Involuntary Treatment

Spotlight on Institutional Psychiatry is a response by psychiatric survivors and allies to Operating in Darkness, a scathing 2017 report on British Columbia’s Mental Health Act Detention System. We hope that professionals will take note of the devastating effects of forced psychiatric treatment and be moved to speak out, and, above all, that survivors will feel encouraged and inspired by our efforts.

Differences in patient-centric versus service-centric measures make quantifying low-value care difficult.

Our children are not safe. Not because of terrorists, but because it is becoming dangerous to advocate for their medical care without fear of losing them. A new charge, "Medical Child Abuse,” is now used by hospitals to remove inconvenient parents from the role of advocating for their children.

To this day I do not know how I found my way back. I think it might’ve had something to do with willpower, as I was NOT going to lose myself. I was NOT going to end up like those people who were living indefinitely in the hospital—those “chronic schizophrenics”, as they say. I was going to find my way back, back to myself.

From The Independent: The notion of choice is increasingly being used to discourage suicidal people from seeking help. Many people's suicidal thoughts and actions are...

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.

Mad In America bloggers, and everyone who is interested, you are cordially invited to participate in a Campaign to Support the CRPD Absolute Prohibition of Commitment and Forced Treatment. The requested action is to write a blog post or contribute artwork, relevant to the purpose of the campaign, i.e. discussing and supporting the absolute prohibition that is promulgated under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).  Posts should be ready for March 29, 2016, the opening day of the 15th session of the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Lise Zumwalt’s new documentary “CRAZY” follows Eric, a young adult diagnosed with serious mental illness, and his father, who together want to change Eric’s treatment. However, the county does not want to give them a say.

A bottom-up approach to understanding the history of asylums allows us to learn from past successes and failures in the mental health system.

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.

Recently, the Murphy Bill in the United States Congress has resurfaced as a tangible threat to the civil liberties of individuals labelled "seriously mentally ill." As many others might relate, my reaction was one of rage, sadness, and utter bafflement. Yet, here we are. Having defeated the bill once, it is back like herpes. After my frustration and anger dissipated a bit, I pondered this and was hit with a "duh" moment. Politics is not about facts; politics is about power, money, and playing on the emotions of society.

Professional psychologists designed most of the main techniques and strategies and played ongoing, active, central roles in the CIA's torture of people it was...

The researchers find that the drug effects for reducing psychosis are small and that treatment failure and severe side effects are common.

-Motherboard reports on an implantable chip that can hold hundreds of doses of drugs and be activated by remote control.

A new study published in Lancet Psychiatry challenges the common practice of locking psychiatric wards to prevent patients from attempting suicide or leaving against...

Until recently the history of psychiatry was a neglected backwater whose murky depths were explored largely by psychiatrist. The impression conveyed by books such as Tuke’s Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles, Macalpine and Hunter's Three Hundred Years of Psychiatry: 1535 - 1860, Berrios and Freemen's 150 Years of British Psychiatry 1841 - 1991, or Fuller Torrey and Miller's The Invisible Plague, is one that sees psychiatry and modern systems of mental health care as the inevitable outcome of progress through scientific thought, a (white European male-led) narrative from darkness and ignorance to enlightenment and knowledge.

The National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery is calling upon all people of like minds, who care about individuals who need mental health services, to ACT. It is urgent. Please call your representative in the House of Representatives to vigorously oppose HR 2646 on Tuesday, July 5, 2016. And, call your Senator to insist that the Senate reject any amendments or changes to mental health legislation from the House by Friday, July 8, 2016. For more information about this Call to Action, please click here.

From The Sydney Morning Herald: A new review found that mental health patients' decision-making capacity is very rarely considered in court rulings on involuntary treatment. "The...

In this interview for ABC Australia, leading psychology professor Peter Kinderman discusses why we need alternative ways of understanding and supporting people in distress that take...

Rob Wipond reports on a constitutional challenge in British Columbia against a key component of the province’s Mental Health Act. “This case isn’t arguing...

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

I have long been concerned with the way society responds to people who come back from war. Veterans are routinely funneled into psychiatry’s grasp. Over the decades, some people who fought in wars have shared with me their experiences of being psychiatrized upon return from war. Sometimes these experiences included veterans being stripped of their second amendment rights, and a host of other constitutional, civil, and human rights violations as they began to be forced into complying with psychiatric regimens, and on several occasions this included veterans being subjected to electroshock.

From OZY: The suicide rate for former psychiatric inpatients is 44 times higher than that of the general population. According to Australian psychiatrist and professor Christopher Ryan,...

On June 13, 2014, United States District Court Judge Carol E. Jackson issued a Memorandum and Order decision holding that a former psychiatric inmate was allowed to bring federal civil rights claims under 42 U.S.C. §1983 against hospital personnel when the hospital continued to hold her against her will after authorization had expired. In her Memorandum and Order decision, Judge Jackson took Ms. Pierce's rights seriously and, reading through it, one gets a sense that the court was offended by the cavalier attitude of hospital personnel towards their patients' rights. It is clear that if the Court's ruling is upheld, it can result in dramatic improvement in the way people are treated in Missouri psychiatric hospitals.

From The Boston Globe: The state of Massachusetts has permanently closed the Westwood Lodge psychiatric hospital due to issues of patient safety, quality of care,...