This particular patient is smart. He did go to the meeting, and he told me a couple things about it afterward. The "team" has evidently been getting (or making up) false reports about him. He filed a complaint recently with the Office of the Inspector General (OIG). I don't know or remember exactly what that complaint was, it may have been about a threat to take away privileges.
Dr. Cash told the patient that they were not going to take his privileges away after all. That was kind of a foregone conclusion... most threats like that are never carried out. Some threats are actually illegal, too. For example, the mental health code makes it a misdemeanor for a staff to threaten a patient with a civil commitment petition unless the staff is in fact prepared to file a proper petition. (That legal proscription does not however prevent this specific kind of intimidation, which still occurs routinely.)
High-functioning, smart patients who are unwilling to be psychiatric slaves are instinctively disliked by staff who want to believe themselves to be such wise, benevolent "mental health professionals," that the patients should worship them, and be thankfully and rightfully owned by them.
Possibly Michael Fitz, the Nurse-Manager on Lincoln South Unit, is one such would-be slave plantation overseer. Michael walked into today's impromptu meeting and asked sarcastically, "Is this the Ethan show?" Then with rather flamboyant hypocrisy, he accused the patient of being "disrespectful" to staff. Of course, he was unable to offer a single instance of behavior which evidenced any disrespect, so he looked pretty stupid.
I never advise a psychiatric slave to disrespect the overseers. I certainly sympathize with their feelings of disrespect for the whole system, and anyone who would be willing to work for it. Forensic psychiatry, involuntary "hospitalization," forced "treatment" and the insanity defense are the single most destructive wrong turn for legal and social policy in the whole history of humanity. But I'm a licensed attorney and a long-time student of history. I can insult people like Cash and Fitz, and they have no real recourse against me. But the only reason any of my insults ever bite, is that they are based in some truth.
Somebody like Ethan needs to be smart. However hostile he may feel toward his current, temporary slave-masters, he has to acknowledge their power: they have a whole lot of influence over when he can get out. Most of them do not have bad intentions, either. It's not that hard to like them or at least feel sorry for them. They got into psychiatric slavery by mistake, thinking it was a business in which they could help people, or even thinking (perhaps unbelievably in retrospect) it had something to do with medicine.
Dr. Cash actually tipped her own and her institution's hand during today's impromptu meeting. She told Ethan that it "won't help" him to be writing OIG complaints. If she had thought she could get away with it, she would have said what she really meant, namely: Don't ever complain again because we will keep you locked up longer for that!
But she's smart enough to be careful. She's obviously smarter than Michael Fitz. I guess we'll see how smart she is compared to Ethan.
Maybe the two of them can actually get along.
I can't tell you how happy it has made me to find your blog and read about people (you and Ethan) who are standing up to the psychiatric establishment. Psychiatrists have no clue how to cure any patient. The best they can do is match up a patient's symptoms to patented, synthetic drugs in an effort to suppress the patient's symptoms — until he eventually dies. King County (Seattle area) audited the results of the psych drug approach and found in 2002 that out of 9,304 mentally ill DSHS clients treated with the usual drugs, only 5 recovered, resulting in a recovery rate of .0005%. For emphasis, that's point zero zero zero 5%. And psychiatrists have the gall to criticize patients for not taking their miserable chemicals!
ReplyDeleteWhen my son was "incurably" mentally ill, I FIRED his idiotic psychiatrist and found 2 proven, natural ways to treat my son. He has recovered 100%.
I don't care if a psychiatrist comes across as nice or not. In my opinion, every last one of them is either just plain stupid or evil. They have never cured even one patient.
I first learned about "orthomolecular" treatment and used it to taper my son off 3 different, daily antipsychotic drugs. Please see Youtube for my 3 videos about how to use it. They're at "Linda Van Zandt's Mental Health Recovery Channel."
Next, I learned how to use homeopathy. It CURES mental illnesses (and everything else under the sun), gently and permanently.
I hope you'll keep writing about refusing psychiatry!
-Linda Santini, author of "Goodbye, Quacks - Hello, Homeopathy!" (in both e-book and paperback) at Amazon.
Linsant 99 at Gmail.com
Also, since you're an attorney, you probably know about the Congressional Research Service and how they're our country's final word on which laws we have on the books and which ones we don't have. According to the CRS, there is no law that says psychiatric patients must be treated with synthetic psych drugs or talk therapy. The American Psychiatric Association has carte blanche to choose any approach they like — and what they like is whatever brings them the most money. There is no law that says any psychiatrist must even try to cure any patient. All we have is a giant, gaping loop hole where a law should be.
ReplyDeleteI called my congressman in Wash, DC and was redirected to his aide. I told her I was calling to ask my representative to introduce a bill requiring restorative mental health care for all psych patients. She literally screamed at me that no such law will ever be passed because the U.S. government will never, ever try to tell psychiatrists how to treat their patients. The APA (this is my voice now) could use voodoo on their patients and wouldn't even be breaking the law—because there is no law to break.
Both the AMA and APA have been fighting against homeopathy since the late 1800s. With the help of the Carnegie Foundation in 1910, they published "The Flexner Report" (Wikipedia has a description of it) which claimed that homeopathy is some old, outdated form of medicine and is extremely ineffective compared to the patented medicines only the AMA and APA could provide. The U.S. government bought into this power play, this claim, which is why we have such lousy (but expensive) healthcare to this day. It's all about "managing" illnesses, not curing people.
Homeopathy has worked many miracles in my life and in the lives of people around the world for the last 200 years. India has at least 200,000 registered homeopaths. England still has 5 homeopathic hospitals. The U.S. has none.
How I would love for Ethan to be treated with homeopathy and show his idiot psychiatrists how psychiatry should be practiced.
Best regards,
Linda Santini