Forced-Treatment Advocacy Group Cherry-Picks Data to Support Agenda (Again)

So people who were abused as children are more likely to commit violent crimes? Funny how upset folks would get if we suggested punishing survivors of child abuse as though they were violent criminals regardless of their behavior. Yet this is what happens in “mental health.”

Torrey conveniently ignores this since it would draw attention to the fact that his profession exists to punish the weak. Primarily abuse victims.

Psychiatry’s function is penal; not medical. Only they punish for crimes the accused MIGHT COMMIT in the future (according to themselves.)

By treating the law abiding who exhibit signs of emotional trauma as if they’re violent criminals psychiatry punishes the unlucky. Just like the courts of Samuel Butler’s Erewhon.

TAC is the law of the jungle. No justice since they don’t punish for actual crimes–but the mere existence of those they brand “defective.” No mercy either.

Eugenics lives.

Thank you for this provocative piece, Michael.

It’s interesting that having been a recent victim of violence was an important factor. It would seem that people are also likely to see forced treatment as a form of violence against themselves, so in that way forced treatment would increase the risk of future violence.

Knowing when to use violence, and knowing how to use it, are just normal parts of life. No reason survivors should ever be asked to renounce violence, or to show that they are opposed or incapable of it.

Someone who is being labeled by the ~Mental Health System~ is more likely to be in situations where they will have legitimate cause to use violence.

In opposing the legislation of Tim Murphy, it was wrong to try and appease him by making it look like violence was completely off of the table.

Those labeled by the ~Mental Health System~ are seen as deficient. Being willing to absorb abuses, or to take the position towards them which Psychotherapists advocate, is part of this problem.

Well, with most psychiatric drug based treatments, the patient never recovers, but now has this beef against anything claiming to be treatment and will do anything to avoid going back. The only plus about this stuff is that the treatment zombifies patients so they can’t do anything while you keep them around, vegetating for the rest of their lives, because you can never tell if the public will be safe from them.

Mental illness pulls the trigger, right? Is that even possible, since so-called MI is nothing but a metaphor? Maybe poetry pulls the trigger, because it is a metaphor, too. How about music?

Yeah I know. Illogical. But so is the stuff that MH America keeps spewing out.

Awesome bit of research, as usual, Micheal. Thanks!

Even if we cannot agree on everything, we need to develop a strategy for fighting back, for hitting targets of opportunity, and for baiting and provoking the enemy.

I’ve read this now three times, and I fail to see what the point is.

To begin with, to site a study studying people being treated for “schizophrenia,” means you are studying people that are “medicated.” It doesn’t at all state that there were any “schizophrenics,” that weren’t medicated. What this is supposed to have to do with Torey’s statement that poor adherence to psychiatric medications brings bad results is beyond me yet, except that then you can ignore whether no medicating them in the first place turns out to be more helpful and preventative. And there’s of course no study listed comparing “schizophrenics,” that aren’t at all medicated to those having poor adherence or good adherence, regarding whether they get violent. In fact, those with “poor adherence,” you can be sure weren’t given the opportunity to be helped to get off of their medications. So it’s really about people not liking the treatment, being forced on it, and then whether they get violent. Siting a study that “schizophrenics,” have a bit more tendency to get violent without also looking at whether “treating” them with medications they aren’t allowed to dislike ups their chance to get violent is pretentious at best. To magically say it’s because of medication non adherence then is quite unscientific.

And to treat the whole situation in a way (NOT involving “medications”) which promotes recovery, and logically prevents violence, that isn’t even entertained. That would be a treatment (the treatments that have been shown to work like Soteria House, Healing Homes etc.) other than the “treatment” being tested. But it’s not even entertained. The “treatment” entertained is such that when someone doesn’t like it they have – what the author of this article points out – a minor correlation with violence. Mind you, that’s a “treatment that when it forces a person on medications gives them extreme withdrawal symptoms would they not want such “treatment” or the side effects from it. And they for the most part can’t get or have difficulty seeking help for it (coming off the “treatment”), and probably are told that it’s their moral responsibility to endure the side effects that were making them not want to take the medications. On top of that they are most likely being told that the withdrawal symptoms are symptoms of the disease, not of the “treatment.” And then there’s this big statement that some people seem to get violent (although not as bad as five other criteria).

This is science?

And the people that aren’t compliant with “treatment,” that aren’t medicated at all, or weened themselves off, there’s enough evidence that they then have way more of a chance of recovery.

I REALLY wonder though, why in the whole article, it’s not even mentioned about those people, or that poor medication adherence might mean that those are people that feel that the medications don’t work (which has been proven), but they aren’t allowed to have such awareness, and that that by itself is so suppressive and confusing it could make people violent. And that, when they are not allowed to nor their right to express their dislike for treatment is acknowledged, this echoes severe emotional issues that thus are being suppressed echoing the same coercion towards their behavior of expressing dissent or not.

In fact, that people who aren’t treated with medications have less occurrence of violence isn’t even entertained. That would of course blow the whole argument, and if there’s more recovery, which has been shown to be the case, then there’s more exposing that’s not supposed to happen. Nor is it looked at regarding all of the evidence that psychiatric drugs cause violence, which there is ample evidence of, which was suppressed for years and still is.

WHY are we supposed to even read this going around in circles completely ignoring the statistics regarding what happens when people AREN’T put on medications!? And why is “treatment” – whether a person is compliant to it or is seen as having poor adherence but still coerced that they should be compliant – that correlates with violence, not at all seen as a possible CAUSE of that violence!?

That way you could call I don’t know what treatment!

WHAT are they saying!?

“We haven’t even tried this (not forcing treatment or limiting treatment to our treatment), but if it worked what we call needed forced treatment would be shown to not work. So here we’re forcing people on our treatment and when they don’t like it and aren’t helped to try something else that has been shown to promote recovery more, they get violent in an extremely marginal way.”

And then there’s the venues that when there isn’t enough money for treatment, and people at first forced on treatment suddenly don’t get their “treatment,” their “meds,” then they start acting up, so we need more money for treatment. That you could have ever NOT got them addicted to “meds” that only work for a few years before there’s more relapsing, lack of recovery, more cost, more loss of life, more societal paranoia against people not treated by what doesn’t work!? Oh, and when they have withdrawal symptoms and aren’t helped with them and getting off of the highly addictive “treatment” (which would cost less in the long run and promote recovery) then we need more money to “treat” them.

There was an article in The Onion about the big hole that everyone’s money ends up in, and when it was argued as to whether they would shovel it in or use another manner to dump money in there, someone said:

“My father works two jobs so you can dump money in the hole, and I want you to use a shovel, not any other method!”

Why are we even going on about “schizophrenia,” rather than seeing whether the treatment of it is a causing factor: NOT helping a person who wants another method than what they are forced on and they aren’t allowed to say isn’t the kind of treatment they see as working for them, as well as that there’s strong evidence that it doesn’t work, which is suppressed.

And I’ve again typed in all of the above, checked it over, adjusted it, and only once mentioned how this “treatment” echoes severe emotional issues that already weren’t tended to.

But I’m supposed to take up the other flag now, and in not tending to them (severe emotional issues) start fighting the cause, which wouldn’t be there if what actually heals was acknowledged rather than fighting about what doesn’t.

It gets quite something when what truly heals and has no opposition, and so is there when you stop needing to oppose anything, that it’s thus disqualified because it dissolves the whole fight. WHY!? Because it might be called a miracle, and thus be seen as unrealistic? And then where this fighting can’t exist, where it escapes all of the perceptions of loss, and guilt and whatever else maintains the need for a fight but still exists (possibly in forever where whatever is there can’t be destroyed), and if such a place exists it again wouldn’t be allowed to, whether it’s called Heaven or love. That supposedly exists afterwards, if you’re good and judge others… Can’t ever be just now in the moment…..

Well, I’m done….

correction

“We haven’t even tried this (not forcing treatment or limiting treatment to our treatment), but if it worked what we call needed forced treatment would be shown to not work.

should read

“We haven’t even tried this (not forcing treatment or NOT limiting treatment to our treatment), but if it worked what we call needed forced treatment would be shown to not work.

In other words, we are so sure that the pills will work we won’t try anything else.

What did Einstein say about being crazy? “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

I think it’s important to acknowledge exactly “who” it is that E. Fuller Torrey and TAC are referring to when they use the term “schizophrenia”.

According to Dr. Jonathan M. Metzl in the book Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease, “Two historical reasons explain why the diagnosis of schizophrenia captured African American men at Ionia in the 1960s. And why, soon thereafter, schizophrenia disproportionately captured African American men throughout the US. And why, as a result of that capturing, schizophrenia became violent at the same moment in time that it became black. The first reason is as follows: schizophrenia became a racialized disease in the 1960s in ways that preferentially selected black male bodies.”

The book then traces the language of the DSM that changed, eliminating the word “reaction” from disease descriptors, so that illness was not the result of trauma, but some exogenous disease. The DSM language also changed in ways that conflated legitimate protest with violence, creating a new “disease” as a method of containing dissent.

And now today, according to Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada, African American men are diagnosed with “paranoid schizophrenia” at a rate “5 to 7 times more often than white men.”

Michelle Alexander gave us a language to describe the alarming rates of incarceration for people of color in her book The New Jim Crow, and since psychiatry is an adjunct of law enforcement, it’s clear what the motive is for Torrey and the TAC. And with Torrey’s insistence on the use of chemical toxins – even when the evidence does not warrant it – the term “tranquil prisons” comes to mind (see Erick Fabris’ Tranquil Prisons: Chemical Incarceration Under Community Treatment Orders).

And with the death rate so high with these drugs (see: https://www.madinamerica.com/2011/11/%EF%BB%BFearly-death-associated-with-antipsychotics/), psychiatry is able to legally do something law enforcement can’t.

Going after people of color and low-income whites is not new, but it is getting tiring. And deadly.

Psychiatry and those drugs should not exist. And those who have perpetuated this abuse should not go unpunished.

We need to get people to move from seeing their experience as an indicator of a need for ~psychiatry~, or for ~psychotherapy~, or for ~recovery~, but rather as indicating a history of unredressed abuse and injustice, and we all need to move for fighting back, punishing perpetrators, seizing reparations, as well as creating new life options.

Chris Hedges, really interesting voice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ycuw9Cvh6W4

I know this is a off-topic, but one cannot forget that there is a direct linkage between “psyche drugs” and the increased likelihood of violence.

This article references the literature review here.

I just wish they would revisit the literature review and update it with current stats. That is if the data is even being kept anymore for the basis of the review. . .

Just remember, the instances reported are far fewer than the actual instances occurred.

To the extent that human evil exists, I believe that E. Fuller Torrey embodies human evil. He does what he does for money, – “fundraising”, – and for the fame and glory of his mis-nomered “Treatment Advocacy Center”. In the “Time” magazine obituary of Dr. Thomas Szasz, the ONLY person quoted is E. Fuller Torrey.
That’s like having some KKK guy quoted in an obituary for Martin Luther King, jr. Exactly. I’m glad to see MiA further de-constructing the already 100% de-constructed Torrey, even if I’m dismayed he still besmirches the air of loving, sane persons. Torrey is a hater, make no mistake. And yes, he lies about his bogus “studies”.