Principles of an anti-psychiatry legal practice

Following are eight of the most important things I know and have learned from twenty years as an attorney, working exclusively to help individuals who would like to refuse psychiatry if they were only allowed to do so. These points are the general principles in the absence of which I would never have developed practical and tactical knowledge, which a friend of mine recently suggested could be of interest for purposes of a lawyers’ webinar she may host. But without at least a tentative understanding or conditional acceptance of the general principles, I suspect there would be limited value in suggesting specific tactics or trying to pass on my own peculiar experience with cases.

1.) State psychiatric hospitals and state employees HATE dealing with private attorneys who represent non-compliant patients. They will lie, cheat & steal to avoid this. One reason is, they may have to request their own legal representation from their state attorney general’s office, and that probably goes against their bosses’ budget at hourly rates. Another reason is, if they end up under oath in deposition or court testimony, their previous lying, cheating & stealing (or their bosses’ lying, cheating and stealing) may be discovered. 

2.) Public defenders usually (not always) HATE having to represent non-compliant mental patients. They believe in the system, or can’t be bothered to think outside the box. 

3.) Involuntary mental patients almost never have money to pay private attorneys, so they end up with public defenders or other public (similarly state-paid & state-obligated) advocates. 

4.) Adding up #1-3 above, it’s pretty obvious why the forensic psychiatric bureaucracy seems so omnipotent.

5.) But an important aspect of this scene is that the courts (judges) essentially abdicate their own responsibility to provide justice in many cases to psychiatrists, like the churches (clergy) abdicate their responsibility to provide moral leadership of people they can’t understand to psychiatrists. The one thing everyone is even more afraid of than viruses (which we suddenly know all too much about) is insanity. No one can  think about it or look at it, and so they are all fully dependent upon “experts” to think and look for them. 

6.) Ultimately, the only way an involuntary psychiatric patient attains freedom is by first realizing that they MUST change one person’s mind at a time by rational communication and truth alone, not by threats or lies. Even threats of legal action should absolutely be a last resort. (And I say that as an attorney for involuntary psychiatric patients!)

7.) The vast majority of mental health professionals of whatever stripe are well-intended people. They originally got into their business to help others. Then they got trapped by the lies that they didn’t invent.

8.) Notwithstanding #7 above, there are a very small minority of mental health professionals who are, or who have become for all practical purposes, irredeemably evil. Correctly identifying these few “true bad guys” is the single most valuable effort, for anyone who would fight the system.