. Instead I would suggest speaking to “Survivors of the Mental Health System”. I would not encourage anyone to use any part of the Mental Health System or to identify with it in anyway. And though I know this is controversial, I would discourage the use of any sort of disability label, as we are engaging with an enemy, and so we must maintain a wall of privacy and anonymity. None of us should need to have any disability indicator pinned to our lapels. And so then when it comes to disability benefits, I know this is complex, but I believe that we should take care of everybody at all times, without expecting those in need to claim a disability.
And what we really need is a nationwide network of Anti-Mental Health Attorneys. At home today I am strategizing for how to oppose yet another government, non-profit, and philanthropical program designed to advance eugenics arguments and turn economic problems into mental health problems. I know that I must never ask for pity on behalf of those effected. What I really need is a list of local attorneys who are committed to suing the responsible institutions and individuals. Having that would make a huge difference, and before things get any worse. Most people won’t understand Anti-Mental Health arguments. But they do understand lawsuits and process servers. People who stand up for themselves and others are respected. People who ask for pity, get used as visible scapegoats, and then they get plowed under.
Thank you for your work and for your clear headedness.
Nomadic
We need to organize an Anti-Mental Health, Anti-Recovery, Anti-Eugenics Forum. Please join! Your posts will not be censored.
http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/index.php
Report comment
Again, further reading your web site and the attached documents:
1. Your calling for reparations is the most important development I have seen ever. This is the way things are going to change, when the psychiatric system, and also parents, are held accountable.
2. Disability Rights? I don’t really go along with this. Everyone should have rights, and they shouldn’t have to label themselves to get them. And there is no such thing as mental illness.
3. “Nothing said about us without us”. As I know, this comes from the Autism Self Awareness Network and others calling for Neurodiversity. I don’t go along with it, because they are still pinning to themselves this disability label, and when there really is no evidence that it exists. No reason to need to claim that. Hold abusive parents, abusive schools, and abusive work places accountable. And no labels. Everyone is unique, and beyond a point no one can say why that is.
Timimi and his co-authors are adamant, there is no such thing as autism.
https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Autism-Medicalising-Emotional-Competence/dp/0230545262/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1486593295&sr=1-1&keywords=myth+of+autism+timimi
I find that if I just read the writings of the so called autistic autism advocates like John Elder Robison and Nick Dubin, they convince me that autism does not exist, because they are living counter examples of everything they say. What they also show me is that they have a compelling belief that everyone is obliged to conform to normative social expectations. And this I see as their real shortcoming.
There is however something I call Maternal Hatred Syndrome. This is not autism, but its effects are seriously damaging.
https://www.amazon.com/Act-Early-Against-Autism-Paperback/dp/B015X4IYB4/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1486593432&sr=1-1&keywords=jayne+lytel+act+early
This Jayne Lytel is a frightening woman. And the hatred she and her husband have for their second son Leo is thick and palpable.
So lawsuits, against Psychotherapists, Psychiatrists, and Parents, where are the current high water marks? And lets get some more going.
This is what we should be talking about, not more forms of Therapy, Recovery, Healing, and Life-Coaching.
Nomadic
Report comment
I say we start here, get as many therapy and psychiatry clients as possible to sue.
http://www.wmlawyers.com/Firm-Highlights/Publications/A-Comprehensive-Overview-of-Therapist-Abuse-Litigation-in-California.shtml
Now yes, eventually we also want them to be suing parents, and getting disinheritance over turned.
And we also want them to see that not just some therapy is abusive, all of it is, and so they should reject it.
But at least we have a start in these therapy abuse lawyers.
So send the clients to me, I’ll enlighten them and then find them an attorney.
http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/index.php
Nomadic
Report comment
I welcome this initiative and tried a local follow-up.
First came the campaign “Make Norway respect rights of persons with disabilities” https://www.causes.com/campaigns/93254-make-norway-respect-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities
However the state ignored this campaign.
Therefore the German “Alliance against Torture in psychiatry” website “Abolish torture” http://www.folter-abschaffen.de/ was translatet to English: http://home.broadpark.no/~wkeim/files/stop-torture-an.html
Forced medication seemed the weakest point of forced treatment to collect signitures for “Stop Torture in Psychiatry in Norway”: https://www.causes.com/campaigns/102618-stop-torture-in-psychiatry-in-norway/description
An extension was to look at Europe: “Call to Abolish Forced Psychiatry in Europe” http://home.broadpark.no/~wkeim/files/stop-torture-europe.html
—
Walter Keim
Netizen: http://walter.keim.googlepages.com
Report comment
Breaking News, latest treatment . No more electrocution ,chemical lobotomy etc.
Decapitation its cheep,quick, painless relieves suffering instantly .
But Seriously ,IF psychiatry ever went so far ,and one protested against this ,would one be called anti psychiatry?
Please excuse the word treatment,ooopss.
CJ
Report comment