A long-time client whom I’ll call Jack has been locked up at DSH, née Elgin Mental Health Center, for about 30 years. He did commit a murder, but he was found “Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity” by the court and sold into the forensic psychiatric slave system rather than sentenced to prison.
Fairly early on, Jack stopped taking psychiatric “medication”, and it has been many years now since he behaved badly, in any scary way or any way that’s more than a slight nuisance, at DSH. He’s a very bright man, actually. He could almost certainly work, contribute and be happy if he were manumitted. Unfortunately, at the moment Richard Malis is his psychiatrist.
Malis has seen a court order which ordered DSH to create a treatment plan for Jack that does not require psychiatric drugs. He violates that court order every month, by absolutely refusing to consider that Jack might not need drugs. He maliciously invents “delusions” which Jack supposedly has, to argue that this patient is psychotic and “needs” the drugs that he hates and Malis loves, and that everyone knows Jack doesn’t need and will never take.
Jack never voices those “delusions” that Malis accuses him of having. He just refuses to discuss his beliefs with Malis. Jack could easily disavow or clarify the beliefs which Malis says (but of course, can never prove) are “delusional”. However, Malis would almost certainly only try to incriminate Jack by any discussion, so I have advised him as his legal counsel that it’s probably wise to refuse all conversation with the plantation overseer. I think he mostly follows my advice.
The trouble is, Malis is malicious. Jack has glaucoma, and should see an opthamalogist regularly to test the pressure in his eyes and make sure the glaucoma medicine is working. He hates having to go to a medical facility in handcuffs, which are only required for a trip to the doctor because Malis has pulled his passes out of pure retribution for Jack’s getting better without psychiatric “medicine”. The life-long brain disease, “schizophrenia”, is a central and vital article of faith in psychiatry. Anyone who gets better, especially without drugs, insults Malis’ religion.
Thus Jack does not get the proper standard of care for glaucoma. He refuses to be transported in handcuffs and leg irons to the opthamalogy clinic, because it’s demeaning and counter-productive for his medical care. Doctors and nurses are not pleased to have a patient arrive in restraints with guards; it makes all their other patients nervous for one thing, and it prejudices clinicians against the apparent “dangerous criminal”.
I recently attended a monthly staffing for Jack. I commented in the presence of Tom Zubik, the current forensic director of DSH, that there just has to be some way to get Jack his opthamalogical care. Tom was concerned. He thinks it would be very inconvenient and embarrassing if Jack’s eyeball explodes, or if he ends up with a detached retina, because DSH is unable to get him to the clinic regularly. People might notice... that DSH sucks as a supposed “hospital”, and that in fact this is a slave plantation.
There’s nothing more powerful as a symbol or demonstration of slavery than a black man in chains. Malis is an idiot in his malice. And guess what, tomorrow is Juneteenth!
Monday, June 18, 2018
Sunday, April 22, 2018
To all DSH staff
Most of you just do your jobs, collect your pay and try to stay out of trouble. There’s something noble about that, especially in the context of working for the state. It harkens back a bit, to the Greatest Generation of Americans who boarded ships at age nineteen or twenty in 1942, went overseas and fought the war just because they were told it was their job.
Then in 1946, they were suddenly told their new job was to come home, make money and have babies. So they followed those orders and did that, too.
My father-in-law spoke of how everyone who was over there knew MacArthur was full of shit with his “I have returned!” moment, in front of all the cameras in the Philippines. Bob also remembered landing in a Japanese village a few days after the Nagasaki bomb, and while out in his Jeep scouting for fuel, arriving at the perimeter of what had recently been a city but was all dust in a flash. His cousins saw things just as bad in Europe. They all had good reason for utter, life-long cynicism and chronic depression.
I knew these men when they were fighting over the check for dinner in suburban restaurants, with their families there laughing at them. They’re all gone now, but I remember them as wonderful, noble people. They never wanted a better compliment than simply that they did their jobs.
Maybe some of you guys can imagine that as you respond to another code white, or check your computer for correct authorization or change the wording of your clinical note at the request of a superior, you are doing a job as right and as important as driving a Higgins boat full of terrified men toward a beach, or straining to see the approaching Panzers through a dark, frozen forest.
But I rather doubt that. Maybe it would be a symptom of major mental illness anyway, don’t tell Malis, he’ll drug you for sure.
When you see something that you know is wrong, somebody lying, somebody covering up, abusing patients, failing and refusing to help, you have to report it. That’s your job. It might seem hard and dangerous once in awhile, but it’s not as bad as being in a cold foxhole or almost to a beach.
It’s a funny thing, too, how putting all your attention and all your effort into staying out of trouble can make you a real magnet for bullets.
Psychiatria delenda est!
Then in 1946, they were suddenly told their new job was to come home, make money and have babies. So they followed those orders and did that, too.
My father-in-law spoke of how everyone who was over there knew MacArthur was full of shit with his “I have returned!” moment, in front of all the cameras in the Philippines. Bob also remembered landing in a Japanese village a few days after the Nagasaki bomb, and while out in his Jeep scouting for fuel, arriving at the perimeter of what had recently been a city but was all dust in a flash. His cousins saw things just as bad in Europe. They all had good reason for utter, life-long cynicism and chronic depression.
I knew these men when they were fighting over the check for dinner in suburban restaurants, with their families there laughing at them. They’re all gone now, but I remember them as wonderful, noble people. They never wanted a better compliment than simply that they did their jobs.
Maybe some of you guys can imagine that as you respond to another code white, or check your computer for correct authorization or change the wording of your clinical note at the request of a superior, you are doing a job as right and as important as driving a Higgins boat full of terrified men toward a beach, or straining to see the approaching Panzers through a dark, frozen forest.
But I rather doubt that. Maybe it would be a symptom of major mental illness anyway, don’t tell Malis, he’ll drug you for sure.
When you see something that you know is wrong, somebody lying, somebody covering up, abusing patients, failing and refusing to help, you have to report it. That’s your job. It might seem hard and dangerous once in awhile, but it’s not as bad as being in a cold foxhole or almost to a beach.
It’s a funny thing, too, how putting all your attention and all your effort into staying out of trouble can make you a real magnet for bullets.
Psychiatria delenda est!
Thursday, April 12, 2018
An Offer for James Patrick Corcoran
My client John had a meeting today, with his treatment team and “administration” (the quotation marks are sarcastic, indicating that this is a dubiously defined entity used to deflect and disguise responsibility of specific individuals). Attendees from the clinical team included Psychiatrist Vikranjit Gill, Social Worker Virginia Mejia, and Psychologist Elias Pelacio; attending from “administration” were James Patrick Corcoran, Tom Zubik, and one or two others.
This was a meeting originally scheduled for a week earlier, to clarify “administration concerns” about a positive referral packet completed by the treatment team, for John to live at a particular community treatment facility which is already willing to accept him. Very few such facilities are willing to accept people who don’t take psychiatric medications, by the way; but this particular guy has been psychiatrically stable for a period of some years without any drugs. His criminal court judge ordered expanded privileges for him over the top of disagreement from the court’s own “independent evaluators” on the infamous tenth floor at 26th & California.
It seems that the only thing stopping a John’s conditional release is “administration concerns”. The clinical guys and the court have come to believe he’s no longer mentally ill and dangerous. But the meeting explicitly scheduled to clarify “administration concerns” didn’t. Instead, John was presented with what was actually called an offer, as if in negotiation. The facility (DSH) would support John’s release only if he: 1. attends three or four demeaning and childish “treatment groups” every day; 2. spends six months in a useless substance abuse program; 3. spends another six to twelve months on a different unit or in a facility nominally classified as low security; 4. spends a further six months in a coed treatment unit.
In other words, this “offer” from “administration” was an arbitrary sentence of an additional year and a half or two years of stricter confinement, for an individual who is not mentally ill and dangerous, and who is manifestly ready to be released. Why? It’s insane.
James Patrick Corcoran has it in for John because John doesn’t take psychiatric drugs, and yet he’s no longer “mentally ill” and he’s getting better.
I suggest the following offer in response, in the style of legendary Scottish warrior William Wallace.
If James Patrick Corcoran resigns immediately, repays every dollar he ever got at taxpayer expense, and personally apologizes to John and to each and every other so-called “patient” at DSH, in writing, for the fraud, constitutional rights violations, dehumanization, medical battery, and crimes against humanity, that he has spent his disgusting career committing under sickly ironic guises of “help” and “community protection”, and if he publishes every once of those apology letters on line; then and only then John and I, and various other DSH slaves who will soon be free, may not bother to spend the rest of our lives suing him and prosecuting him, and exposing his cruelty and lies.
Otherwise, Corcoran has no future. He’ll be like a Third Reich fugitive, with Mossad and Simon Wiesenthal always hot on his heels.
And of course, there’s one other point in this offer.... Corcoran must call the entire DSH staff together in the parking lot outside the Forensic Program Building, and in front of them he must put his head between his legs and kiss his own ass.
Psychiatria delenda est!
This was a meeting originally scheduled for a week earlier, to clarify “administration concerns” about a positive referral packet completed by the treatment team, for John to live at a particular community treatment facility which is already willing to accept him. Very few such facilities are willing to accept people who don’t take psychiatric medications, by the way; but this particular guy has been psychiatrically stable for a period of some years without any drugs. His criminal court judge ordered expanded privileges for him over the top of disagreement from the court’s own “independent evaluators” on the infamous tenth floor at 26th & California.
It seems that the only thing stopping a John’s conditional release is “administration concerns”. The clinical guys and the court have come to believe he’s no longer mentally ill and dangerous. But the meeting explicitly scheduled to clarify “administration concerns” didn’t. Instead, John was presented with what was actually called an offer, as if in negotiation. The facility (DSH) would support John’s release only if he: 1. attends three or four demeaning and childish “treatment groups” every day; 2. spends six months in a useless substance abuse program; 3. spends another six to twelve months on a different unit or in a facility nominally classified as low security; 4. spends a further six months in a coed treatment unit.
In other words, this “offer” from “administration” was an arbitrary sentence of an additional year and a half or two years of stricter confinement, for an individual who is not mentally ill and dangerous, and who is manifestly ready to be released. Why? It’s insane.
James Patrick Corcoran has it in for John because John doesn’t take psychiatric drugs, and yet he’s no longer “mentally ill” and he’s getting better.
I suggest the following offer in response, in the style of legendary Scottish warrior William Wallace.
If James Patrick Corcoran resigns immediately, repays every dollar he ever got at taxpayer expense, and personally apologizes to John and to each and every other so-called “patient” at DSH, in writing, for the fraud, constitutional rights violations, dehumanization, medical battery, and crimes against humanity, that he has spent his disgusting career committing under sickly ironic guises of “help” and “community protection”, and if he publishes every once of those apology letters on line; then and only then John and I, and various other DSH slaves who will soon be free, may not bother to spend the rest of our lives suing him and prosecuting him, and exposing his cruelty and lies.
Otherwise, Corcoran has no future. He’ll be like a Third Reich fugitive, with Mossad and Simon Wiesenthal always hot on his heels.
And of course, there’s one other point in this offer.... Corcoran must call the entire DSH staff together in the parking lot outside the Forensic Program Building, and in front of them he must put his head between his legs and kiss his own ass.
Psychiatria delenda est!
Friday, March 30, 2018
Oh goody, a new slave!
“Marilyn Hartman, 66, will be transferred from Cook County Jail to a state mental health facility (DSH) in hopes that with treatment she will be able to stand trial within a year.”
That is today’s euphemistic rendition by the Chicago Tribune, of a finding by Cook County judge Maura Slattery Boyle that a habitual criminal defendant should not be tried and punished for what she did, but rather, enslaved. Thus, Marilyn Hartman will either be “reformed” with psychiatric drugging, or just as likely, she will die at DSH.
I have no idea whether Hartman has a long “mental health” history or none at all. If she has already been drugged by psychiatrists for some large portion of her life, she will probably knuckle under again, learn to lie just a little bit better to herself and her masters, and get “treated” (drugged and dehumanized into submission) until she dies.
But it strikes me that she might want to continue to commit the same crimes she’s currently charged with, and she may refuse to believe she’s only doing it because of some “illness” which people have invented so they can pretend they’re not punishing her. In that case, I may even help her refuse psychiatry.
But it’s interesting to me that, at least in the Trib article, Hartman’s “illness” is never named. She is variously described as manifesting a psychotic thought process (is that actually an identified, specifically describable process of thinking?), as showing signs of a major psychotic illness (which one? ...there are after all many listed and meticulously described in the APA’s DSM), as exhibiting pervasive and maladaptive behaviors and misinterpretations of the world, and as lacking ability to recognize her disposition (whatever the hell that means) and how she can interact with people.
Two “experts” have “examined” and “tested” Hartman to conclude that she does not understand her legal situation and/or is unable to assist legal counsel in her own defense. I know these two guys, I’ve cross examined both of them on several occasions. Christopher Cooper and Mathew Marcos work for pretty good salaries on the taxpayer’s dime, at Forensic Clinical Services, the Circuit Court’s stable of “doctors” up on the tenth floor at 26th and California. They have no other job than to assist the court in disposing of people whom it doesn’t feel like either prosecuting or releasing.
The 10th floor guys regularly perjure themselves by reciting orthodox psychiatric propaganda under oath. Markos in particular, as the Director of Forensic Clinical Services, has stated categorically that schizophrenia is proven brain pathology that can only be treated with lifelong antipsychotic drugs. Anyone with an M.D. degree and a license to practice medicine knows better, or should. Markos lies under oath, period. Cooper testifies with total, charismatic certainty about things he can’t possibly see or objectively test. But judges believe these guys, and we pay for them.
What we buy for our tax money in this case, is a new slave, Marilyn Hartman. She will shortly arrive on F or H Unit, at DSH. She’ll be told by such valuable public employees/plantation overseers as Social Worker Lavadna Wheeler, Security Therapy Aide Tiffany Bates, nurse Patti Passilla, and psychiatrist Dr. Shanghee Kim-Ansbro, that she must understand she only gets on planes illegally because of her “illness”. The guys on the 10th floor and the Trib writer were unwilling to name that mental disease, but F or H Unit staff soon will, safely out of the public eye. I’ll take a guess: “delusional disorder, persecutory type” or “schizophrenia”. It doesn’t matter, it’s not a medical diagnosis in any scientific sense, it’s the excuse for coercive drugging.
Our new slave will cost us about $800/day as long as she’s at DSH. It seems to me it would be a better idea to convince her that unless she stops getting on planes to London without a ticket, she’ll spend the rest of her life in prison, at about $150/day.
There are people whom society must control. We just pay $650/day too much to pretend we’re “helping”.
Psychiatria delenda est!
That is today’s euphemistic rendition by the Chicago Tribune, of a finding by Cook County judge Maura Slattery Boyle that a habitual criminal defendant should not be tried and punished for what she did, but rather, enslaved. Thus, Marilyn Hartman will either be “reformed” with psychiatric drugging, or just as likely, she will die at DSH.
I have no idea whether Hartman has a long “mental health” history or none at all. If she has already been drugged by psychiatrists for some large portion of her life, she will probably knuckle under again, learn to lie just a little bit better to herself and her masters, and get “treated” (drugged and dehumanized into submission) until she dies.
But it strikes me that she might want to continue to commit the same crimes she’s currently charged with, and she may refuse to believe she’s only doing it because of some “illness” which people have invented so they can pretend they’re not punishing her. In that case, I may even help her refuse psychiatry.
But it’s interesting to me that, at least in the Trib article, Hartman’s “illness” is never named. She is variously described as manifesting a psychotic thought process (is that actually an identified, specifically describable process of thinking?), as showing signs of a major psychotic illness (which one? ...there are after all many listed and meticulously described in the APA’s DSM), as exhibiting pervasive and maladaptive behaviors and misinterpretations of the world, and as lacking ability to recognize her disposition (whatever the hell that means) and how she can interact with people.
Two “experts” have “examined” and “tested” Hartman to conclude that she does not understand her legal situation and/or is unable to assist legal counsel in her own defense. I know these two guys, I’ve cross examined both of them on several occasions. Christopher Cooper and Mathew Marcos work for pretty good salaries on the taxpayer’s dime, at Forensic Clinical Services, the Circuit Court’s stable of “doctors” up on the tenth floor at 26th and California. They have no other job than to assist the court in disposing of people whom it doesn’t feel like either prosecuting or releasing.
The 10th floor guys regularly perjure themselves by reciting orthodox psychiatric propaganda under oath. Markos in particular, as the Director of Forensic Clinical Services, has stated categorically that schizophrenia is proven brain pathology that can only be treated with lifelong antipsychotic drugs. Anyone with an M.D. degree and a license to practice medicine knows better, or should. Markos lies under oath, period. Cooper testifies with total, charismatic certainty about things he can’t possibly see or objectively test. But judges believe these guys, and we pay for them.
What we buy for our tax money in this case, is a new slave, Marilyn Hartman. She will shortly arrive on F or H Unit, at DSH. She’ll be told by such valuable public employees/plantation overseers as Social Worker Lavadna Wheeler, Security Therapy Aide Tiffany Bates, nurse Patti Passilla, and psychiatrist Dr. Shanghee Kim-Ansbro, that she must understand she only gets on planes illegally because of her “illness”. The guys on the 10th floor and the Trib writer were unwilling to name that mental disease, but F or H Unit staff soon will, safely out of the public eye. I’ll take a guess: “delusional disorder, persecutory type” or “schizophrenia”. It doesn’t matter, it’s not a medical diagnosis in any scientific sense, it’s the excuse for coercive drugging.
Our new slave will cost us about $800/day as long as she’s at DSH. It seems to me it would be a better idea to convince her that unless she stops getting on planes to London without a ticket, she’ll spend the rest of her life in prison, at about $150/day.
There are people whom society must control. We just pay $650/day too much to pretend we’re “helping”.
Psychiatria delenda est!
Monday, March 26, 2018
“SCHIZOPHRENIA”
INTRODUCTION/EXPLANATION
March 25, 2018
Following are my own 20 questions/comments about the web page of the National Institute of Mental Health discussing “Schizophrenia”.
What I have done is simply download the text of NIMH’s page, and then insert my own comments or questions (in the red typeface) at those points when they occur. My words turned out to be more voluminous than the original article, so the NIMH page is pretty broken up. But anyone who cares to check against the current website will see that I didn’t alter or omit anything the government wrote.
This little project was inspired by a report that clinical staff on H Unit at DSH (Elgin Mental Health Center) recently printed out this NIMH Schizophrenia page and distributed it to all patients. I suspect that they will not allow the kinds of questions and comments that I have written here, because their purpose, like that of the plantation overseer, is to coerce compliance. However, I believe that open discussion or debate is necessary to the concept of informed consent. Informed consent is vital under the law. Psychiatric “patients” are human beings with rights.
I have not documented scientific facts to justify, or provided citations for, my comments. I can probably do that quite thoroughly, if anyone wants me to. I am simply trying to counter the propaganda of the “forensic mental health” plantation in a timely enough manner to get people thinking. Please give me any feedback you can.
Yours truly,
S. Randolph Kretchmar
Law Offices of Kretchmar & Cecala, P.C.
847-370-5410 (mobile)
Refusingpsychiatry.com
_________________________________________________________________________________
Schizophrenia
Overview
Schizophrenia is a chronic and severe mental disorder
1. This term, mental disorder, has almost entirely replaced the earlier characterizations, mental illness and mental disease. The point remains that all human problems in thinking, feeling and behaving should be labeled as discrete entities which doctors either can cure or should attempt to cure. It’s the medical model. Western civilization has obtained immense benefit from medical science over the past 150 years. However, human history over several thousand years contains a much larger perspective. Just because physical manipulation of bodily structures and processes has been “hot” for a century and a half, that doesn’t imply any necessary conclusion that it’s a sure route to ultimate happiness and salvation. In fact, the change of terms from mental illness/disease to mental disorder is a bit of a tip-off that the medical model is in difficulty. These problems may not be “curable” by doctors after all. Psychiatrists now actually admit that they do not cure anything. They imply that perhaps soon they will, but that’s gotten very old.
… that affects how a person thinks, feels, and behaves. People with schizophrenia
2. The phrase, people with schizophrenia, once again, implies that this is some discrete entity which can be identified or isolated for a person to have (i.e., you don’t have something that you are). But there is no such thing, or at least it has not been discovered despite more than a century of scientific search for it. Schizophrenia is an extremely variable pattern of behaviors. I have repeatedly gotten psychiatrists to admit under oath that any two individuals who both supposedly have schizophrenia may have no “symptoms” in common, whatsoever. What is schizophrenia, as a disease then? No one knows.
… may seem like they have lost touch with reality. Although schizophrenia is not as common as other mental disorders, the symptoms
3. Technically, the word symptoms just means subjective reports or complaints. In medicine, signs is the term to describe objectively observed phenomena that can be tested for like physical lesions, sugar levels in the blood or urine, EKG results, x-rays, etc. Psychiatrists are trained medical doctors and should distinguish between symptoms and signs in their “diagnosis”. They know the difference, and they know it is important, but they obscure it purposefully.
… can be very disabling.
Signs and Symptoms
Symptoms
(Please see #3 above.)
… of schizophrenia usually start between ages 16 and 30. In rare cases, children have
(Please see #2 above.)
… schizophrenia too.
The symptoms
(See #3 above.)
… of schizophrenia fall into three categories: positive, negative, and cognitive.
Positive symptoms:
(#3)
… “Positive” symptoms
(#3)
… are psychotic behaviors
4. Behaviors are in fact the entire issue. If a person behaves badly enough, or violently or strangely enough to frighten others around him, then sooner or later people will do something to him to make him stop. And the only way anyone knows if a person is hallucinating or delusional is by consulting their behavior (including speech, writing or other communication, which is behavior). We do not know what anyone is thinking or feeling unless they tell us, or show us by their behavior. And that will always be, substantially, an interpretation by someone.
… not generally seen in healthy
5. Don’t forget we’re talking about behaviors. If we say they are “healthy” or “unhealthy” either way, it’s only in a metaphorical sense. There’s no known disease!
… people. People with positive symptoms
(#3)
… may “lose touch” with some aspects of reality. Symptoms
(#3)
… include:
• Hallucinations
• Delusions
• Thought disorders (unusual or dysfunctional ways of thinking)
6. Hallucinations, delusions and unusual or dysfunctional ways of thinking can not be seen directly. Hence, they are often completely a matter of opinion, and always a subjective evaluation to some degree. We don’t actually know what a person believes, but only what he says. Maybe a delusion or hallucination is simply a lie. Can a psychiatrist really tell the difference?
• Movement disorders (agitated body movements)
7. To some extent this, unlike hallucinations, delusions and thought disorders, can be objectively observed and reported. However, it’s worth considering that movement disorders are well known side effects of psychiatric “treatments”, in which case they can hardly be confidently blamed on an underlying “illness”.
Negative symptoms: “Negative” symptoms
(#3)
… are associated with disruptions to normal emotions and behaviors.
8. Normal emotions and behaviors would certainly include sadness and grieving after the death of a loved one. However, a psychiatrist is free to “diagnose” a grieving person as “having (the disorder/illness) depression” whether their emotions and behaviors are generally considered part of normal grieving or not. The elimination of the bereavement exclusion became a very contentious public and professional issue, when DSM-5 was published in 2013.
… Symptoms
(#3)
… include:
• “Flat affect” (reduced expression of emotions via facial expression or voice tone)
• Reduced feelings of pleasure in everyday life
• Difficulty beginning and sustaining activities
• Reduced speaking
(Please see #7 above.)
…Cognitive symptoms
(#3)
…: For some patients, the cognitive symptoms
(#3)
… of schizophrenia are subtle, but for others, they are more severe and patients may notice changes in their memory or other aspects of thinking. Symptoms
(#3)
… include:
• Poor “executive functioning” (the ability to understand information and use it to make decisions)
• Trouble focusing or paying attention
• Problems with “working memory” (the ability to use information immediately after learning it)
(See #7 above.)
Risk Factors
There are several factors that contribute to the risk of developing schizophrenia.
Genes and environment: Scientists have long known that schizophrenia sometimes runs in families.
9. This runs in families colloquialism would be laughable for a scientific government research institute, which NIMH pretends to be, but for the unfortunate history it connects to: eugenics, social Darwinism and racism. Psychiatrists have postulated genetic causes of mental illness for at least 100 years. All of their speculative “research” efforts have yielded precisely nothing in the way of clinical benefit. It may be noted that two areas of human thinking, emotion and behavior “run in families” more reliably than any others: political affiliation and religious faith. But no one searches for the genetic “causes” of being a Republican or an Episcopalian. In fact, no one searches for genetic causes of any personality type or behavior considered acceptable. It’s only the negative things about some people which are ruefully blamed on genetics, perhaps as an excuse to change those people by force, for their fellows who need “reasons” to do what they instinctively know is wrong.
… However, there are many people who have schizophrenia
(See #2 above.)
… who don’t have a family member with the disorder
(#2)
… and conversely, many people with one or more family members with the disorder
(#2)
… who do not develop it themselves.
Scientists believe that many different genes may increase the risk of schizophrenia, but that no single gene causes the disorder by itself. It is not yet possible to use genetic information to predict who will develop schizophrenia.
Scientists also think that interactions between genes and aspects of the individual’s environment are necessary for schizophrenia to develop. Environmental factors may involve:
• Exposure to viruses
• Malnutrition before birth
• Problems during birth
• Psychosocial factors
Different brain chemistry and structure: Scientists think that an imbalance in the complex, interrelated chemical reactions of the brain
10. Wonderful! The infamous chemical imbalance in the brain…! The leading biological psychiatrist, Dr. Ronald Pies, M.D., who authored various definitive textbooks and popular volumes on psychiatry and mental health, and who is one of the strongest and most constant voices in defense of a pure medical model of mental/emotional/behavioral problems, actually wrote in Psychiatric Times (of which he was Editor at the time) that the whole notion of a chemical imbalance in the brain had been nothing more than an urban legend, which no reputable psychiatrist ever really believed.
Some experts also think problems during brain development before birth may lead to faulty connections.
11. This faulty connections concept is no more scientific or useful than the earlier chemical imbalance pseudoscience. Nobody knows what it means, nobody can test for it, nobody can see, let alone fix, “faulty connections”.
… The brain also undergoes major changes during puberty, and these changes could trigger psychotic symptoms
(#3)
… in people who are vulnerable due to genetics or brain differences.
Treatments and Therapies
Because the causes of schizophrenia are still unknown, treatments focus on eliminating the symptoms
(#3)
… of the disease. Treatments include:
Antipsychotics
12. So-called “antipsychotics” are also called by the older, more accurate terms, neuroleptics or major tranquilizers. They tend to knock down manifestations of psychosis in the short term, but they knock down the patients, too, and cause long-term disability and stunted recovery with long-term use. Although the term antipsychotic was coined to highlight the drugs’ desired effects, the first such drug (chlorpromazine) was actually promoted as a chemical lobotomy. Clearly the effects that are desired vary, depending on the point of view.
Antipsychotic medications
13. Just consider the difference between the sound of the term, antipsychotic medications on one hand, and neuroleptic drugs on the other. The two terms have equal lexical relevance and accuracy, but which one gets used tells you a lot about who is communicating and whether they want to convince you the drugs are beneficial cures, or warn you that they’ll likely be experienced as force, not reason.
… are usually taken daily in pill or liquid form. Some antipsychotics are injections that are given once or twice a month.
14. The reason they are sometimes injected once or twice a month is because the psychiatrist knows that way you can’t refuse or avoid taking them, which almost anyone would do, if they had any choice about what to put in their own body. Monthly injectable antipsychotics are cruel, covert oppression of patients, merely to conserve psychiatric staff effort and attention. It’s brutal control, not help.
… Some people have side effects when they start taking medications, but most side effects go away after a few days.
15. A few days?! This statement is deceptive and borderline malpractice. There are hundreds of stories on the internet from people who have spent years trying to find meds that are even slightly tolerable, and more years trying to withdraw from them when they are not tolerable. Check out Laura Delano’s site: theinnercompass.org.
… Doctors and patients can work together
16. Doctors and “patients” do not work together in mental health, psychiatrists order and coerce patients to comply. When NIMH says they can work together, what is meant is that if “patients” comply strictly with everything the psychiatrist suggests or thinks, then the psychiatrist will be happier. Just that.
… to find the best medication or medication combination, and the right dose. Check the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) website: (http://www.fda.gov/), for the latest information on warnings, patient medication guides, or newly approved medications.
Psychosocial Treatments
These treatments are helpful after patients and their doctor find a medication that works.
17. So there it is: Drugs first, talking comes only after you comply with drugging!
… Learning and using coping skills to address the everyday challenges of schizophrenia helps people to pursue their life goals, such as attending school or work. Individuals who participate in regular psychosocial treatment are less likely to have relapses or be hospitalized. For more information on psychosocial treatments, see the Psychotherapies webpage on the NIMH website.
Coordinated specialty care (CSC)
This treatment model integrates medication, psychosocial therapies, case management, family involvement, and supported education and employment services, all aimed at reducing symptoms and improving quality of life. The NIMH Recovery After an Initial Schizophrenia Episode (RAISE) research project seeks to fundamentally change the trajectory and prognosis of schizophrenia through coordinated specialty care treatment in the earliest stages of the disorder. RAISE is designed to reduce the likelihood of long-term disability
18. Long-term disability is caused by the psychiatric drugs, not (for any practical purpose) by a theoretical “disease” process for which nobody has yet discovered any real mechanism.
… that people with schizophrenia often experience and help them lead productive, independent lives.
How can I help someone I know with schizophrenia?
Caring for and supporting a loved one with schizophrenia can be hard. It can be difficult to know how to respond to someone who makes strange or clearly false statements. It is important to understand that schizophrenia is a biological illness.
19. It cannot be important to understand any such thing, because it’s not reality, it’s an article of faith. What NIMH means here is, if you believe in schizophrenia as a brain disease which will eventually be discovered by real doctors and scientists (although it hasn’t been discovered, after a hundred years of research supported by virtually unlimited government funds), then and only then will you be a better and kinder person to someone you know who “has” it, because you won’t blame them for their behavior. But maybe this peculiar faith isn’t so necessary for tolerance and charity, and it certainly should not be a state religion, that’s unconstitutional. The other thing that’s so very important about people being faithful to the psychiatric religion is that the high priests (psychiatrists) cannot make a living or increase their power unless more and more people become faithful. The evangelism has gotten much more difficult of late, with so much information out of control via the internet.
…Here are some things you can do to help your loved one:
• Get them treatment and encourage them to stay in treatment
• Remember that their beliefs or hallucinations seem very real to them
• Tell them that you acknowledge that everyone has the right to see things their own way
• Be respectful, supportive, and kind without tolerating dangerous or inappropriate behavior
• Check to see if there are any support groups in your area
Join a Study
Clinical trials are research studies that look at new ways to prevent, detect, or treat diseases and conditions
20. Diseases and conditions… are these the same, or different? If they’re different, then which is schizophrenia, a disease or a condition? Why does NIMH need to confuse the public like this?
…, including schizophrenia. During clinical trials, treatments might be new drugs or new combinations of drugs, new surgical procedures or devices, or new ways to use existing treatments.
The goal of clinical trials is to determine if a new test or treatment works and is safe. Although individual participants may benefit from being part of a clinical trial, participants should be aware that the primary purpose of a clinical trial is to gain new scientific knowledge so that others may be better helped in the future.
Please note: Decisions about whether to participate in a clinical trial, and which ones are best suited for a given individual, are best made in collaboration with your licensed health professional.
How do I find Clinical Trials at NIMH/NIH?
Scientists at the NIH campus conduct research on numerous areas of study, including cognition, genetics, epidemiology, and psychiatry. The studies take place at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland and require regular visits. After the initial phone interview, you will come to an appointment at the clinic and meet with one of our clinicians.
Find NIH-funded studies currently recruiting participants with schizophrenia by using ClinicalTrials.gov (search schizophrenia) or visit Join a Study: Adults - Schizophrenia.
How Do I Find a Clinical Trial Near Me?
To search for a clinical trial near you, you can visit ClinicalTrials.gov. This is a searchable registry and results database of federally and privately supported clinical trials conducted in the United States and around the world. ClinicalTrials.gov gives you information about a trial's purpose, who may participate, locations, and phone numbers to call for more details. This information should be used in conjunction with advice from health professionals.
Learn more
Free Booklets and Brochures
• Schizophrenia: A detailed booklet that provides an overview on schizophrenia. It describes symptoms, risk factors, and treatments. It also contains information on getting help and coping. Also available en Español.
• What is Schizophrenia? A brief brochure on schizophrenia that offers basic information on signs and symptoms, treatment, and finding help.
Research and Statistics
• Recovery After an Initial Schizophrenia Episode (RAISE): The NIMH-launched RAISE is a large-scale research initiative that began with two studies examining different aspects of coordinated specialty care (CSC) treatments for people who were experiencing first episode psychosis.
• NIMH Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders Research Program: This program administers funding to scientists doing research into the origins, onset, course, and outcome of schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and such related conditions as schizotypal and schizoid personality disorders.
• Schizophrenia Statistics: This webpage provides information on the best statistics currently available on the prevalence and treatment of schizophrenia in the U.S.
• Schizophrenia Clinical Trials at NIMH: Adults: This webpage lists NIMH clinical trials that are currently recruiting adults with schizophrenia.
• Schizophrenia Clinical Trials at NIMH: Children: This webpage lists NIMH clinical trials that are currently recruiting children with schizophrenia.
Last Revised: February 2016
Unless otherwise specified, NIMH information and publications are in the public domain and available for use free of charge. Citation of the NIMH is appreciated. Please see our Citing NIMH Information and Publications page for more information.
Psychiatria delenda est!
March 25, 2018
Following are my own 20 questions/comments about the web page of the National Institute of Mental Health discussing “Schizophrenia”.
What I have done is simply download the text of NIMH’s page, and then insert my own comments or questions (in the red typeface) at those points when they occur. My words turned out to be more voluminous than the original article, so the NIMH page is pretty broken up. But anyone who cares to check against the current website will see that I didn’t alter or omit anything the government wrote.
This little project was inspired by a report that clinical staff on H Unit at DSH (Elgin Mental Health Center) recently printed out this NIMH Schizophrenia page and distributed it to all patients. I suspect that they will not allow the kinds of questions and comments that I have written here, because their purpose, like that of the plantation overseer, is to coerce compliance. However, I believe that open discussion or debate is necessary to the concept of informed consent. Informed consent is vital under the law. Psychiatric “patients” are human beings with rights.
I have not documented scientific facts to justify, or provided citations for, my comments. I can probably do that quite thoroughly, if anyone wants me to. I am simply trying to counter the propaganda of the “forensic mental health” plantation in a timely enough manner to get people thinking. Please give me any feedback you can.
Yours truly,
S. Randolph Kretchmar
Law Offices of Kretchmar & Cecala, P.C.
847-370-5410 (mobile)
Refusingpsychiatry.com
Schizophrenia
Overview
Schizophrenia is a chronic and severe mental disorder
1. This term, mental disorder, has almost entirely replaced the earlier characterizations, mental illness and mental disease. The point remains that all human problems in thinking, feeling and behaving should be labeled as discrete entities which doctors either can cure or should attempt to cure. It’s the medical model. Western civilization has obtained immense benefit from medical science over the past 150 years. However, human history over several thousand years contains a much larger perspective. Just because physical manipulation of bodily structures and processes has been “hot” for a century and a half, that doesn’t imply any necessary conclusion that it’s a sure route to ultimate happiness and salvation. In fact, the change of terms from mental illness/disease to mental disorder is a bit of a tip-off that the medical model is in difficulty. These problems may not be “curable” by doctors after all. Psychiatrists now actually admit that they do not cure anything. They imply that perhaps soon they will, but that’s gotten very old.
… that affects how a person thinks, feels, and behaves. People with schizophrenia
2. The phrase, people with schizophrenia, once again, implies that this is some discrete entity which can be identified or isolated for a person to have (i.e., you don’t have something that you are). But there is no such thing, or at least it has not been discovered despite more than a century of scientific search for it. Schizophrenia is an extremely variable pattern of behaviors. I have repeatedly gotten psychiatrists to admit under oath that any two individuals who both supposedly have schizophrenia may have no “symptoms” in common, whatsoever. What is schizophrenia, as a disease then? No one knows.
… may seem like they have lost touch with reality. Although schizophrenia is not as common as other mental disorders, the symptoms
3. Technically, the word symptoms just means subjective reports or complaints. In medicine, signs is the term to describe objectively observed phenomena that can be tested for like physical lesions, sugar levels in the blood or urine, EKG results, x-rays, etc. Psychiatrists are trained medical doctors and should distinguish between symptoms and signs in their “diagnosis”. They know the difference, and they know it is important, but they obscure it purposefully.
… can be very disabling.
Signs and Symptoms
Symptoms
(Please see #3 above.)
… of schizophrenia usually start between ages 16 and 30. In rare cases, children have
(Please see #2 above.)
… schizophrenia too.
The symptoms
(See #3 above.)
… of schizophrenia fall into three categories: positive, negative, and cognitive.
Positive symptoms:
(#3)
… “Positive” symptoms
(#3)
… are psychotic behaviors
4. Behaviors are in fact the entire issue. If a person behaves badly enough, or violently or strangely enough to frighten others around him, then sooner or later people will do something to him to make him stop. And the only way anyone knows if a person is hallucinating or delusional is by consulting their behavior (including speech, writing or other communication, which is behavior). We do not know what anyone is thinking or feeling unless they tell us, or show us by their behavior. And that will always be, substantially, an interpretation by someone.
… not generally seen in healthy
5. Don’t forget we’re talking about behaviors. If we say they are “healthy” or “unhealthy” either way, it’s only in a metaphorical sense. There’s no known disease!
… people. People with positive symptoms
(#3)
… may “lose touch” with some aspects of reality. Symptoms
(#3)
… include:
• Hallucinations
• Delusions
• Thought disorders (unusual or dysfunctional ways of thinking)
6. Hallucinations, delusions and unusual or dysfunctional ways of thinking can not be seen directly. Hence, they are often completely a matter of opinion, and always a subjective evaluation to some degree. We don’t actually know what a person believes, but only what he says. Maybe a delusion or hallucination is simply a lie. Can a psychiatrist really tell the difference?
• Movement disorders (agitated body movements)
7. To some extent this, unlike hallucinations, delusions and thought disorders, can be objectively observed and reported. However, it’s worth considering that movement disorders are well known side effects of psychiatric “treatments”, in which case they can hardly be confidently blamed on an underlying “illness”.
Negative symptoms: “Negative” symptoms
(#3)
… are associated with disruptions to normal emotions and behaviors.
8. Normal emotions and behaviors would certainly include sadness and grieving after the death of a loved one. However, a psychiatrist is free to “diagnose” a grieving person as “having (the disorder/illness) depression” whether their emotions and behaviors are generally considered part of normal grieving or not. The elimination of the bereavement exclusion became a very contentious public and professional issue, when DSM-5 was published in 2013.
… Symptoms
(#3)
… include:
• “Flat affect” (reduced expression of emotions via facial expression or voice tone)
• Reduced feelings of pleasure in everyday life
• Difficulty beginning and sustaining activities
• Reduced speaking
(Please see #7 above.)
…Cognitive symptoms
(#3)
…: For some patients, the cognitive symptoms
(#3)
… of schizophrenia are subtle, but for others, they are more severe and patients may notice changes in their memory or other aspects of thinking. Symptoms
(#3)
… include:
• Poor “executive functioning” (the ability to understand information and use it to make decisions)
• Trouble focusing or paying attention
• Problems with “working memory” (the ability to use information immediately after learning it)
(See #7 above.)
Risk Factors
There are several factors that contribute to the risk of developing schizophrenia.
Genes and environment: Scientists have long known that schizophrenia sometimes runs in families.
9. This runs in families colloquialism would be laughable for a scientific government research institute, which NIMH pretends to be, but for the unfortunate history it connects to: eugenics, social Darwinism and racism. Psychiatrists have postulated genetic causes of mental illness for at least 100 years. All of their speculative “research” efforts have yielded precisely nothing in the way of clinical benefit. It may be noted that two areas of human thinking, emotion and behavior “run in families” more reliably than any others: political affiliation and religious faith. But no one searches for the genetic “causes” of being a Republican or an Episcopalian. In fact, no one searches for genetic causes of any personality type or behavior considered acceptable. It’s only the negative things about some people which are ruefully blamed on genetics, perhaps as an excuse to change those people by force, for their fellows who need “reasons” to do what they instinctively know is wrong.
… However, there are many people who have schizophrenia
(See #2 above.)
… who don’t have a family member with the disorder
(#2)
… and conversely, many people with one or more family members with the disorder
(#2)
… who do not develop it themselves.
Scientists believe that many different genes may increase the risk of schizophrenia, but that no single gene causes the disorder by itself. It is not yet possible to use genetic information to predict who will develop schizophrenia.
Scientists also think that interactions between genes and aspects of the individual’s environment are necessary for schizophrenia to develop. Environmental factors may involve:
• Exposure to viruses
• Malnutrition before birth
• Problems during birth
• Psychosocial factors
Different brain chemistry and structure: Scientists think that an imbalance in the complex, interrelated chemical reactions of the brain
10. Wonderful! The infamous chemical imbalance in the brain…! The leading biological psychiatrist, Dr. Ronald Pies, M.D., who authored various definitive textbooks and popular volumes on psychiatry and mental health, and who is one of the strongest and most constant voices in defense of a pure medical model of mental/emotional/behavioral problems, actually wrote in Psychiatric Times (of which he was Editor at the time) that the whole notion of a chemical imbalance in the brain had been nothing more than an urban legend, which no reputable psychiatrist ever really believed.
Some experts also think problems during brain development before birth may lead to faulty connections.
11. This faulty connections concept is no more scientific or useful than the earlier chemical imbalance pseudoscience. Nobody knows what it means, nobody can test for it, nobody can see, let alone fix, “faulty connections”.
… The brain also undergoes major changes during puberty, and these changes could trigger psychotic symptoms
(#3)
… in people who are vulnerable due to genetics or brain differences.
Treatments and Therapies
Because the causes of schizophrenia are still unknown, treatments focus on eliminating the symptoms
(#3)
… of the disease. Treatments include:
Antipsychotics
12. So-called “antipsychotics” are also called by the older, more accurate terms, neuroleptics or major tranquilizers. They tend to knock down manifestations of psychosis in the short term, but they knock down the patients, too, and cause long-term disability and stunted recovery with long-term use. Although the term antipsychotic was coined to highlight the drugs’ desired effects, the first such drug (chlorpromazine) was actually promoted as a chemical lobotomy. Clearly the effects that are desired vary, depending on the point of view.
Antipsychotic medications
13. Just consider the difference between the sound of the term, antipsychotic medications on one hand, and neuroleptic drugs on the other. The two terms have equal lexical relevance and accuracy, but which one gets used tells you a lot about who is communicating and whether they want to convince you the drugs are beneficial cures, or warn you that they’ll likely be experienced as force, not reason.
… are usually taken daily in pill or liquid form. Some antipsychotics are injections that are given once or twice a month.
14. The reason they are sometimes injected once or twice a month is because the psychiatrist knows that way you can’t refuse or avoid taking them, which almost anyone would do, if they had any choice about what to put in their own body. Monthly injectable antipsychotics are cruel, covert oppression of patients, merely to conserve psychiatric staff effort and attention. It’s brutal control, not help.
… Some people have side effects when they start taking medications, but most side effects go away after a few days.
15. A few days?! This statement is deceptive and borderline malpractice. There are hundreds of stories on the internet from people who have spent years trying to find meds that are even slightly tolerable, and more years trying to withdraw from them when they are not tolerable. Check out Laura Delano’s site: theinnercompass.org.
… Doctors and patients can work together
16. Doctors and “patients” do not work together in mental health, psychiatrists order and coerce patients to comply. When NIMH says they can work together, what is meant is that if “patients” comply strictly with everything the psychiatrist suggests or thinks, then the psychiatrist will be happier. Just that.
… to find the best medication or medication combination, and the right dose. Check the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) website: (http://www.fda.gov/), for the latest information on warnings, patient medication guides, or newly approved medications.
Psychosocial Treatments
These treatments are helpful after patients and their doctor find a medication that works.
17. So there it is: Drugs first, talking comes only after you comply with drugging!
… Learning and using coping skills to address the everyday challenges of schizophrenia helps people to pursue their life goals, such as attending school or work. Individuals who participate in regular psychosocial treatment are less likely to have relapses or be hospitalized. For more information on psychosocial treatments, see the Psychotherapies webpage on the NIMH website.
Coordinated specialty care (CSC)
This treatment model integrates medication, psychosocial therapies, case management, family involvement, and supported education and employment services, all aimed at reducing symptoms and improving quality of life. The NIMH Recovery After an Initial Schizophrenia Episode (RAISE) research project seeks to fundamentally change the trajectory and prognosis of schizophrenia through coordinated specialty care treatment in the earliest stages of the disorder. RAISE is designed to reduce the likelihood of long-term disability
18. Long-term disability is caused by the psychiatric drugs, not (for any practical purpose) by a theoretical “disease” process for which nobody has yet discovered any real mechanism.
… that people with schizophrenia often experience and help them lead productive, independent lives.
How can I help someone I know with schizophrenia?
Caring for and supporting a loved one with schizophrenia can be hard. It can be difficult to know how to respond to someone who makes strange or clearly false statements. It is important to understand that schizophrenia is a biological illness.
19. It cannot be important to understand any such thing, because it’s not reality, it’s an article of faith. What NIMH means here is, if you believe in schizophrenia as a brain disease which will eventually be discovered by real doctors and scientists (although it hasn’t been discovered, after a hundred years of research supported by virtually unlimited government funds), then and only then will you be a better and kinder person to someone you know who “has” it, because you won’t blame them for their behavior. But maybe this peculiar faith isn’t so necessary for tolerance and charity, and it certainly should not be a state religion, that’s unconstitutional. The other thing that’s so very important about people being faithful to the psychiatric religion is that the high priests (psychiatrists) cannot make a living or increase their power unless more and more people become faithful. The evangelism has gotten much more difficult of late, with so much information out of control via the internet.
…Here are some things you can do to help your loved one:
• Get them treatment and encourage them to stay in treatment
• Remember that their beliefs or hallucinations seem very real to them
• Tell them that you acknowledge that everyone has the right to see things their own way
• Be respectful, supportive, and kind without tolerating dangerous or inappropriate behavior
• Check to see if there are any support groups in your area
Join a Study
Clinical trials are research studies that look at new ways to prevent, detect, or treat diseases and conditions
20. Diseases and conditions… are these the same, or different? If they’re different, then which is schizophrenia, a disease or a condition? Why does NIMH need to confuse the public like this?
…, including schizophrenia. During clinical trials, treatments might be new drugs or new combinations of drugs, new surgical procedures or devices, or new ways to use existing treatments.
The goal of clinical trials is to determine if a new test or treatment works and is safe. Although individual participants may benefit from being part of a clinical trial, participants should be aware that the primary purpose of a clinical trial is to gain new scientific knowledge so that others may be better helped in the future.
Please note: Decisions about whether to participate in a clinical trial, and which ones are best suited for a given individual, are best made in collaboration with your licensed health professional.
How do I find Clinical Trials at NIMH/NIH?
Scientists at the NIH campus conduct research on numerous areas of study, including cognition, genetics, epidemiology, and psychiatry. The studies take place at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland and require regular visits. After the initial phone interview, you will come to an appointment at the clinic and meet with one of our clinicians.
Find NIH-funded studies currently recruiting participants with schizophrenia by using ClinicalTrials.gov (search schizophrenia) or visit Join a Study: Adults - Schizophrenia.
How Do I Find a Clinical Trial Near Me?
To search for a clinical trial near you, you can visit ClinicalTrials.gov. This is a searchable registry and results database of federally and privately supported clinical trials conducted in the United States and around the world. ClinicalTrials.gov gives you information about a trial's purpose, who may participate, locations, and phone numbers to call for more details. This information should be used in conjunction with advice from health professionals.
Learn more
Free Booklets and Brochures
• Schizophrenia: A detailed booklet that provides an overview on schizophrenia. It describes symptoms, risk factors, and treatments. It also contains information on getting help and coping. Also available en Español.
• What is Schizophrenia? A brief brochure on schizophrenia that offers basic information on signs and symptoms, treatment, and finding help.
Research and Statistics
• Recovery After an Initial Schizophrenia Episode (RAISE): The NIMH-launched RAISE is a large-scale research initiative that began with two studies examining different aspects of coordinated specialty care (CSC) treatments for people who were experiencing first episode psychosis.
• NIMH Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders Research Program: This program administers funding to scientists doing research into the origins, onset, course, and outcome of schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and such related conditions as schizotypal and schizoid personality disorders.
• Schizophrenia Statistics: This webpage provides information on the best statistics currently available on the prevalence and treatment of schizophrenia in the U.S.
• Schizophrenia Clinical Trials at NIMH: Adults: This webpage lists NIMH clinical trials that are currently recruiting adults with schizophrenia.
• Schizophrenia Clinical Trials at NIMH: Children: This webpage lists NIMH clinical trials that are currently recruiting children with schizophrenia.
Last Revised: February 2016
Unless otherwise specified, NIMH information and publications are in the public domain and available for use free of charge. Citation of the NIMH is appreciated. Please see our Citing NIMH Information and Publications page for more information.
Psychiatria delenda est!
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
Silliness on the plantation
A client called me yesterday morning and said his treatment team at Chicago Read Mental Health Center had informed him that if I attend his upcoming monthly staffing, they will need to hold it somewhere off the unit. The reason given was that I have published confidential information in this blog.
So after I am done rolling on the floor laughing... I have to conclude that keeping me off the clinical unit, away from “patients”, is intended to prevent... what, exactly?
The “disclosure of confidential information” problem is a classic red herring. I looked back over my blog posts, and I have carefully, meticulously, avoided doing that. Any names of clients appear only because they are already public, and by the client’s own choice. For example, I represent two plaintiffs against a former social worker on L Unit at Elgin Mental Health Center named Christy Lenhardt. Ms. Lenhardt, a married white woman in her fifties with two sons in their twenties, seduced these two young black men and coerced them into sexual relationships.
This was a class 3 felony under Illinois law. It’s been all over the media in the USA and internationally. If the cases were not loudly public, there is a good chance the whole thing would be swept under the proverbial rug. Various other clinicians and administrators at Elgin (aka, DSH) are being sued for collaborating and enabling the felony, in violation of strict reporting requirements, etc. A third case will be filed soon, as well.
Illinois Department of Human Services facilities (“mental health centers”) are plantations. They hold slaves whom they euphemistically call “patients” or “recipients of services”. Maybe the reason the treatment team at Chicago Read wants to hold my client’s staffing off the unit is... they’re afraid that I could be effective as an abolitionist? Maybe they think my very presence will infect slaves beyond my current list of clients with dangerous abolitionist thoughts? But... I never even talk to anyone but my client when I’m there.
Oh! That’s not 100% true... In fact, I talk to staff as much as I can. Maybe somebody higher up the food chain is afraid I’ll infect staff with my abolitionist ideas. Maybe some of those well-intended helping professionals are getting tired of covering up for the real criminals, the overseers on the plantation, the abusers.
If so, call me! Ask a patient for my cell number.
Psychiatria delenda est!
So after I am done rolling on the floor laughing... I have to conclude that keeping me off the clinical unit, away from “patients”, is intended to prevent... what, exactly?
The “disclosure of confidential information” problem is a classic red herring. I looked back over my blog posts, and I have carefully, meticulously, avoided doing that. Any names of clients appear only because they are already public, and by the client’s own choice. For example, I represent two plaintiffs against a former social worker on L Unit at Elgin Mental Health Center named Christy Lenhardt. Ms. Lenhardt, a married white woman in her fifties with two sons in their twenties, seduced these two young black men and coerced them into sexual relationships.
This was a class 3 felony under Illinois law. It’s been all over the media in the USA and internationally. If the cases were not loudly public, there is a good chance the whole thing would be swept under the proverbial rug. Various other clinicians and administrators at Elgin (aka, DSH) are being sued for collaborating and enabling the felony, in violation of strict reporting requirements, etc. A third case will be filed soon, as well.
Illinois Department of Human Services facilities (“mental health centers”) are plantations. They hold slaves whom they euphemistically call “patients” or “recipients of services”. Maybe the reason the treatment team at Chicago Read wants to hold my client’s staffing off the unit is... they’re afraid that I could be effective as an abolitionist? Maybe they think my very presence will infect slaves beyond my current list of clients with dangerous abolitionist thoughts? But... I never even talk to anyone but my client when I’m there.
Oh! That’s not 100% true... In fact, I talk to staff as much as I can. Maybe somebody higher up the food chain is afraid I’ll infect staff with my abolitionist ideas. Maybe some of those well-intended helping professionals are getting tired of covering up for the real criminals, the overseers on the plantation, the abusers.
If so, call me! Ask a patient for my cell number.
Psychiatria delenda est!
Sunday, March 18, 2018
Complexity, health care, and psychiatry
The Wall Street Journal on March 16, 2018, contains two articles, one an oped by former Senate Banking Committee Chairman Phil Gramm about how to “escape” from Obamacare, and the other (to which I can’t find a link, “Health-Law Suit May Boost Insurers” by Stephanie Armour) a report on lawsuits in connection with the Affordable Care Act. Cases currently before a panel at the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit may amount to the largest civil lawsuits ever.
More thinking and prognosticating and thrashing around occurs, and more is written about how to organize and pay for medical services, than almost any other human problem. Nothing gets so complicated and “important” unless it contains a lie, it’s a sure tip-off. And the more complication, the more fundamental the lie must be.
Much discussion has concerned mandated coverages. Under the ACA, it seems every policy must be standardized. E.g., “treatment” for “mental health disorders” must be included for everyone, even people who (like me) would sooner go to jail or be exiled than pay a psychiatrist or receive psychiatric “medicine”. Until a recent change, everyone also had to buy their policy, or pay a fine. I think it’s now legal again, at least in theory, to have a health care policy that doesn’t cover psychiatric services. (But I’m not sure, even though I’m a lawyer and very interested. It’s too complicated.)
The idea that not covering mental health disorders on the same basis as physical diseases is discrimination from stigma is patent nonsense. That is a rational economic risk/benefit assessment, by the people who are far and away the best economic risk/benefit assessors (insurance companies). The crusaders for “mental health parity” merely want to ignore or compensate for marketplace reality: almost nobody buys psychiatry for themselves, and they are only very occasionally willing to push or force it on others. Elite policy makers want to enforce their own value judgments on everyone else, who they presume are insufficiently enlightened to realize that we should all get “treated”.
But it seems to me that the fundamental lie underlying all off this is that human beings are all the same, and they all need and want the same things. That’s quite true for air, food and water, but it doesn’t go any further. Despite what we’re incessantly told, not everybody needs and wants sex (or at least, not the same kind). Not everybody needs and wants shelter (at least, not constantly).
An even more basic lie, however, is that human beings are their bodies, first, last and forever. Individual psychiatrists may or may not think about the implications, but the claim that depression (for example) should be considered primarily as a brain disease to be treated medically, is necessarily in conflict with any religious faith. You can’t honestly be a good Christian, Muslim or Jew, and simultaneously postulate the salvation of individuals through drugs.
The idea that all human problems of cognition, emotion and behavior can be solved by manipulating brain chemistry or neurological structure, rather than by communication alone to change a mind, is a kind of ultimate heresy against all religion.
It’s also untrue, which is the most fundamental reason why medical service delivery has become so complicated. Doctors allowed psychiatrists to follow on their coat tails.
Psychiatria delenda est!
More thinking and prognosticating and thrashing around occurs, and more is written about how to organize and pay for medical services, than almost any other human problem. Nothing gets so complicated and “important” unless it contains a lie, it’s a sure tip-off. And the more complication, the more fundamental the lie must be.
Much discussion has concerned mandated coverages. Under the ACA, it seems every policy must be standardized. E.g., “treatment” for “mental health disorders” must be included for everyone, even people who (like me) would sooner go to jail or be exiled than pay a psychiatrist or receive psychiatric “medicine”. Until a recent change, everyone also had to buy their policy, or pay a fine. I think it’s now legal again, at least in theory, to have a health care policy that doesn’t cover psychiatric services. (But I’m not sure, even though I’m a lawyer and very interested. It’s too complicated.)
The idea that not covering mental health disorders on the same basis as physical diseases is discrimination from stigma is patent nonsense. That is a rational economic risk/benefit assessment, by the people who are far and away the best economic risk/benefit assessors (insurance companies). The crusaders for “mental health parity” merely want to ignore or compensate for marketplace reality: almost nobody buys psychiatry for themselves, and they are only very occasionally willing to push or force it on others. Elite policy makers want to enforce their own value judgments on everyone else, who they presume are insufficiently enlightened to realize that we should all get “treated”.
But it seems to me that the fundamental lie underlying all off this is that human beings are all the same, and they all need and want the same things. That’s quite true for air, food and water, but it doesn’t go any further. Despite what we’re incessantly told, not everybody needs and wants sex (or at least, not the same kind). Not everybody needs and wants shelter (at least, not constantly).
An even more basic lie, however, is that human beings are their bodies, first, last and forever. Individual psychiatrists may or may not think about the implications, but the claim that depression (for example) should be considered primarily as a brain disease to be treated medically, is necessarily in conflict with any religious faith. You can’t honestly be a good Christian, Muslim or Jew, and simultaneously postulate the salvation of individuals through drugs.
The idea that all human problems of cognition, emotion and behavior can be solved by manipulating brain chemistry or neurological structure, rather than by communication alone to change a mind, is a kind of ultimate heresy against all religion.
It’s also untrue, which is the most fundamental reason why medical service delivery has become so complicated. Doctors allowed psychiatrists to follow on their coat tails.
Psychiatria delenda est!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
