Good conversation

Many people wonder why I spend as much time and attention as I do, for no money, in state psychiatric “hospitals”. Well... maybe I’ll get paid someday, and maybe I’ll contribute to abolition of psychiatric slavery. But meanwhile, there are occasional entertaining moments.

I spent a couple hours at Chicago Read Mental Health Center last week, meeting with our second plaintiff (new lawsuit, to be filed in Federal District Court Wednesday) alleging sexual abuse under a guise of “mental treatment”, against a pervert social worker, her psychiatric enablers, bureaucratic collaborators, and clueless apologists. This case actually involves even more blatant corruption of psychiatric “diagnosis” and “medication” than the previously filed Hurt case does, although it doesn’t quite feature as much sex. (Less sex doesn’t matter legally, though there was only a bit less in this instance, because any sex at all between staff and a patient brings felony charges against the staff, no mitigating circumstances are possible, no issue of “consent” is allowed.)

After I’d been there about an hour, I was approached by my client’s psychiatrist, Dr. Goyal.  He and the treatment team social worker Rex, and the psychologist Dr. Stiava, wanted to have a private conversation with me (meaning without my client, their “patient”) before I left. No problem, but slightly weird...

The four of us ended up conferring for about twenty minutes. It was quickly apparent that they wanted my client to take more psychotropic “medication”, and they hoped either I would help talk him into it, or at least not oppose it. The most specific reason why they had come to the recommendation for a higher drug dose was an incident that occurred about a month ago, details of which they only knew from reading others’ reports, but which of course they had never witnessed, investigated or confirmed, themselves. The only other conceivable reason is that this “patient’s” Muslim prayer habits make them uncomfortable.

I did point out to these guys that I’m a lawyer, not a mental health clinician. I need my client to be a credible plaintiff for our civil suit, not constantly in trouble, etc. The civil suit involves events and individuals out at Dick Suck Hospital in Elgin, not anyone at Chicago Read, at least not for the time being. So in theory, I have a common interest with the people who are currently “treating” him... if (but there’s no way this contingency can be taken for granted!) they intend and are capable of making him better.

I also admitted that under almost all circumstances, I’ll be the guy who defends involuntary “patients” against forced drugging, so if they want to increase my client’s meds, they’ll need to get his agreement rather than coerce him. Dr. Stiava spoke of my client’s “remarkable amount of self-restraint,” but speculated about potential situations of unpredicted or unusual stress that could set him off and make him dangerous to himself or others. The significant thing about that is, it’s an implied admission that he’s not dangerous to himself or others now. Which of course means that under the law, he shouldn’t be subjected to involuntary treatment on an inpatient basis; which of course is why they are currently recommending him for conditional release; which of course is their main problem — they don’t want to have to reverse course on that, and change all the paperwork; which of course would make them look like they don’t know what the hell they’re doing (which of course they don’t!).

I responded to Dr. Stiava with the prospect that coercion of psychiatric drugs might become a stress factor very quickly. But social worker Rex and psychiatrist Dr. Goyal quickly insisted that such an idea would not be “debated” in this meeting. There was another idea that these guys flatly refused to “debate”: their own assertion that, of course, their views of what drugs should go into my client’s body are more valid than his own, because he is mentally ill and they are mental health professionals. The law does not support them on that: they should be more willing to “debate” it, so they can predict that it’s a clear losing argument in court.

Ultimately, this conversation reconfirmed my understanding that so-called “mental health professionals” who work for the state and get their “patients” by police force can never be benevolent doctors in proper hospitals, but only overseers on plantations. They are the scum of the earth, and the public will shortly see the rampant sex slavery in this Illinois system as the ugliest crime since Auschwitz.

Psychiatria delenda est!