Fugazy medicine

Years ago, I wrote about crazy guys and forensic mental health workers being brothers in delusion. Today I learned a new word, fugazy (pronounced "foo-GA-zi"), that basically means crazy, cheap fake, or otherwise messed-up and useless. It's perfect to describe Elgin Mental Health Center and all the other psychiatric slave plantations in Illinois. Fugazy psychiatry, fugazy law, or fugazy help. Fugazy science. Fugazy medicine. I love this word!

I had a staffing out at Elgin yesterday for a "patient" who has been declared unfit to stand trial (UST) for a relatively minor crime (ie, not murder). It came up that EMHC is not providing any "treatment" to get this person fit. Fitness for trial consists of precisely two factors: 1. the defendant understands the charges he/she faces; and 2. the defendant is capable of assisting his/her legal counsel in their own defense. 

In almost every case, the issue is the latter. Public defenders (or sometimes, private counsel) do not want to pursue the same trial strategy the defendant wants to pursue, so they use a psychiatric "diagnosis" to say the defendant isn't able to assist them. The judge buys it, and the defendant becomes a psychiatric slave.

In the case of yesterday's "patient" everybody wants her to believe in her "schizophrenia diagnosis" and to take "medication" for it. If she doesn't, then they will presume she cannot work with her legal counsel to assist in her own defense. It's a little hard to know exactly what she wants, other than to blame the treatment team at EMHC and mental health professionals generally for everything that seems wrong everywhere. Of course, that project aligns quite well with my professional pursuits, so I'm happy to advocate for her. On top of that, she actually insists upon paying me.

The EMHC treatment team, and perhaps the administration, would prefer that I would not advocate for this "patient," so they have told her explicitly not to pay me, and they are actively trying to prevent her from doing so by confiscating her checkbook. It's an opportunity for a tort claim for intentional interference with contractual relations.

Given that their job at EMHC is to get the patient fit to stand trial, and that the only reason she is classified as unfit is that she allegedly cannot assist her attorney (everyone around the table yesterday nodded when I asked if it was true, that was the sole basis of the unfit evaluation), one might expect that the treatment team would have spoken to their "patient's" attorney, at least once. They have not done so. Will County Assistant Public Defender Kylie Blatti reportedly has never called EMHC, never spoken with anyone on the treatment team, and nobody seemed to think that is unusual or problemtic.

It's easy: a paychiatrist called the Defendant "schizophrenic"? Nobody needs to ask or know anything else, no trial needs to happen, just lock her up on the plantation, drug her, and force her to work as a "mental patient" as long as possible. Everyone on the treatment team, plus administrators, security personnel, etc., all get good state salaries and benefits. The more slaves they hold and the  longer they hold them, the better they all do! UST (g)(2) is wonderful!

Civil rights are violated, the taxpayers are robbed. Oh well, it's mental health. Forensic psychiatry.

FUGAZY.