REALLY up for grabs! Addendum 2

On March 3, 2025, Judge Ron Motl of the Third Judicial Circuit Court of Madison County conducted a hearing on the ability of the Illinois Department of Human Services to provide any safe or therapeutic environment for the care and treatment of mentally ill persons at Choate Mental Health Center. Sworn testimony from 5 witnesses, all current employees at Choate, showed that IDHS in fact has no such ability. The case was No. 2024MH322, In re S.B. It was cited in detail, with transcripts attached, in a Motion by Allen W. James, Attorney for the Guardianship and Advocacy Commission, filed on April 22, 2025, in combined cases Nos. 2025MH5, -6, -8, -9, -10 and -13, in the circuit Court of Union County. Allen James' office number at Choate is (618) 833-7025, for anyone who would like his opinion of what I am saying in this article. He may have important disagreements with my views.

Choate is severely understaffed. No psychotherapy is being provided for patients. Professional staff consist of 4 social workers (only 3 are licensed), no regularly scheduled on-site psychiatrist, one remote psychiatrist, no psychologists, and perhaps a score of nurses, for all shifts and all clinical units. There are over 70 patients to be served at Choate. This situation basically means Choate cannot be considered to provide effective mental health treatment in a least restrictive environment as required by law. Choate only provides incarceration, and "patients" are not supposed to be incarcerated, that is unconstitutional.

But the thing is, it's the same situation in all IDHS mental health facilities. There are differences in manner or degree, but Chester, Elgin, Chicago Read, Packard, Alton, and Madden are ultimately no better than Choate. None of these plantations is a legitimate hospital. No one goes there for medicine or help, unless they are forced to by a court. IDHS has no ability to provide any safe or therapeutic environment on any of these psychiatric slave plantations.

Elgin has been rationing toilet paper for weeks. Joe "dumb-as-a-rock" Basso argues with Gus about how many sections he needs. (Gus should ask Joe if he wants to come into the stall himself, to wipe....) There's no library use, because the librarian finally got fired for sexual harassment of patients after Michelle "expert-in-sexual-trauma" Evans missed noticing his widely known behavior for many years.

Drs. Kashe, Treanor, and Gadson down at Packard are just mean as hell to anyone (even pregnant patients) who doesn't worship them and toe the line. At Chester patients die (and not from mental illness). Chicago Read is falling apart physically, the building would actually be condemned if it were a normal residential facility. But the almighty James Patrick Corcoran, "Statewide Forensic Medical Director," has his own reserved parking place which he will happily kick your car out of, even if he hasn't used it himself for weeks.

These are just examples, and there are an unlimited variety of more examples. Everywhere in the system, the staff are demoralized, paranoid, confused.

People think this is a complicated problem. It's not, it's a very simple one. The psychiatric plantation system pretends to be a medical endeavor to help people and protect people, when in fact it's a social control operation to remove people who are dangerous or disliked. That fundamental lie makes the scene appear too complex to solve.

The bottom line is, both medicine and the law are discredited. This is bad for society. It may be just a part of the larger political scene that we're all getting so sick and tired of these days in the USA.

Or it may have substantially caused the larger "catastrophic failure of confidence in authority." (See my musing from 15 years ago: https://refusingpsychiatry.blogspot.com/2010/01/psychiatry-and-national-health-security.html)

This is why psychiatry must be destroyed. 

14 Nisan

The day the Jews were told that Pharaoh would allow their departure from Egypt is 14 Nisan on the Jewish calendar, which falls on April 12th in 2025. So in that sense, today is the anniversary of our freedom. But relating the Exodus story to our lives today is obviously a much more interesting exercise than celebrating one historical event.

Our Passover seder tonight will tell a story of long and brutal slavery, ending after ten plagues with a miraculous mass escape from a vengeful army into the desert. We are not supposed to think of this, and we are explicitly instructed not to tell our children about it, as something that happened to our ancestors in the remote past, but rather that this was our own experience in our lifetimes, like last year or the year before, or maybe just before Covid or a couple years after 911. 

Part of the ritual is to spill one drop of wine from our cups for each plague the Egyptians had to suffer for Pharaoh's intransigence before he finally let us go. We cannot be oblivious to any harm to any people, even our enemies.

When the kids ask why this night is different from all other nights and why we enact such an elaborate drama during a family dinner, we must explain, "This is important; I want you to know what God did for me when he brought me out of Egypt: I was a slave, and now I am free."

The story goes on through the trek across Sinai, disgraceful golden calf debauchery, the delivery of Torah, the gift of the Sabbath, and arrival at the promised land. There are so many lessons in Passover. Some families will elaborate on these lessons for most of the night, and others will edit things and get to dinner. The religion is an awesome, almost incalculable reservoir of human beauty and understanding.

But only a day before Passover this year, I sat in a legal conference room at EMHC with Gus, the "high-maintenance patient" I've worked with for years, Dr. Gill, the failure at medicine, Joe "dumb-as-basalt" Basso, a young blonde nurse named Tim, and an old hag psychologist, Dr. Ronnett. A plague threatens to cause suffering among these plantation overseers in Illinois. Their bosses' lawyers had successfully limited the task of defending against a certain kind of litigation for decades, but due to particular circumstances in Gus' case, that task may become onerous and expensive. It will be a plague, I think.  

I mentioned Passover to Vik Gill, Margarete Ronnett, Joe Basso and Nurse Tim yesterday because it's time for the psychiatric Pharaoh to let slaves like Gus leave Egypt. I threatened  these guys with this plague: a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The masters up in the big house will not be happy if such a petition is not quickly and easily dismissed.

Suddenly the masters may have to zealously defend habeas petitions because the overseers, by their admissions and omissions in Gus' case, rendered the processes of forensic mental health defective in several aspects required by law. They inadvertently proved that however lawful an original commitment may be, a slave may be constitutionally entitled to sudden, expedited discharge. And it's not only Gus: many psychiatric slaves are in the same situation. The plantations are losing control.

So I might spill an eleventh drop of wine from my cup tonight. I should not celebrate my freedom in complete disregard for its costs to others.