Retribution

DSH Medical Director James Corcoran recently had the audacity to tell several people during a staffing, “We don’t get retribution against patients.” Well, it wouldn’t be for lack of trying. There is certainly an effective policy or practice of punishing anyone who  challenges or fails to profess adequate faith in the “mental illness”/“brain disorder”/“legitimate medical condition” orthodoxy. No matter how good your behavior and emotional state may be, and no matter how sharp your thinking, you’d better take psychotropic “medication” if your “doctor” tells you to, or at least tell everyone else it’s generally helpful and you’re willing to take it under some circumstances. Otherwise you will not get privileges and you will not get out before your Thiem date.

The whole “forensic mental health” enterprise is steeped in an agenda of retribution. “Patients” in psychiatric “hospitals” are taught, and often told in so many words, that they owe it to the community to take neuroleptic drugs for the rest of their lives despite debilitating side effects, because of their past violent acts. In other words, they should be willing to be chemically disabled and psychiatrically dehumanized, they should accept the retribution of their fellows.

One of the more interesting aspects of this is that it absolutely contradicts another point that is impressed upon everyone ever found not guilty by reason of insanity (“NGRI”): you didn’t really commit that crime... it was your mental illness that caused it, and if not for your mental illness you’d have been a normal, social person.

A couple years ago I wrote about how this contradiction is especially dramatic when NGRI “patients” at DSH are urged to engage in MRT (“Moral Reconation Therapy”), which was actually developed for criminals in prison. One of my clients is still discredited to his criminal court judge by his treatment team with every semi-monthly court report, because he can’t get over the glaring intellectual dishonesty when the MRT therapist at DSH tells him it’s all his own fault that he’s locked up, at the same time the MD psychiatrist tells him it’s not his fault at all, he just needs to have his brain chemistry adjusted by experts. He refused to pretend that it made sense, and quit MRT. For that, he’s said to be non-compliant; for being non-compliant, he remains locked up.

Individuals are targeted for retribution at DSH. Corcoran (and Malis via Corcoran) complained under oath that a client of mine was one of the most difficult patients in the institution. His intention was to undermine a motion for privileges that a treatment team had recommended to the court. In other words, Corcoran was testifying that his own people had mis-evaluated their patient and didn’t know what they were doing. Fortunately, the court took this for what it was worth: nothing. My client was given his privileges despite Corcoran’s attempt.

As I recently indicated in a letter to the General Counsel of the Illinois Department of Human Services, I believe Corcoran is trying to provoke or harass a patient on N Unit via another patient. This would be retribution for lawsuits. The patient who is my client is probably the smartest and least “mentally ill” person still remaining at DSH, but his criminal court motions for privileges and release have been repeatedly stymied because he calls lies, incompetence and corruption when he sees them.

Retribution goes two ways, what goes around comes around....

If people were “treated” medically at DSH to their benefit, Corcoran and his fellow plantation overseers would have nothing to worry about.

Psychiatria delenda est!