On January 31, just ahead of the Iowa caucuses, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) released a wide-ranging disability policy plan naming disability rights as “an issue of fundamental civil rights.” Sanders said in a statement, “A society that does not center the voices and needs of people with disabilities has yet to fulfill its most basic obligations.”
Sanders’ ‘disability rights as civil rights’ plan is distinctive in its explicit inclusion of people with psychiatric disabilities and diagnoses, an orientation that runs counter to prevailing policy discourse in the U.S. “Sanders’ plan is particularly notable for how it addresses mental health,” Jennifer Mathis, deputy legal director and director of policy and legal advocacy at the Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, told Mad in America.
Mathis, who is acknowledged as a policy advisor on the Sanders plan, added, “The focus on community integration, inclusion, autonomy and independence, the use of voluntary services, and the commitment to respecting privacy rights, stands in marked contrast to how most candidates have approached mental health — focusing solely on ‘access to treatment’ and sometimes explicitly calling for expansion of institutionalization and force and reduction of privacy rights.”
Such anti-civil rights policy trends ramped up at the Federal level in 2013, when former Congressman Tim Murphy (R-PA), who perpetuated the false link between gun violence and psychiatric diagnosis, introduced the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act. The bill received bipartisan support, and several key provisions were folded into the 21st Century Cures Act signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2016.
Every person with a disability deserves the right to live in their community and have the support they need to thrive.
This is an issue of fundamental civil rights, and we will not wait to advance disability rights.
Read our plan here: https://t.co/CfXu3ShX4H
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) January 31, 2020
Current presidential candidates, including Pete Buttigieg (D) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn), have endorsed policy positions favoring the expansion of institutionalization via repealing of the Institutions of Mental Disease (IMD) Exclusion, a statute enacted at the start of the Medicaid program to disincentivize states from over-relying on costly and dehumanizing institutions. While Elizabeth Warren does not mention IMD Exclusion repeal in her disability plan, her disability team has not yet responded to a request to clarify her position.
By far the most controversial mental health plan belonged to Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), issued just days before she dropped out of the presidential race last December. It not only called for the repeal of the IMD Exclusion but also pushed to expand involuntary outpatient commitment programs — euphemistically referred to as Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) — and the opening of segregated “psychiatric campuses.” The Harris plan was roundly condemned by the disability community for its coercive, punitive proposals.
In contrast, the Sanders plan unapologetically embraces a core tenet of the disability rights movement: “Nothing About Us, Without Us,” namely, the imperative to center the leadership of voice and persons most directly impacted by policy and practice. Both Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sanders included a number of people with disabilities and neurodiverse individuals as advisors in crafting disability policy.
Rebecca Cokley, director of the Center for American Progress’s Disability Justice Initiative, served as a policy advisor to both Warren and Sanders. “Starting off with community integration shows that the Sanders campaign is clearly in touch with the energy and priorities of the grassroots,” Cokley told Time.
Ari Ne’eman, an Obama appointee who also served as a disability policy advisor to both the Warren and Sanders campaigns, concurred with Cokley, telling Arc Digital, “the best disability policies and plans are about bringing disabled people into the community and keeping them there. That is the overarching goal of the disability community.”
Sara Luterman writes in The American Prospect: “Sanders didn’t just seek out people who already love him to develop his plan. Instead, it was developed by a big tent—the kind of coalition many commentators have been skeptical Sanders could pull off.” Luterman also noted on Twitter that the plan was influenced by “cutting edge” experts.
It seems like @BernieSanders didn't invite any of those guys to the table in formulating his disability plan, and I sort of love him for that. Everyone thanked at the end are people who are not only experts, but are at the cutting edge. Sanders' plan is bold as hell.
— Sara Luterman (@slooterman) January 31, 2020
For Sanders, this level of engagement with, and approval from, the grassroots represents a significant departure from his radio silence on disability policy during the 2016 elections. “Sanders has risen from being among one of the worst candidates on disability policy to the leading disability rights champion of the primary,” Luterman writes in the Prospect.
Sanders’ plan has received such widespread admiration because it thoughtfully integrates disability into every facet of his existing platforms, including Medicare For All, Housing for All, Social Security, as well as the Green New Deal climate change proposal. “I’m struck by Sanders’ ability to think through how to make the Green New Deal inclusive of the disability community,” Cokley told Time.
Sanders “Opposes Proposals to Expand Involuntary Commitment Laws,” “Weaken Privacy Protections”
Of all the presidential candidates’ disability platforms, the Sanders plan appears to have the most robust set of rights protections for people with psychiatric diagnoses and disabilities.
As President, Sanders would “oppose proposals to expand involuntary commitment laws or weaken HIPAA and FERPA privacy protections, recognizing that mental health services work best when they are voluntary, evidence-based and available without cost or waiting.”
Disability justice advocate Victoria Rodríguez-Roldán told The Hill that she was honored to have helped advise the Sanders campaign on its disability platform. “It is by far the most progressive disability plan in the field. It’s particularly amazing how it takes such a firm stance against mental health institutionalization and coercive treatment.”
Kathy Flaherty, director of the Connecticut Legal Rights Project, called the plan’s rejection of proposals to expand involuntary treatment “remarkable.”
To see a plan that explicitly rejects calls to expand involuntary treatment is … remarkable. My thanks to every single one of the fierce advocates who helped develop this plan. https://t.co/HESh3MTfuv
— Kathy Flaherty (@ConnConnection) January 31, 2020
Proposes “Aggressive” Enforcement of Olmstead to Address Criminalization
The plan states that as President, Sanders will “fight to end the criminalization of disability, while also defending the rights of people with disabilities to make their own choices about treatment.”
The Sanders plan includes a radically different set of policy solutions to criminalization than those typically proposed by caregivers and medical providers, which have included an increased focus on beds and involuntary outpatient commitment. The decision to combine a decriminalization agenda with the explicit support for rights and choice is notable, as these policy priorities have often been framed in Washington as being mutually exclusive and in opposition.
Sanders’ disability plan avoids rebuilding the asylums as a solution to incarceration. Instead, the plan proposes to address the criminalization of people with psychiatric diagnoses and disabilities by improving enforcement of Olmstead vs. LC. This landmark 1999 Supreme Court decision gave people with disabilities, including psychiatric disabilities and diagnoses, the civil right to live in integrated, community-based settings.
Ne’eman said on Twitter that the plan’s focus on Olmstead enforcement is “a huge deal,” “given how candidates often talk about mental illness.”
https://twitter.com/aneeman/status/1223245804607102976?s=20
Every state is supposed to have an Olmstead plan as per the law; some states still do not, Flaherty explained via Twitter. The Obama administration led a push to re-invigorate Olmstead enforcement, but such efforts have waned considerably during the Trump era.
The Sanders plan states, “We will use the Olmstead decision to challenge states that have failed to adequately support the voluntary, community-based mental health services that can divert people with mental illness from ending up in the criminal justice system.” He said he would seek to return to the Obama-era momentum on Olmstead, appointing an Attorney General who will “ensure that the Department of Justice will vigorously enforce the Olmstead decision.”
One policy point directly challenges the lawmakers, families, and medical advocates who seek to subvert the Olmstead mandate when it comes to people diagnosed with severe mental illnesses (SMI). Sanders promises to “defend the Americans with Disabilities Act from attempts to weaken it, whether those attempts come from Congress through legislation or businesses challenging the law.”
Advocates calling themselves the “SMI community,” whose policy priorities formed the basis for the Kamala Harris mental health plan, include in their policy platform an effort to dilute Olmstead. Among their policy asks are to “Clarify Olmstead for SMI. Least restrictive care isn’t always least expensive or best. Examine, don’t ignore, a person’s ability to handle and benefit from a less restrictive setting.”
Pursues Meaningful Action on Police Violence Against People with Disabilities
The plan also acknowledges and seeks to end longstanding patterns of police violence that have disproportionately impacted disabled people of color, noting:
“All too often, people with disabilities, especially people of color with disabilities, face violence from law enforcement. This requires more than just training — it requires accountability. Approximately half of all people who die in police-involved shootings have a disability. In order to protect the rights of people with disabilities, we intend to make discriminatory law enforcement interactions with people with disabilities a major enforcement priority of the Civil Rights Division.”
The Sanders plan represents a significant departure from current mainstream policy trends on police violence against people diagnosed with SMI, which generally stop at mandating increased funding for mental health training for law enforcement such as Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) team training, also known as “The Memphis Model.”
Even when CIT training has been effective in de-escalating violent encounters between law enforcement and individuals with disabilities, without an accompanying accountability mechanism, training has not resulted in significant systemic improvement. Furthermore, CIT Training has not been implemented in the majority of law enforcement agencies in America, and there is no consistently enforced legal mandate that only CIT-trained officers be dispatched to 911 mental health crisis calls.
As Alexis D. Campbell writes in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, “Without the backing of the legal system, even the most well-designed program for training officers on how to best respond to persons in mental health crisis may not protect persons experiencing mental illness from unnecessary uses of police force.”
The plan takes a progressive approach to crisis response, the site of much police violence against distressed and disabled people of color. It would “create a civilian corps of unarmed first responders, such as social workers, EMTs and trained mental health professionals, who can handle order maintenance violations, mental health emergencies, and low-level conflicts outside the criminal justice system.” While Seattle-King County and other counties in the U.S. now employ a co-responder model that includes both mental health professionals and cops, Sanders’ plan would seek to take law enforcement out of the crisis response altogether whenever possible, “freeing police officers to concentrate on the most serious crimes.”
Assumes a Broad Human Rights Orientation
Both the Sanders and Warren disability plans call for ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), the landmark human rights treaty adopted by the United Nations in 2006. America became a signatory to the CRPD in 2009; however, only ratification would make it a fully binding and enforceable mechanism in the U.S. To date, 181 countries have ratified the CRPD.
CRPD ratification would be meaningful for all disabled people, and it has particular legal resonance in the current U.S. policy environment for people with psychosocial disabilities, given the pendulum swing towards an increased policy push for force and coercion.
Article 12 of the CRPD touches the heart of current debates about capacity and choice, declaring that “persons with disabilities have legal capacity on an equal basis with others.” A U.N. technical assistance document on the CRPD acknowledges that “Guardians and tutors acting on behalf of persons with disabilities sometimes fail to act in the interests of the individual they are representing; worse, they sometimes abuse their positions of authority, violating the rights of others.”
The document notes that Paragraph 4 of Article 12 establishes safeguards to protect against the abuse of substituted decision-making mechanisms, such as the appointment of court-ordered guardians or conservators who have authority to make decisions on behalf of people “without necessarily having to demonstrate that those decisions are in the individual’s best interest or according to his/her wishes.”
The Sanders plan is also unique among disability policy plans in its emphasis on promoting supported decision-making models as “a best practice and alternative to guardianship and conservatorship.” The plan states: “Bernie believes that people with disabilities deserve the right to make their own choices.”
The right to choice is a bold vision in a policy environment that increasingly favors substituted decision-making programs. An example of the latter is SB 40, the expanded conservatorship program authorized last year by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
SB 40 has been vehemently opposed by a coalition of grassroots groups calling themselves Voluntary Services First. The coalition characterizes the bill as a “developer-backed bill allowing for three pilot California cities to expand conservatorship of people with both psychiatric disabilities and substance abuse issues. It is a naked attempt to target houseless people and remove them from the streets.”
As its name implies, the Voluntary Services First coalition is pushing for “actually providing services and housing as a way to solve this problem. It is such a simple idea and apparently too complicated for city politicians: if real housing, drug treatment on demand and accessible mental health services existed, homeless encampments would shrink!”
Sanders also guarantees housing as a human right in his disability plan: “When we are in the White House, we will guarantee housing as a right for all and end housing discrimination once and for all.” The Sanders plan would allot $32 billion over the next five years to address the housing crisis and homelessness, including doubling McKinney-Vento homelessness assistance grants to build permanent supportive housing and $500 million to provide outreach to homeless people to help connect them to available services.
The Sanders plan would fully fund tenant-based Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers and would implement a non-discrimination law to address the rampant practice of landlords’ refusal to rent to Housing Choice voucher holders.
Theo Henderson, an unhoused resident in Los Angeles and host of We the Unhoused podcast, shared with Mad in America via Twitter that Bernie’s disability policy plan “would be needed after Trump attacking the disabled community.”
Appointed last December, ‘homelessness czar’ Robert Marbut criticized California early on for its management of homelessness. Marbut has long said that he is against the popular and effective Housing First program, which offers supportive housing for people with disabilities, telling The Huffington Post, “I believe in Housing Fourth.” Marbut’s appointment signals a policy shift to an approach that bundles housing to prolonged compliance with services. Glenn Bailey, executive director of the Crossroads Urban Center, said of Marbut to the Salt Lake Tribune: “His philosophy on homelessness seems to be to kind of incarcerate folks in large campus settings that are away from everyone else in the city and isolate people.”
Centers the Leadership of People with Disabilities
The Sanders plan centers the leadership of people with disabilities in numerous and concrete ways, from the formulation of policy to community-based participatory action research, another aspect distinguishing it from the prevailing mood on mental health policy. For example, a December daylong White House mental health summit did not include a single speaker openly disclosing a psychiatric history or diagnosis.
In contrast, the family- and medical provider-driven forced treatment movement tends to prefer medical authorities as leaders. A common refrain of Rep. Tim Murphy, Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, and other family and medical advocates was that a psychiatrist should be running the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). A cornerstone of Murphy’s “Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis” legislation was the creation of the Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use, who reports directly to the head of HHS, a position that is now indeed held by Dr. Elinore McCantz-Katz, a psychiatrist who also heads up SAMHSA.
Sanders’ disability plan would create a new National Office of Disability Coordination. The office would be responsible for “coordinating and making disability policy to advance the full inclusion of people with disabilities, including ensuring every aspect of our public resources are ADA compliant and that the civil rights of people with disabilities are protected and expanded.” This office would be headed up by a person with a disability.
The Sanders plan would also “require condition-specific advisory committees, such as the Inter-Agency Autism Coordinating Committee, to include individuals with the relevant disability as at least half of the public members of the committee.”
Ne’eman tweeted that this requirement represented a “groundbreaking commitment from a presidential candidate.”
https://twitter.com/aneeman/status/1223248295675539457?s=20
While not mentioned by name, under this new policy, the Interdepartmental Serious Mental Illness Coordinating Committee (ISMICC) chaired by Assistant Secretary McCantz-Katz, might have to make some changes. Of ISMICC’s 14 non-Federal public members, currently only two members openly identify as being people living with a mental health condition.
Reflects the Growing Influence of the Disability Rights Movement
Many advocates feel that the strength of both the Warren and Sanders plans represents a testament to the growing power and influence of people with disabilities in the political process. #CripTheVote, a nonpartisan hashtag organized by the Disability Visibility Project’s Alice Wong, Andrew Pulrang, and Gregg Beratan, even hosted a Twitter Town Hall Candidate Chat with Elizabeth Warren last month. As Sara Luterman writes in The Nation of Warren’s participation, “The candidate’s engagement with #CripTheVote is a sign that disability politics has finally gone mainstream.”
#CripTheVote has also extended the invitation to Sanders and all candidates to participate in a Twitter Town Hall to answer questions from disabled voters and allies.
https://twitter.com/SFdirewolf/status/1223273524007038977?s=20
No candidate’s disability policy plan has been perfect, with Warren and Sanders skewing the most towards community inclusion. But the fact that as of this writing, with the exception of Joe Biden, every frontrunner Democratic candidate has issued a disability policy platform represents a significant sea change from the 2016 election.
Even those who support the plan may point out the futility of a Democratic President Sanders or Warren passing any revolutionary legislation, especially in a GOP-controlled Senate. But Sanders anticipates this possible reality, planning to “use the power of the executive to make major disability policy advancements,” and vowing to “take bold and necessary executive action to protect the rights of people with disabilities.”
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MIA Reports are supported, in part, by a grant from the Open Society Foundations
This sucks, as Bernie’s attitude towards psychiatry always has. There is nothing positive or progressive here, and as long as survivors allow themselves to be construed as having “disablities” we are playing the system’s game. Though Bernie is the only person I would even consider voting for (as opposed to not voting at all), he remains clueless about psychiatric oppression, and is acting like a liberal here, not a socialist or a revolutionary. No “lesser of two evils” for us: Psychiatry Kills!
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On second reading I feel basically the same.
It is definitely a good thing that involuntary intervention is being challenged. This has nothing to do with “disability,” however; it’s an issue of basic human rights. But simply holding the line against the prospect of the expanded is not progress, it’s more like treading water. And I wonder if stuff like AOT would be considered “force.” I see all this stuff as clearly a wolf in sheep’s clothing scenario.
If these politicians want to demonstrate their integrity let’s see how they respond to a unified call on our part to repeal the Murphy provisions of the 21st Century Cures Act.
The above is a serious proposal btw — do I hear a second?
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I’ve heard the expression “social disability” used before, and I think it curious, despite stinking of welfare fraud. However, when it’s a matter of survival, if you can’t play the guitar with your teeth maybe you can call your socially manufactured unemployment “disability”. If the government had not basically destroyed the labor movement in this country, you could have united with other people in your position, and sued for another one, position, that is. Hmm. Revive the labor movement, and you still can.
Given Bernie’s stand against force, if Bernie makes the ticket, I’m voting for him. If not, I will vote Green again. No Regrets.
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Agree with that.
But even that is only a good faith downpayment on what needs to happen: total abolition of the regime of forced treatment and hospitalization that amounts to both arbitrary detention and substitute decision-making (equivalent to guardianship) under the CRPD. This as you know but others might not, is not only my interpretation but the official interpretation of the treaty by its international monitoring committee.
The fact that this part of CRPD was left off the table shows a narrowing of permissible discourse that our own movement leaders who participate in that table have colluded in.
Sanders’ policy may well be better than the others on this. Saying no *more* increases to involuntary commitment is a step, when others are calling for those increases. It separates him from Trump and the Jaffe crowd. But it still leaves us behind compared with the other disability groups. Our core issues are dealt with only by saying, well we won’t let them harm you any more than they’re already doing. Thanks a heap.
As I say it’s a step that he even listened to those who are willing to color inside those lines. But we – *WE* – have to be ready and willing to take it further. What are we afraid of? We have the arguments.
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Glad to see us largely in synch on the essence of what we’re dealing with here. And yes, I’m afraid that many who see themselves as part of “the movement” are so anxious to be taken seriously by their system masters, whose power they secretly admire, that they’ll give up the whole struggle for a few shekels of “community support” silver and a few official pats on the head.
Drawing the line on force and saying “no more” would be a start, but the immediate next step should be reversing what already is.
(Btw I see no “Trump/Jaffee crowd”; I think Trump is just typically clueless about this stuff and is being manipulated by sellout liberals and faux “progressives” such as Jaffee and Torrey. Trump’s interest in all this is fighting curbs on the 2nd Amendment, by blaming mass violence on “mental patients” rather than guns per se. Maybe he could be educated about the role psychiatric drugs in such violent incidents.)
Also, I think it’s important not to see ourselves as a “disability group”; all we really have in common is having been labeled as “disabled.” How we see ourselves is vital, and it’s important to not have an internal definition of oneself as “disabled.”
I’ve been watching Bernie for awhile, and he continually spouts “mental health” propaganda. Hopefully he will be open to learning from us, but we have lots of “mental health” careerists blocking our way to such access and speaking “about us without us.” Survivors need to ditch the mh terminology now, not sometime in the distant unforeseeable future.
Anyway, absolutely — let’s take it further!
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Correct me, please, if I’m wrong, but I don’t think you know anything about either Andrew Yang, or Tulsi Gabbard. Look into them, then get back to us, please, ok? Thanks, oldhead.
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Not doing your job for you — be specific about something and I’ll respond.
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Bradford, if Tulsi had a chance . . .
Heck, I’m not even sure Bernie has a chance, with the old guard ready to block him at every primary.
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The Treatments cause Suicide and Homicide.
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Not that impressed with the CRPD. Australia is a signatory to that – and there are concerns that Australia is sterlising her disabled persons.
At least the CRPD is oversight and prints that in a report?
Yeah, not that impressed. I think it’s a bunch of academics making a paper that sounds good, countries “sign on” to it, and whitewash their sins. . .
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Amnesty International calls for Australian Prime Minister to raise the issue of human rights abuses in Indonesia? Might Amnesty International not call for Indonesia to raise the issue of Australias human rights abuses with the Prime Minister?
Not how it works. The sychophants at A.I. will point fingers at certain countries and ignore the abuses of others.
All part of the ‘whitewash’. Speaking of which, Australia criticizes Ghana for their ‘spiking’ of “patients” whilst neglecting to protect their own citizens (never mind “patients”).
i guess the drugging of “suspects” without their knowledge is considered ‘medicine’ these days, and when it all goes wrong, blame the victim. One guy who claims he was ‘spiked’ set fire to his two children and I know for a fact that the State is allowing this to be done and then slandering the victims and making the proof disappear.
Can’t have anyone knowing that the drugs are the cause of violence so conceal the facts from the public as it is not in their interest. And of course how can you debate that it is in your interest when you don’t know what is being concealed from you?
Trussssssst Ussssss
On one hand we have politicians saying ‘spiking’ is “abhorrent and extremely dangerous” and on the other we have Community Nurses (and the Minister for Health) authorising it without any prescribing rights as an aide to police (and public service) interrogations (combined with ‘acute stress reactions’, aka torture methods). Seems a little more than inconsistent. So who do you complain to about being subjected to torture? Because i’ve been looking for who for 9 years now and all i’ve found is that the State (if they investigate and find it to be true) simply drop you off at an Emergency Dept for a ‘hot shot’. Refoulment I believe this is called, but with no effective mechanism to investigate other than the people doing the torture investigating themselves, i don’t hold out much hope for anything other than an expansion of the program.
I have explained in detail what occurred and why it constitutes torture, only to have my complaint ignored. They can’t say it.s not torture as that would be proof that the State has neglected their duty under the Convention by not training public officers correctly in what does and does not constitute torture. So they say nothing, and that way no one can be held accountable. A bit like our Chief Psychiatrist not knowing what a burden of proof is then arbitrary detentions and torture can be overlooked with his dereliction of duty and criminal negligence. I’m sure his enabling act for human rights abuses will secure his place in history.
Breach after breach and not a soul will stand up and say “this is wrong”. I get it now how the National Socialists rolled into town.
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CRPD is not magic. It depends on how countries put it into practice.
Colombia and Peru have enacted serious reforms of legal capacity that abolish guardianship and substitute decision-making. Arguably in both those countries now the remaining laws that allow forced psychiatry are incompatible with that legislation and should be overturned. In Peru, much of the mental health legislation on forced treatment had been eliminated already and what remains is ’emergency’ forced treatment for 12 hours. In Colombia the reform included repeal of forced treatment provisions in one particular law but there may be others that remain; there is also a residual clause repealing any legislation that is contrary to the reform law and I have discussed with colleagues there how to make this argument using the CRPD. (Right now in Colombia they are fighting off constitutional challenges to the reform law that are brought by proponents of guardianship and substituted decision-making; this is all part of how it goes, revolution isn’t easy or fast and we have to change minds at every step along the way.)
In US law, one of the most promising initiatives is the Disability Integration Act, which Bernie Sanders also supports (many of the others do too, it’s become pretty standard). I’ll leave that for another time, maybe will blog about it if I haven’t done so already.
BTW, CRPD wasn’t written by academics. I was one of the people who had a hand in writing it, I was a recent law school graduate (though older than that would suggest) and a grass roots activist in the survivor movement. It is a good story to tell, and many people have suggested I write the narrative account of it as I often tell it in person. Here is one account that was written for a book but I withdrew it due to attempted censorship that went to the heart of my advocacy. https://www.ssrn.com/abstract=2326668
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Ms Minkowitz,
in the paper you link to you write:
“Many people with psychosocial disabilities are still placed under the civil death of plenary guardianship, or deprived of legal capacity in broad areas of life (typically, finances and personal care).”
Could you tell me how I might find out if I have been subjected to the ‘civil death’ you speak of? It seems that in my instance I was ‘flagged’ for death after making a complaint about being ‘spiked’ and having a knife and some cannabis planted on me to obtain a police referral to a Community Nurse, who could then ‘verbal’ me on Forms and have me treated for an illness I didn’t have.
Since making my complaint regarding this method of obtaining police referrals for mental health workers (necessary because of the protections in the law which mean a person needs to actually be a “patient” before they can be brutalised and call it ‘medicine’. If I had been “patient” there was no need for the planting of items on me for police to find and make immediate referral to the waiting whack team) it appears that my life has been very different, for example the police tell me they don’t have a copy of the criminal code in a large metro police station, and it feels like my right to make decisions on my own behalf has been hijacked without anyone informing me as to why. It is my firm belief that this has been done to conceal the original criminal offences that were committed against me by these mental health workers. It seems bizarre to me that the lawyers who claimed to be assisting me have to contact some unnamed person who claims to be my ‘guardian’ to ask if I have permission to complain about their criminal conduct towards me (ie the assault on me by ‘spiking’).
In what other areas do police call the alleged perpetrator and ask if the victim should be given the right to make complaint? And refuse to accept the documented proof of the crimes because the criminals don’t want the evidence to be admissible? To me, conspiring to stupefy and commit an indictable offence namely kidnapping are serious matters, and yet they disappear if police are deceived into the false belief that I was someones “patient” and they will actively assist these criminals)
I was no ones “patient” and yet found myself being subjected to the sort of ‘care’ they receive, and have now fallen prey to criminal frauds and slanderers. They even sent a set of fraudulent documents to the Mental Health Law Centre. I showed these to a Member of Parliament because I had no idea that hospitals had carte blanche to conceal their misconduct with criminal fraud. The police turning me away with the documented proof resulted in the hospital attempting to retrieve the documents I had with the assistance of my self appointed guardian. They were in no hurry to have proof of whether the claim was true or not, they simply wanted me to be someones “patient” so they could act in such a disgraceful manner and call it ‘care’. Such an ’emergency’ requires special powers to act before anyone notices the crimes you’re committing, and wow how effective is the slander they use? “oh the claim he has been spiked is a common delusion, we call that mental illness” while they hide the truth with fraudulent documents.
Anyway, direction on how I might go about finding out how these criminals have had me ‘flagged’ as sub human to conceal their crimes would be greatly appreciated. I’d like to go back to the good old days where I was speaking for myself and was a loved father/grandfather with a home.
I even had Shine lawyers tell me that my ‘doctor’ had authorised the ‘spiking’ but that they couldn’t tell me who my doctor was for reasons of confidentiality. Maybe it’s my illness but that seemed a bit bizarre. Especially considering as far as I was aware I didn’t have a doctor (all referrals had expired and thus i was a free man under our law).
Perhaps they were referring to the doctor who wrote a prescription for the drugs I was spiked with 12 hours after they were covertly administered, and 12 hours before he even knew of my existence? He writes prescriptions for ‘spikings’ post hoc? I see a problem there but ….. he’s the doctor. maybe he had a premonition that I was going to become his “patient” or something? Because his colleague made claims that he could read minds and travel through time and space to make the “observations” required by law before engaging police to transport me against my will to a cage they call a hospital.
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I’ll make an assumption that you recognise the methods of exploiting the “inherent in or incidental to lawful sanction” part of Article 1.1 of the Convention against the use of Torture.
By ‘spiking’ citizens and planting items for police to find and then obtaining “lawful sanction” to ‘treat’ citizens the whole community can now be subjected to the use of known torture methods and have no means of remedy as a result of this ‘hack’. With the dereliction of duty by our Chief Psychiatrist they have carte blanche and zero accountability with regards arbitrary detentions and thus the use of known torture methods (which we will now call ‘medicine’).
Good news, bad news. it;s going to be awfully useful for ex public officers to ensure their silence on matters of “National Security” such as we have seen lately with the use of corporate credit cards for prostitutes. Careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. Even our Treasurer had to flee the State for treatment for his bipolar lest he be ensnared in the State mental health system. The Premier calling for his privacy to be respected (in other words no questions while we do a cover up and a ‘sheep dip’).
And I can’t imagine it’s too difficult to figure out if a mug like me knows all about it.
From little things big things grow. Surely the progression from torturing a few vulnerable individuals to a wholesale torture program sanctioned by the State is not surprising? When the CRPD criticised Australias mental health laws as being “a violation of human rights” and that the “treatments may constitute torture” you would think that the new Act would provide better protections. Instead they invalidated the statement with the rewrite and made the situation a whole lot worse by making human rights abuses even easier. And will we have to wait another 20 years before a statement is made regarding the human rights abuses enabled by the current Act? Because the expansion of the ‘industry’ and the abuse of powers is difficult to deny. They have used and manipulated the situation to double down.
“Added protections” was the line being spouted by our Politicians about the new Act. What they didn’t tell anyone was that these protections were not for the community, and well if the community made the mistake of thinking they were being protected by these protections, caveat emptor. Truth is doctors were getting worried about being sued over ECTs on children, and so they received protections under the new Act and now our ECTS have increased by a whopping 194%, mostly kids.
Added protections. They need colostomy bags attached to their cheeks.
And now we have a Euthanasia Act with “more than a 100 protections”. It seems these people have found a model that works, simply tell the public they are being protected and they will go along with anything. because everyone wants to be protected right? Try exercising your rights to these protections though and well……. your in for a shock.
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You got this one wrong, JC and Boans. CRPD is a potentially revolutionary document. Don’t be stymied by the bureaucratic/legalistic tone. And read Tina’s response carefully. She’s on OUR side.
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Yes, read Tina’s response. Glad to know she was involved with it – that fact alone lifts it in my esteem.
But it’s still paper. Not the way it is run on the ground. I was excited to see Australia as a signatory. Then I realised – Boans’ story, and the sterilisation of the “disabled” is still happening here.
BUT at least with CRPD someone is talking about it. Without CRPD it would just be happening with no oversight at all. That’s my interpretation, anyway.
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“You got this one wrong, JC and Boans. CRPD is a potentially revolutionary document. Don’t be stymied by the bureaucratic/legalistic tone. And read Tina’s response carefully. She’s on OUR side.”
Never doubted that for a moment Oldhead. Its not unlike the government here making our aboriginal people into humans in 1968, a momentous act. If only we could get people to start acting like they were humans is the issue.
And of course the legalistic/bureaucratic tone is of course an issue for me. I’m sick of trying to explain what a burden of proof is to people who should have a thorough understanding of what that is. The Minister for Mental Health doesn’t know what a “suspect on reasonable grounds” legal protection is? The Chief Psychiatrist wants the law to read “suspect on grounds he believes to be reasonable” and of course if this is true then the torture and kidnapping I was subjected to goes away. The principle of the mental Health aw Centre doesn’t know what “suspect on reasonable grounds” actually does in law. Wow, imagine that, all that trouble to write laws that protect the public and then the people charged with protecting the public don’t know what they are.
Of course if they would just come out and state their case of Well sometimes we want to torture people and we need to overlook the law, i’m fine with that. Torture away people, just let the public that is forced to vote for you know this is where you stand, stop hiding behind your claims of plausible deniability and negligence. Of course these cowards won’t do that, they use thugs to do their dirty work and claim the moral high ground. Leave the children of others to die for rights they overlook when it comes to the community they have a duty to protect.
Tell me what good would this document be to our Minister, Chief Psychiatrist or the Principle of the mental Health Law Centre who haven’t the knowledge to pass a first year law course? And sure that sounds silly doesn’t it? Want to see the letter I have from them stating they do not like the protections of the law so they have removed them for the convenience of some organised criminals acting as doctors? “Suspect on reasonable grounds” becomes “suspect on grounds he believes reasonable”?
I’ve heard it said that this is a low bar set by the State. It is also the standard set for mandatory reporting of suspected crimes by public officers in s. 28 of the Corruption and Crime Commission Act. The crime of Procurring the apprehension or detention of a person not suffering from a Mental Illness carries a 2 year prison term, and yet the Minister and C.P. simply never suspect that this crime has occurred despite having the documented proof? We know I wasn’t suffering from a mental illness as I was ‘assessed’ on that day and cleared of all charges, no mental illness. And of course the Community Nurse lied to police to have them detain me by claiming I was a “mental patient” of his hospital, thus creating a false belief. And then there’s the conspiring to pervert the course of justice over the concealment of the drink spiking with benzos. and the list goes. Though it doesn’t matter it went through to the same people who deal with priests who have been molesting children so expect no action.
Its a burden that is low when applied to me, but beyond reach when applied to a public officer who is ‘verballing’ mental patients and having them unlawfully detained by police. Of course we know where the complaints about their crimes goes. A needle full of drugs and weeks of dribble therapy for the complainant, and if necessary fraudulent documents to lawyers who have a duty to protect their human rights. Then there is the conversations between the Minister and said lawyers regarding funding for the Mental Health Law Centre and how it might be best they drop this one. Just look the other way while we have an unintentional negative outcome with your client who you have failed in your duty to represent.
Start throwing people who have been tortured under a bus for what? Some political leverage? You just lost any leverage you had with the corruption. No wonder these abuses in our institutions abound, the people charged with protecting US have been compromised and are looking the other way. The odd one slips through yes but only to give the appearance of fairness. It allows the places like the MHLC to act as ‘venus fly traps’ to catch anyone who has evidence of criminal conduct to be ‘neutralised’.
Don’t believe me? Like to view the proof? Thought not.
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These “reasonable grounds” I speak of are even set out in the Mental Health Act under s.26. They are that a person
– has a mental illness (thus not me, as I was not a patient as defined in the Act)
– their illness is treatable –
– the person has refused tretment
-the least coercive method of getting the person treatment is used.
Basically. However, the way the Chief Psychiatrist has misrepresented the protections of s. 26 of the Act it may as well be thrown out along with s. 4 the defintion of what a mental illness is.
Suspect on reasonable grounds (see section 26) becomes suspect on grounds he believes to be reasonable, which has no standards set and could constitute tomato which could not be contested in a court. Thus he has enabled arbitrary detentions without even removing the protections of the MH Act. The good news about this is that the public actually thinks they are protected, while there are mental health workers running around drugging people without their knowledge and snatching them from their beds using police resources, and then any complaints they will be, according to the Operations manager who examined my complaint “fuking destroyed” if they don’t stop pointing out that what they did was actually kidnapping and torture. They are trying so hard to make it look like medicine and dont need the public noticing that its actually criminal conduct disguised as ‘medicine’.
These claims I am making are not even in contention. The letters are there along with some other ‘evidence’ which the police do not seem to want to take into their posession. the witnesses have been threatened, the fraudulent documents distributed to lawyers and the slandering of my person complete to the point where I have no friends left. they’re really good at this I must admit, and I understand why there is fear of these people, especially when I found out about the State giving them not only the power to kidnap and torture citizens, but that they can unintentionally negatively outcome them while police turn a blind eye. It saves all that stuff with ‘evidence’ and you know these guys went to some trouble to ‘verbal’ stat decs and spike people and then cause ‘acute stress reactions’.
They can’t even remove the bad apple because it would expose their negligence in regards the other victims who came after I had made my complaint. I mean they were told, and failed to listen because of the effectiveness of the system of slandering people they have created.
And I am still to this day being slandered by the Minister for Health who also doesn’t like the protections of the law, and prefers to give carte blanche and zero accountability to these organised criminals operating in our hospitals.
Nine years of torture and they continue with refoulment and not a soul will step up and say “this is wrong”. Still, i’m in good company, this sort of thing has been seen before if one cares to look at history.
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CRPD is more than “just paper,” in fact what Tina has done with CRPD over the years is probably a more significant and concrete accomplishment than anything else the so called “movement” has done in decades. In essence it provides a moral and human rights basis for eliminating forced psychiatry and sets the groundwork for doing so. Most important, it is an official U.N. document. It is not something whipped up by “progressive” shrinks and mh workers to put a smiley face on their schemes. As with many UN resolutions it does not carry the force of law, and its enforcement will rely on the degree of pressure exerted by those affected. But CRPD truly IS a significant step towards eliminating forced interventions, unlike myriad other statements of this sort proffered by the psych industry and its flunkies.
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I’m assuming last “reply” button gets me to the bottom of the list.
What needs to be realised Oldhead is that our Prime Minister has made it clear that we as a Nation need to separate ourselves from outside interference from the likes of the UN. It is precisely these sorts of documents that he does not want people discussing. We know what is needed here and if we want to torture, maim and kill our citizens keep your noses out of our business.
Now let me say that Australia has a history with apathy. They show protests on the nightly news here from different countries and the people here think it doesn’t happen here because we have nothing to protest. Well, there was that time the unions started organising and they State government passed 54(b) of the Criminal Code which made it unlawful for three or more people to congregate in a public place without a permit from the State. Not that it was enforced on anyone other than the unions, and it only took 11 years to have the High Court remove it as unconstitutional.
I sometimes ponder what may happen in the 11 years it takes to have these unconstitutional laws overturned. I mean in that instance they smashed the unions to pieces. But what about these Euthanasia Laws? What if some clever doctor or lets say Epidemiologist (like the guy who wrote the draft of our new Mental Health Act with a clause for steralizing children without parental consent included) found a bit of a loophole and ………. 11 years? I mean the Germans are notoriously efficient so they got a lot done in less than 11 years, but still…..
What bothers me is the total capitulation of people here who claim to be ‘advocates’ for those deemed ‘mentally ill’. It has at times literally made me sick to think about it.
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I note this statement from the Special Rapportuer for Torture
“Forced and non-consensual administration of psychiatric drugs, and in particular of neuroleptics, for the treatment of a mental condition needs to be closely scrutinized. Depending on the circumstances of the case, the suffering inflicted and the effects upon the individual’s health may constitute a form of torture or ill-treatment.”
Is this why our Chief Psychiatrist writes that the use of neuroleptics as a “chemical restraint” has no National Standard? In that way they are not being used as a form of ‘treatment’ and come under virtually no scrutiny?
Hey, just don’t call it ‘treatment’ and the statement is invalidated. And now they can inject anyone with any amount and are free from the sins of being a torturer. My “potential for violence with no clear intent or actual history” (thus this is the paranoid delusions of the doctor, not some ‘symptom’ I actually have) is seen as justification for injecting me with a large amount of chemicals which according to another doctor would have made me extremely ill. They spike you with benzos, then write down the effects of that as symptoms and use that to justify injecting you with neuroleptics then write down the effects of that and hey presto your a mental patient.
Loophole identified and staff informed. Its a chemical restraint not treatment. Much like they’re not killings but unintended negative outcomes.
I really don’t know how our politicians can stand up and make statements about the legal protections afforded the community with a straight face. Both the Mental Health Act and it’s ‘Sister Act’ the Euthanasia Act have zero protections for the public. They would know they are lying through their teeth and are fully aware that those with a duty to protect the public are being deliberately derelict in their duty.
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Though I must ask who, besides Marianne Williamson, is even opposed to increasing forced “treatment?” The political landscape is indeed grim from the point of view of our intentions here. Sanders might at least be able to listen to those who wish to educate him further. But my hopes are slim.
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You are correct Steve there is no hope no choice they are all the same pointless voting for any of them the entire system is broken best plan if no one at all voted what would happen then ..?? I would love to see that day
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I’d prefer to have “regular people” running for office rather than letting the ignorant and uninformed do the voting. There was an influx of new candidates in 2018, mostly women, who were NOT career politicians but just seemed tired of “business as usual.” But of course, we have to get rid of corporate money donations as point zero in any change plan, which is one thing Bernie has been very strong about.
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As with the psychiatric system the electoral system is not “broken,” but doing what it is meant to do, i.e. keep the corporatocracy calling the shots.
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Oldhead, Sanders is definitely the least of the choice of evils though.
I would advise homeless people to do whatever it takes to leave California. There are fewer homeless people in cities where I live–which means more community resources for those we do have. More HUD housing–and cheaper regular housing. More available jobs.
And no laws–like the one recently passed in California rendering it impossible for gig workers to make a living in most cases. You can earn a living as a freelancer where I live and rent an apartment for $500 a month.
Come to Indiana where the cost of living is only about 40% of what it is out West. Where even I could find a job. Where you actually have a chance to bootstrap your way out of financial dependence on the “mental illness” system!
BTW, I agree that the only disabilities the “mentally ill” suffer from are those inflicted on them by the “doctors.”
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Rachel, are you turning into a Democrat? 🙂
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She is herself and does not need to “turn ” into anything so derogatory
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Rachel knows that without prompting.
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A lot of homeless and ex-prison in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, and Kentucky are given a bus ticket to my former hometown, Bloomington, Indiana. I don’t know how good the shelters are, there, but it’s possible to get fed, and there are other social services in place in that little blue mecca amidst a sea of red…
As a result, the ex-con population in Bloomington has tripled or even quintupled. This may be why you don’t see homeless in your neighborhood.
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Because the ex-cons killed them?
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I would not be surprised if there is not a single person running for office who is willing enough and aware enough to oppose the psychiatric system.
I certainly haven’t run across any. But these people are not total fools. They have probably met dysfunctional people (if not some actual psychiatrists) and they know that “mental illness” is not just something someone made up, it’s something that really affects people. They just have been fooled into believing that psychiatry takes care of this, when there could be nothing further from the truth.
The “illness” equals “medical” problem is perhaps a weakness in our language. But I don’t think that most people who write on this subject, even the ones who post comments here, understand what the mind really is or what to do about it. Psychology doesn’t know.
My 65 years of living have resulted in no great respect for politics or politicians. Yet they are part of our society; we can’t just write them off. They get elected and they create laws that shape how we experience life. I am not very into being a voter these days, but if I were, I would want to somehow support those who are willing to speak up for basic human rights. I’m actually surprised that Bernie has taken this stand on this issue. Of course it doesn’t go far enough, but we are trying to restrain these people as best we can until we can find a way to replace them with saner beings. Right now, it’s an insane system. We have to do more than just fight it; we need to replace it with something saner, and that boils down to saner people.
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When Sanders comes to the conclusion that psychiatry needs to be abolished being as it is a major human rights crime of eugenics and sterilization dressed up as a medical discipline, that has with pharma corrupted everything it touches, harmed countless thousands, killed countless thousands, we might be getting some where.
We don’t want any bullcrap with the words ‘disability’ or ‘mental health’ nor any ‘policy’ we just want psychiatry to die.
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streetphotobeing, “8 million people die each year due to mental illness.”
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/directors/thomas-insel/blog/2015/mortality-and-mental-disorders.shtml
And that confession comes from the same head of NIMH, who confessed that none of the DSM “mental illnesses” were valid in 2013.
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/directors/thomas-insel/blog/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml
That means psychiatrists have murdered 400,000,000 people in the past 50 years. Which is an ongoing psychiatric holocaust, that dwarfs the Nazi psychiatric holocaust of the Jews back during WWII, since it is claimed that 6,000,000 Jews were killed in that psychiatric holocaust. 400,000,000 vs 6,000,000
Psychiatry does need to die, I agree.
Bernie is good at talking the right talking points.
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I really can’t blame psychiatry for literally everything, nor can I ignore all the accomplices in crime psychiatry has managed to develop in associated and allied professions. If It were the mental ill health fabrication system that needed to die, I would agree with you. The problem is that some people seem to conflate psychiatry with forced treatment and the two are not synonymous. In other words, get rid of the one, and you still haven’t gotten rid of the other. I think we should get rid of forced psychiatric treatment. I don’t think doing so will relieve the world of fools of any type. Prohibition of psychiatry? I’m really not a prohibition type person. I don’t see how you can get rid of the profession without resorting to some of the same heavy handed tactics used to enforce it’s will. I had rather see more people freed (i.e. liberated), in other words, than enslaved, and I question whether you would be doing so by changing places, in so far as brute force is concerned, with your en slaver (i.e. oppressor).
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I am totally agreeable with this goal.
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It’s amazing how patient people are in a state of psychosis. Isn’t it time for us to watch pictures about synesthesia and compare them with pictures about schizophrenia (in which I personally would add a young barefoot girl, walking on the grass in the hospital courtyard).
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People are looking for Alternatives (Irish Election)
Latest poll suggests Sinn Féin has overtaken FG and FF
http://www.rte.ie/news/election-2020/2020/0203/1112942-opinion-poll/
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It clearly states in Romans 13:
“Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.”
Whichever “peanut” get’s elected, remember what the bible says (a similar passage is also in Hebrews). Some of the passages shouldn’t be taken literally (and may well be included for self preservation), neither should the presidential elections be seen as somehow a democratic process.
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I like how in America they discuss the stuff they are going to do if they get elected.
Where I live for example the ‘new’ government got elected and then told us they needed to rush through some legislation to allow Euthanasia. Making killings a medical procedure wasn’t even mentioned by either party during the election campaign, just the new roads and trains they were going to build. Anyway, now we have the removal of peoples right to consent via their anasognosia, a Mental Health Act that provides “added protections” (who wouldn’t want that huh? Oh as long as they don’t mention the protections are for doctors to do ECTs on teenagers). Its much too sophisticated for us plebs to understand I guess.
And we HAVE to vote to create the appearance of a democracy. It gives legitimacy to a bunch of elite lapdogs doing the bidding of their masters who would otherwise not even meet the standards to have their deposit returned. No one would willlingly vote for these corrupt individuals we have. Don’t believe me, stop forcing us to vote.
Anyway, back to America. What is going to happen when this guy Sanders looses the election to Trump? Is that an admission that folk want more restrictive laws and bigger and better institutions? More AOTs? Because that may be a possible outcome of openly discussing giving human rights to people deemed unworthy.
Anyway Boans has been singing “I’d like to live in America” since reading this article 🙂
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I like how in America they discuss the stuff they are going to do if they get elected..
You’d probably love the way they lie too. 🙂
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Oh our lot don’t do that oldhead, they mislead, misrepresent, misdirect, misogyny, but never lie. See by telling us nothing then they can’t possibly be held to account, and that is without doubt the game. In fact, ive spent the whole day pondering that quote below from Saul of Tarsus. I realise he had to be careful how he worded things given the psychiatric system was in its infancy back then, treatments such as being fed to Lions, crucificion etc. But he does seem to have a bit to say about those who lie and stray from the laws sent down from this God we all seem to have so many disagreements about. Worth a read those letters of his to the Romans and Thessalonians.
And God sends upon them a great delusion that they might believe the Lie 🙂 Which lie would that be? The Lie
I’m with that great American Ben Franklin in that God heals, the doctor just collects the fees. Which funnily enough seem to be extremely large in these times where a Ben Franklin doesn’t stretch too far.
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It is truly a sad scene, isn’t it? And though I wish I could hearken back to the “good old days,” the more I learn, the more it seems clear that those days never existed. If the good days exist, they must exist in our futures, waiting for us to create them. So while we bemoan the past and the present, let us also create the beginnings of something better.
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“Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.”
Just beautiful. Worth going back to Romans 2 where it states;
“You therefore have no defence – you who sit in judgement, whoever you may be – for in judging your fellow man you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, are equally guilty”
Nowhere to run to Baby, nowhere to hide.
So does this mean that to stand up to the likes of Hitler is to stand against God?
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Nitpicking maybe, but when you say the “larger disability community” aren’t you implying we are part of that community? I sure don’t identify as disabled.
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Removed for moderation.
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So let me correct you, if I may:
oldhead should have wrote: “I sure don’t identify as disabled, other than when I do.”
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Anomie –
Iatrogenic disability is indeed different to “mental illness.”
And I think it is something that is overlooked. It is not a diagnosis offered to anyone. And yet – everyone I know who has been on the drugs for more than 10 years – and many of the people who have come off of them, as well – suffer from iatrogenic disability.
Some of us are able to struggle and get by – but many of us are not.
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I live in the same place as you boans and I completely absolutely support the WA voluntary assisted dying legislation enacted by our government by which we will ensure as per Terry Pratchett’s wish that everyone is entitled to free choice as in their right to “their life, their death their choice ” nothing whatsoever to do with the government killing you getting really bored with hearing it . Try watching someone you love suffer for weeks With terminal illness bleeding tears of blood . “If I was a dog or cat you would put me to sleep and out of pain” I will never forget those words so have some respect.
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Support away madmother13. If you honestly think i’m not supportive of “their life, their choice” then your completely wrong.
But I would once again point out that the legal protections afforded the community are being overlooked with regards the Mental Health Act, so why would I trust the State Government to observe the protections they boast about with regards their Euthanasia Act? Your ‘argument’ is one seen here regularly in that saying you do not agree with the ‘treatments’ being dished out by these so called doctors, means you would leave people to suffer in their times of need. The two are not necessarily related. Just because I don’t think ECT is a means to ‘cure’ depression, doesn’t mean I don’t recognise that people do become what we might call depressed. I’d just like some safeguards in place before people are snatched from their beds and have electricity applied to their skulls and call it medicine.
If someone is getting to the point that you describe (and I have seen it) then I would be looking at finding another doctor, not arguing that the doctor doesn’t have the tools he needs to do his job. Speak to Michael Gannon (Head of the AMA) who tells us that it simply requires a sophisticated knowledge of the law. He offered to explain it to Alydee Lancee on the front page of the newspapers.
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Grateful for this article, as it reaffirms my desire and need to vote for Bernie Sanders.
I am one who was forcibly injected with a two two week shot of prolixin which I was allergic to , and then sentenced to Norwich State Hospital in CT. for the crime of complaining about my forced treatment.
Only thing that was good of that time was that it taught me that psychiatrists are less trustworthy than the drug dealer down the street, but the drug dealer cannot sentence me to months of being locked up to take his drugs.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
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““The candidate’s engagement with #CripTheVote is a sign that disability politics has finally gone mainstream.””
smh… unfortunately, Bernie Sanders is this generations Ralph Nader. If anything, this is a clear sign that the opposite of his agenda will occur.
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I only want to point out that although many of us think of “illness” as meaning a medical problem, more broadly it only means “condition of being unhealthy.” There is no need to reduce the experience of “mental illness” to a fiction to make our point. Our central problem is that we need “mental treatments” that actually make people well and happy. Such treatments actually exist. Although nutrition is involved with some of them, medicine is involved with none of them. They exist, yet have largely been rejected by the mental health community in general and psychiatry in particular. And that’s the point. Psychiatry has turned its back on people with mental or emotional problems in favor of making a quick buck. It has always been that way with psychiatry. We have to find ways to limit their ability to harm until such time as we can replace them.
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I watched the debate. Sanders is a fucking disaster just like the rest. He totally shies away from acknowledging the carnage and violence wreaked by psychiatric drugging in the form of school shootings and — just like Trump — thinks the answer is targeting the psychiatrized, not outlawing SSRI’s and benzos for medical pretenses. The other element of the “progressive” answer is disarming the populace, as if the very existence of guns causes them to be used in such ways — if this is the case why haven’t we had a Department of Mass Violence since the country’s inception?
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Don’t get me wrong, I will vote for Sanders if he gets the nomination, and likely for no one if he doesn’t. That doesn’t blind me to his cluelessness regarding “mental health.”
Off topic, but I loved seeing Bloomberg get his ass kicked in the debate!
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Bernie Sanders at least has a moral compass and wants to hear what people have to say.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKf4y0Ki96I&feature=youtu.be
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I just dug out the documents to fully identify how they are getting around this use of neuroleptics for torturing people. They call it an “Agitation and Arousal Medication Chart”. So the aim would be for staff to bait the target and then begin injections based on the notion that what is being done is ‘chemically restraining’ patients. Thus it isn’t actually treatment, and therefore not subject to scrutiny and the amounts need not be limited as there is No National Standard. Imagine police being given handcuffs with razor blades on the inside that they can tighten anytime they like? Letter to the Minister for Police with a suggestion.
As stated above I had one doctor look at the list of chemicals I was to be injected with and state emphatically that it would have made me extremely ill (in the case of Tristan Dimer it nearly killed him). Of course that was the unstated aim of the chemical restraint that isn’t treatment. And with ‘evidence’ that the restraint method is effective???? Just keep on truckin Doc.
Let me say this, the Community Nurse who verballed me up was fully aware of this method of silencing any issues. Now if a low level like him is aware that all he needs to do is to ask Doc (not even a psychatrist) to do a ‘snow job’ for him, how far through the system does this actually go? I get it that this particular doctor was also a Catholic Priest and may have been using this silencing method over some years. Certainly it was another day at the office for him, having me remove my clothing when I had expressly denied him the right to physically examine me ( a right we both knew I had) but he had his thugs ready to restrain me and then his chemicals to make me sick so, what does one do but provide what he calls ‘implied consent’. She didn’t say ‘no’ so she meant ‘yes’. Well, that is if you ignore my clearly stating “you do not have the right to do this examination, and if you do it will constitute an assault”. The documents that the examination was done, proof that I was assaulted. Fortunate police can’t find their copy of the criminal code so he’s good to go with other assaults on anyone he wishes. Well, maybe 40 years something might be said but for now he is being enabled.
Shame that the hospitals don’t keep any data on these things really, a bit like the Euthanasia Act means no counting how many people access the legislation. No wonder this industry is attracting sadists at a phenomenal rate.
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