Coercion

Psychiatry would long since have gone the way of phrenology and mesmerism but for the financial support it receives from the pharmaceutical industry. But the truth has a way of trickling out. Here are five recent stories that buck the psychiatry-friendly stance that has characterized the mainstream media for at least the past 50 years.

In an article published by the Treatment Advocacy Center, The Shortage of Public Hospital Beds for Mentally Ill Persons, the authors (D. J. Jaffe and E. Fuller Torrey) present the idea that we have far too few hospital beds in this country, and because of that there has been a dramatic shift towards the diversion of people labeled with mental illness into prisons and homelessness. Their answer to this issue is that we should radically increase the amount of hospital beds and we should also dramatically increase our reliance on outpatient treatment in the form of mandated involuntary medication programs. As many people know here, the TAC has been highly influential politically and the authors of this paper have been instrumental in getting laws passed that mandate the outpatient use of psychiatric drugs for people who have been civilly committed.

Mental health nurse education supports institutional psychiatric practice in an insufficiently questioning way. Its formal curricula in universities are often undermined by the informal curricula of practice environments. As an institution, mental health nursing pays insufficient attention to both these issues because it is an arguably un-reflexive and rule-following discipline.

A review of the literature demonstrates that coercive practices lack empirical support and violate human rights.

For those of us who have been labeled by medical model psychiatry, it is frightening to watch the wolf of social prejudice being cloaked in the guise of mental health reform. The reality for many of us is that our lives and well-being have been profoundly affected – not only by the bad science and good marketing of pharmaceutical companies - but also by a wholesale refusal to listen. The result is a mental health system that many of us do not trust to operate in good faith. The Murphy bills add fuel to this fire.

Again and again I am told the ‘severely mentally ill’ are impaired and incapable, not quite human. I am told the “high utilizers” and “frequent flyers” burden services because they are different than the rest of us. And when I finally do meet the people carrying that terrible, stigmatizing label of schizophrenia, what do I find? I find – a human being. A human who responds to the same listening and curiosity that I, or anyone, responds to. I find a human who is above all terrified, absolutely terrified, by some horrible trauma we may not see or understand.

The year before I was born, E. Fuller Torrey published ‘The Death of Psychiatry.’ Therein, he repeatedly made statements that are disdainful of the psychiatric profession and its core concepts. He also asserted that known brain diseases were responsible for "no more than 5 percent of the people we refer to as mentally 'ill’.” As recently as 1991, he has been quoted as calling for the end of psychiatry. In October of that year he said, “Now, if you give the people with brain diseases to neurology and the rest to education, there's really no need for psychiatry." I want to ask: “Edwin Fuller Torrey, what happened to you?”

The disability community, including users and survivors of psychiatry, has sent a letter (drafted and circulated by WNUSP) to the UN Human Rights Committee urging that treaty monitoring body to follow the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in prohibiting all mental health detention. The signatories came from all regions of the world and include user/survivor organizations, disability organizations, other human rights organizations and individual experts. Since our letter is quite technical in pointing out the divergence of the Human Rights Committee's position from that of the CRPD, which is a higher standard of human rights protection, I would like to bring out some additional points that may be helpful in our advocacy.

Mahatma Gandhi said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” With Pennsylvania Republican Representative Tim Murphy currently trying to push his Murphy Bill (HR 3717) through Congress, the battle is clearly on. And now, we are in the fight of our lives.

From The Washington Post: In Massachusetts, which has one of the highest rates of opioid deaths nationally, addiction-related civil commitments have doubled in the past...

A CVS pharmacy recently sent me a standardized form by fax with a dire warning about one of my patients. The form was called “MEDICATION NONADHERENCE THERAPY ADVISORY” and it said: “A review of your patient’s retail and mail prescription history indicates that the patient has not obtained his or her first refill.”

What is informed consent? Informed consent obviously means if you are being given drugs you should know the common and potential adverse affects, drug interactions, risk of dependency and addiction, and counter-indications with other substances, health conditions or health concerns. This is the baseline of informed consent (which many people don't receive) but there is an incredible amount more that is included in what you deserve to know about any drug you are prescribed or medical system you are advised to subscribe to.

From The Boston Herald: Michelle Carter has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for repeatedly encouraging her high school boyfriend to kill himself via text...

From Fear and Loathing in Bioethics: A new fifteen-minute television documentary investigates New Zealand's "unfortunate experiment," a horrific case of nonconsensual experimentation at the National...

On January 6th, 2014, a teenager with a diagnosis of schizophrenia died in North Carolina. He was shot and killed by the police that his parents called for help after he wanted to fight his mother. It is said that he was "having an episode."

Professor Leigh Turner of the University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics blasts the Board of Regents for ignoring psychiatric research abuse.

In this piece for Medium, Jenny Karlsson makes the case for depathologizing shyness by removing "social anxiety disorder" from the DSM. "Shyness, under the label of,...

Dear Reader, I am reaching out to you in the hope that you will get this message in time to act! Even if you only have time to read the first two sentences of this blog, please click here for instructions on how you can win the hearts and minds of our federal legislators and help them understand why HR 2646 – proposed by Rep. Tim Murphy and called the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act – is a bad bill

From Harvard Public Health: Weight stigma, or prejudice toward people of size, can have a significant impact on both mental and physical health. On the other...

As a former practicing clinical psychologist, I find Congressman and psychologist Tim Murphy's actions deplorable, a disgrace to the profession, a violation of the ethical principles that guide psychologists in their duties, and an attempt to use his credentials as a psychologist to manipulate the public and Congress to believe obviously false statements. As a result of becoming increasingly concerned about Congressman Tim Murphy's false, public statements conflating mental illness with violence, I contacted the Pennsylvania Psychology Licensing Board and formally requested the implementation of a State ethics investigation of Representative Tim Murphy, Ph.D. I invite you to do the same by emailing the PA board at [email protected]

Last Thursday, the FDA agreed to review a “digital pill,” combining a sensor with the antipsychotic Abilify, in order to track patients’ compliance with drug treatment. Patients taking the tracker pill would also wear a patch, which would receive information and relay it to a mobile device, according to a brief report by BioPharmaDIVE.

I am a psychiatrist who believes that involuntary treatment is rarely effective in the long run but I am also a psychiatrist who sometimes forces people into hospitals against their will.

The Grand Jury indictment on January 21st of a Georgia policeman for the felony murder of Anthony Hill brought national attention to the intersection of Black Pride and Mad Pride. Hill, who was black and a veteran, was murdered in March 2015 while in an extreme state or “mental health crisis.” He was naked and clearly unarmed when shot by a white policeman. The indictment brings attention to the failure of mental health care system in America.

The Lancet Psychiatry published a study last week finding no benefit to locking up patients in mental health hospitals. Data on 145,000 patients found...

Audit of ECT usage, demographics, and adherence to guidelines and legislation raises concern over its continued use.