Tag: forced treatment

After decades of study, billions of dollars spent, and thousands of studies conducted, the failure to identify any genes for schizophrenia should definitively put to rest the notion that schizophrenia is a genetic disorder, according to E. Fuller Torrey.

In commentary for the Globe and Mail, Rob Wipond, MIA contributor and author of Your Consent Is Not Required: The Rise in Psychiatric Detentions,...

We interview Ole Andreas Underland, Director of the Hurdalsjøen Recovery Center in Norway which provides “medication-free” care for those who want such treatment or who want to taper from their psychiatric drugs. Ole Andreas explains why the success of this pioneering approach might threaten its future.

Born and raised in suburban Weathersfield, Connecticut, Jim Flannery was committed at four mental hospitals across the United States. There he received the best care available in the modern world…torture.

Anyone detained and then formally committed under Wisconsin’s civil mental health laws can initially be held and forcibly drugged for six long months. Yet, for years, not a single person has been able to appeal the six-month commitments in court.

Despite the UN’s strong stance against involuntary treatment, many countries continue to uphold legislation that encourages it.

Roxanne fled to Canada, and received formal refugee status, as a psychiatric refugee after being threatened with psychiatric imprisonment and forced drugging in Jamaica.

Spriestersbach was imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital for almost three years. The more he told the doctors that he was not Thomas Castleberry, the more they believed that he was psychotic.

The International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry petitions the American Psychological Association to condemn forced treatment as a human rights violation

So many of us young women believed the people who told us we needed them to make us healthy, who told us that without them, we’d be at the mercy of untameable "disease."

Peter Gøtzsche gives advice on what withdrawal symptoms may look like and explains the dangers of—and alternatives to—forced treatment.

Public mental health authorities continue to oppress persons with psychosocial conditions through a combination of punitive and discriminatory laws that are constructed with a "best interests" paradigm in mind and a medical model that pathologises difference and dissent. 

When I heard this morning that DJ Jaffe was dead my face went through its own mutation; a moment of surprise and wonderment followed by swift elation, and then, very quickly and now for so many hours afterward, an enraged, frustrated, quick-breathed grimace.

Neglect for personal autonomy is a pervasive attitude in the mental health system. No human being should be stripped of their dignity and autonomy, much less a vulnerable 74-year-old woman.

I am very concerned that Evan is about to be devoured by psychiatry's maw. Things could be different if Evan were able to hire an attorney or attorneys to deal with all of these different legal actions coming at him and otherwise protect his interests such as sue the trustees for their unconscionable actions, but as I have indicated, his trustees have cut off his money so he can't hire such an attorney or attorneys.

Both these cases are examples of people whose only symptoms were stating they were not mentally ill and did not need psychiatric medication. They both certainly had problems at some time in their lives, but the one size fits all system of commitment and mandatory medication did not fit their needs at all. Does having mental symptoms in the past mean that one should have a lifetime of mental health commitment and forced medications?

New study finds that people who felt they were coerced into being hospitalized were more likely to attempt suicide later.

MIA's Peter Simons interviews David Cohen, PhD, on his path to researching mental health, coercive practices, and discontinuation from psychiatric drugs.

In all countries, we need to work for ensuring that forced medication for psychiatric patients is forbidden by law. Virtually all countries, apart from the US, have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which prohibits forced drugging, but not a single country has done anything.

Debate ensues as scholars and policymakers discuss how to bring a rights-based approach to mental health policy.

Dr. Dainius Pūras argues that the status quo in mental health treatment is no longer acceptable and demands political action to promote human rights.

55 Steps is a new film based on a true story that centers around two women: Collette, a lawyer with a tendency to work long hours, and Eleanor, who has spent far too much time incarcerated in hospitals. Over the course of five years, Collette fights for Eleanor’s right to choose whether or not she takes psychiatric drugs. This film is imperfect, but its importance can’t be ignored.

From InDaily: "In the early 2000s when I was detained in a psychiatric hospital I was treated against my will, I was even secluded....

From ShortList: "'I asked to go out for a cigarette but was told that if I tried to leave I would be sectioned against...

From The Sacramento Bee: "I don’t know what it’s like to be an immigrant kid, to travel alone to an unfamiliar country or be...