A couple months ago I outlined the case of a client whom I called Billy. His motion for pass privileges was recently granted by the court, despite the objections of the State and the psychiatric expert who said Billy should never get any privileges at all until he takes meds.
Of course, the expert tried to say things like... Billy lacked insight into his mental illness, Billy was refusing treatment, etc., etc. But everyone knew perfectly well, that all she really meant was, unless and until Billy caves, and sucks up to us and convinces us that he truly believes psychotropic drugs help him and treat his illness - well, he'll just never go anywhere.
This became obvious when the psychiatrist admitted under cross examination that the standard of practice in psychiatry was supposed to be determined by results from scientific studies, none of which she had ever read. The State tried to make a point that academic psychiatry and research were, after all, less important than forensic psychiatry, which is for criminals and doesn't need to consider any science. But it was too late.
Billy's judge sustained various objections to my cross examination of the psychiatrist. He noted that she was just saying, well, Billy is a special kind of paranoid schizophrenic because he had committed a brutal murder, and therefore maybe he should be kept on drugs for the safety of the community. Really, the judge's comments often seemed like he was making the State's case.
But after several hearings, the judge said he wanted to think it over. When his decision was announced, Billy won.
I think this judge just wasn't buying into the whole orthodox psychiatric viewpoint any more. He heard the evidence in this case, and began to doubt if severe mental illness is really any known brain disorder or disease after all. His decision certainly was that Billy need not take the drugs just to have a supervised off-grounds pass privilege. And that, despite what the psychiatric "expert" swore to.
I was encouraged.
Monday, January 21, 2013
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Lloyd Sederer, psychiatry and violent crime
The forced-drugging crowd think they can make hay with the Sandy Hook shootings. New York's director of Mental Health wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed about what he calls the tragedy of mental health law.
Lloyd I. Sederer, M.D., thinks the tragedy is that mental health law doesn't work to protect communities. Well, guess what? It never has and never, ever will. The real "tragedy of mental health law" is that any state psychiatry exists in the first place.
Our version of this monstrosity was probably generated back in the 1950's by an apparently humane consideration: "Maybe instead of just punishing these people who do terrible things, we can fix them."
Of course, fixing people meant mechanically somehow, like fiddling with their brain chemistry, because people were, after all, understood to be just mechanisms....
Of course, fixing people meant mechanically somehow, like fiddling with their brain chemistry, because people were, after all, understood to be just mechanisms....
It seems that any social institution based on a fundamental misconception will progress through predictable phases, from inspirational creation through ever more onerous work, confusion, complexity, enforcement, incomprehension, ultimately arriving as a nightmare, in dark and tragic farce.
One of the most frightening examples of Orwellian "newspeak" I've seen in a long time, is Lloyd Sederer's call for "user-driven design" of mental health services. User-driven, in the context of the easier forced treatment regime which Sederer favors, must be when patients become pieces of burning fuel to drive roaring combustion in the engine of state psychiatry, producing nothing, taking society precisely nowhere, but deafening and blackening the soul.
Sederer cynically complains that law plays a more prominent role in psychiatry than in any other medical specialty. But psychiatry is more an arm of the law than it is a real medical specialty. Psychiatrists themselves wanted it that way and planned it, beginning at least as early as the 1940's. And without such a prominent role of law - that would be without involuntary commitment or forced treatment, and without the insanity defense excuse for criminal acts - psychiatry would have a much-reduced presence in society or none at all. As Thomas Szasz often suggested, it might just wither away.
The claim that serious mental illness makes it difficult for patients to assess their own need for treatment is a veiled statement of the ultimate "anosognosia" myth which serves only to make the Hippocratic Oath irrelevant and medicine a blind servant of a totalitarian state.
What really makes it difficult for patients to assess their own needs is psychiatric lies about the nature of mental illness itself, and about the risks and benefits of dangerous drugs, electroshock and other brutal methods of control merely disguised as "treatment".
The rules and procedures for patient protection do not exceed common sense so much as they exceed all comprehension. But that's not because they are outdated and unnecessary. It's because they're a product of constant back-and-forth efforts in evasion, mitigation, alteration and restoration over many decades, as the original, fundamental misconception has gradually produced incontrovertible empirical proof that the system will just never work.
What we need to do is give it the hell up. We can help our fellow man and make our communities safer, but never by "diagnosing" people with fake diseases and drugging them into disability.
We can start with total abolition of involuntary "hospitalization" and "treatment", and the insanity defense.
Only when we erect a wall of separation between psychiatry and the state will the tragedy of mental health law be over.
What really makes it difficult for patients to assess their own needs is psychiatric lies about the nature of mental illness itself, and about the risks and benefits of dangerous drugs, electroshock and other brutal methods of control merely disguised as "treatment".
The rules and procedures for patient protection do not exceed common sense so much as they exceed all comprehension. But that's not because they are outdated and unnecessary. It's because they're a product of constant back-and-forth efforts in evasion, mitigation, alteration and restoration over many decades, as the original, fundamental misconception has gradually produced incontrovertible empirical proof that the system will just never work.
What we need to do is give it the hell up. We can help our fellow man and make our communities safer, but never by "diagnosing" people with fake diseases and drugging them into disability.
We can start with total abolition of involuntary "hospitalization" and "treatment", and the insanity defense.
Only when we erect a wall of separation between psychiatry and the state will the tragedy of mental health law be over.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Proposed change in the Illinois Mental Health Code
(I'm not writing this as a bill yet, just want to get it written down so I don't forget...)
State law currently defines psychotropic medication:
State law currently defines psychotropic medication:
(405 ILCS 5/1-121.1) (from Ch. 91 1/2, par. 1-121.1) Sec. 1-121.1. "Psychotropic medication" means medication whose use for antipsychotic, antidepressant, antimanic, antianxiety, behavioral modification or behavioral management purposes is listed in AMA Drug Evaluations, latest edition, or Physician's Desk Reference, latest edition, or which are administered for any of these purposes. For the purposes of Sections 2-107, 2-107.1, and 2-107.2 of this Act, "psychotropic medication" also includes those tests and related procedures that are essential for the safe and effective administration of a psychotropic medication. (Source: P.A. 89-439, eff. 6-1-96.)
"Psychotropic medication" means any drug which is used for antipsychotic, antidepressant, antimanic or antianxiety purposes, and which is listed in AMA Drug Evaluations, latest edition, or Physician's Desk Reference, latest edition. For the purposes of Sections 2-107, 2-107.1, and 2-107.2 of this Act, "psychotropic medication" also includes those tests and related procedures that are essential for the safe and effective administration of a psychotropic medication.
"Psychotropic medication" does not include purely experimental drugs, or drugs which present such risks that, in the opinion of a reasonable, fully-informed patient, those risks would not be outweighed by any likely benefits.
The modification or management of behavior by any individual or agency with coercive authority under the law is a non-medical purpose. Drugs used only for non-medical purposes are not included in the definition of "psychotropic medication".
Monday, November 19, 2012
Jubilant email from a heroic crusader
Subject: KABLAM!!! TEENSCREEN DEAD! KAPOW!!!
Date: Nov 19, 2012 8:56 AM
TeenScreen is dead, according to their website TeenScreen.org.
Their announcement: "We are sorry to inform you that the TeenScreen National Center will be winding down its program at the end of this year. Accordingly, we will no longer train or register new programs. We will provide updates on the TeenScreen website for a limited time with respect to any other screening programs of which we become aware.”
TeenScreen was a huge program for psychiatrists. This was their massive plan intended to infiltrate every school and mentally screen every kid in the United States. It was THE program the psychs were counting on to get their hands on every child in America - so that the next generation would all become their victims.
And now - it is dead.
We dealt TeenScreen various fatal death blows from which it never recovered and that ultimately led to its demise. We won the internet fight. OnGoogle we never relinquished the top 2 or 3 spot when searching for TeenScreen. We defeated TeenScreen on YouTube by never giving up the #1 spot when searching for TeenScreen. We worked with the press across the country and had a massive number of stories published. We informed schools who booted it out. This all spawned coast to coast demonstrations.
TeenScreen was a very controversial national so-called "diagnostic psychiatric service", aka suicide survey; done on children who were then referred to psychiatric treatment. The evidence suggests that the objective of the psychiatrists who designed TeenScreen was to place children so selected on psychotropic drugs.
TeenScreen was originally investigated and exposed by PsychSearch.net when there was ZERO negative information on the net. We were informed about TeenScreen by Sylvia DeWall, a Clearwater event promoter who was alarmed after seeing a TV news report, where the Florida Mental Health Institute was attempting to implement TeenScreen in Pinellas County schools. DeWall’s alarm was justified.
TeenScreen’s pharma connected Director Laurie Flynn had her sights set on Pinellas’ kids. This was revealed in one of Flynn’s emails to a Florida official, which PsychSearch.net obtained in a public records request: “I’m looking for a horse to ride here!” and “I need to get some kids screened”. PsychSearch.net investigated and the resulting expose’ led to a firestorm of emails to Pinellas County school district officials from concerned citizens protesting TeenScreen. This resulted in Tampa Tribune and St. Petersburg Times stories and the Pinellas County school board booting TeenScreen out.
The controversy was then off to the races as it exploded on the World Wide Web and spread across the country spawning media across the country as school after school rejected TeenScreen. We lost track of how many reporters we provided documentation and quotes to.
Recently we have been tracking the departures of TeenScreen’s directors Laurie Flynn and Leslie McGuire. One source close to the scene said that Flynn and McGuire left with disagreements over policy issues. The source said that psychiatrist Mark Olfson was the “interim director” who we discovered only showed up once a week on Wednesdays for one hour!
What has been happening at TeenScreen has been hush-hush. Even one of TeenScreen's National Advisory Council members, psychiatrist Joe English told us. "Your e-mail is the first information I have on what may have happened here."
Thanks to all of those Clearwater area folks who were there in the beginning, went to battle and kicked butt! See Video
Thanks goes to the legal team at the Rutherford Institute, writer Evelyn Pringle, the Eagle Forum and all those groups from many walks of life, nationwide, who fought this.
Special thanks goes to those I call the TeenScreen Dream Team, Sandra Lucas in Salt Lake City, who offered public relations guidance and political strategy; Doyle Mills, Clearwater, Fl who commanded the Letters to the Editor Attack Force (LEAF) and wrote articles himself and Sue Weibert, Buffalo, New York, investigator and google-fu master.
And a very special thank you to my good friends Michael and Teresa Rhoades, who fought with the fury you would expect from parents whose child was mentally screened without their permission.
We have never really tooted our own horn, but today, for your enjoyment, we solemnly play Taps. (wink wink)
To the psychiatric adversaries in our path – get a head start on your counterparts - surrender now! J
I am not kidding.
Sincerely,
Ken Kramer
Researcher
PsychSearch.net
PsychSearch.net
P.S. If you now believe PsychSearch.net is worthy of your support, click the below red button. If we haven't won your confidence yet, perhaps you will be convinced
when you hear very soon what else has been accomplished!
Trashing Dear Abby (again)
Jeanne Phillips, 70-year-old daughter of the original Abigail Van Buren, Pauline Phillips, has always told almost everyone who writes to her to see a psychiatrist as the "common-sense" solution to whatever problem they are having.
Today, her omnipresent Dear Abby column inadvertently reveals the obnoxious agenda of all psychiatric shills, particularly so-called "family support" groups like NAMI.
Abby sagely suggests to a writer she calls "Hearing Voices in Illinois" that the only reason her family might think she doesn't need psych drugs is that they're "reluctant to admit" what Hearing's psych would confirm -- that in fact, there is a mental illness in the family.
In other words, if the family weren't so irrationally prejudiced against people with diseases of the brain as opposed to the heart, kidney or stomach, then they'd surely see the obvious logic of taking drugs which reduce your life expectancy by twenty-five years and do virtually nothing to help you.
Abby speculates that Hearing's nephew could go online to research mental illness since he is gifted. She presumes that this gifted nephew will clearly see the truth -- that the orthodox, hyper-medicalized view of all human problems absolutely must rule.
Families are only to be respected when they tell people to take psych drugs. If they tell people not to get "treatment" then they're wrong, and they deserve no respect. That's the way NAMI has always operated. Today's Dear Abby just takes the implication to a more obvious, blatant and pedestrian level.
I could just laugh at something so utterly stupid as Dear Abby. Jeanne Phillips is really so out of touch with the issues she's writing about that I have to wonder where she is in time, and why anybody pays her anymore. Her readers are certainly smarter than she is -- they've heard about black box warnings, billions in judgements for false advertising and fraud, etc.... haven't they?
This "most popular and widely syndicated column in the world" has the common sense of a late-night TV commercial and the youthful perspective of ... someone about Jeanne Phillips' age!
But people are stupid. Maybe such destructive falsehood should be kept out of the mass media for the protection of the public.
Today, her omnipresent Dear Abby column inadvertently reveals the obnoxious agenda of all psychiatric shills, particularly so-called "family support" groups like NAMI.
Abby sagely suggests to a writer she calls "Hearing Voices in Illinois" that the only reason her family might think she doesn't need psych drugs is that they're "reluctant to admit" what Hearing's psych would confirm -- that in fact, there is a mental illness in the family.
In other words, if the family weren't so irrationally prejudiced against people with diseases of the brain as opposed to the heart, kidney or stomach, then they'd surely see the obvious logic of taking drugs which reduce your life expectancy by twenty-five years and do virtually nothing to help you.
Abby speculates that Hearing's nephew could go online to research mental illness since he is gifted. She presumes that this gifted nephew will clearly see the truth -- that the orthodox, hyper-medicalized view of all human problems absolutely must rule.
Families are only to be respected when they tell people to take psych drugs. If they tell people not to get "treatment" then they're wrong, and they deserve no respect. That's the way NAMI has always operated. Today's Dear Abby just takes the implication to a more obvious, blatant and pedestrian level.
I could just laugh at something so utterly stupid as Dear Abby. Jeanne Phillips is really so out of touch with the issues she's writing about that I have to wonder where she is in time, and why anybody pays her anymore. Her readers are certainly smarter than she is -- they've heard about black box warnings, billions in judgements for false advertising and fraud, etc.... haven't they?
This "most popular and widely syndicated column in the world" has the common sense of a late-night TV commercial and the youthful perspective of ... someone about Jeanne Phillips' age!
But people are stupid. Maybe such destructive falsehood should be kept out of the mass media for the protection of the public.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Two cases (discussion)
I was down at 26th & California today to pick up a transcript of Dr. Watson's testimony in Billy's case. When I walked into the courthouse, there was a small demonstration (3 or 4 people) out in front.
One guy had a flag and a megaphone, but in my rush I did not recognize his cause for protest. His voice was remarkable, however, with a cadence almost Martin-Luther-King-like.
When I left the courthouse, the demonstrator was still there, yelling over his megaphone and waving the flag. I remarked to someone walking by that he had a great voice, and got the response, "Yeah, but he talks the wrong shit."
I wasn't quick enough, so I missed the opportunity to paraphrase William Munny, my all-time favorite Clint Eastwood character: We all talk the wrong shit, kid.
Maybe we all helped put both Billy and Johnny in the nuthouse. After all, Billy murdered somebody, and Johnny tore up too much furniture in the middle of the night. So something had to be done with both of them, and the psychs are convenient "experts". Who wouldn't wish for a clean, merciful, medical solution to stuff like this?
The problem is, that clean, merciful, medical solution is a delusion.
If Billy had gone along with the state plan, he'd be taking antipsychotic medications just because his psych wanted him to, even though it didn't do anything but disable him. He would be more dangerous and less able to ever contribute to society again under his own steam. That is definitely not what the taxpayers want, nor what the Illinois Department of Human Services advertises.
If Johnny had bought into his psych "diagnosis" he'd be on drugs, too. He be a mental health consumer for life, chronically mentally ill, a confirmed victim, with every excuse to fail his family. His daughters would worry about genetic risk of mental illness. That's definitely not the result Johnny's parents were after when they called the police, nor any advantage of paying medical insurance premiums up-to-date.
We will have to walk and talk with our own crazy people, not just give them away to experts. Otherwise we will all be slaves.
Or at best, we'll sure be talking the wrong shit.
One guy had a flag and a megaphone, but in my rush I did not recognize his cause for protest. His voice was remarkable, however, with a cadence almost Martin-Luther-King-like.
When I left the courthouse, the demonstrator was still there, yelling over his megaphone and waving the flag. I remarked to someone walking by that he had a great voice, and got the response, "Yeah, but he talks the wrong shit."
I wasn't quick enough, so I missed the opportunity to paraphrase William Munny, my all-time favorite Clint Eastwood character: We all talk the wrong shit, kid.
Maybe we all helped put both Billy and Johnny in the nuthouse. After all, Billy murdered somebody, and Johnny tore up too much furniture in the middle of the night. So something had to be done with both of them, and the psychs are convenient "experts". Who wouldn't wish for a clean, merciful, medical solution to stuff like this?
The problem is, that clean, merciful, medical solution is a delusion.
If Billy had gone along with the state plan, he'd be taking antipsychotic medications just because his psych wanted him to, even though it didn't do anything but disable him. He would be more dangerous and less able to ever contribute to society again under his own steam. That is definitely not what the taxpayers want, nor what the Illinois Department of Human Services advertises.
If Johnny had bought into his psych "diagnosis" he'd be on drugs, too. He be a mental health consumer for life, chronically mentally ill, a confirmed victim, with every excuse to fail his family. His daughters would worry about genetic risk of mental illness. That's definitely not the result Johnny's parents were after when they called the police, nor any advantage of paying medical insurance premiums up-to-date.
We will have to walk and talk with our own crazy people, not just give them away to experts. Otherwise we will all be slaves.
Or at best, we'll sure be talking the wrong shit.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Two cases (continued)
I'll call my client in the second case Johnny.
Johnny was having business problems, and stress at home due to his basement flooding repeatedly. He had also decided to get himself off Ambien, which he worried he had become physically dependant upon.
Johnny's family actually did not know about the Ambien. When he began getting up in the middle of the night to battle mice and bugs which he believed were infesting the furniture, they figured he was having a psychotic break. Finally one morning the police were called and Johnny was packed off to a local emergency room. Although he had no previous psychiatric issues, the behavioral health in-take coordinator (after scouting out the insurance coverage) assured everyone that Johnny was in serious need of treatment whether he wanted any or not. She coerced family members to re-write their initial affidavits and add statements about fears of suicide.
Johnny had never been violent or suicidal in his life. He was not violent that morning, and he had no thoughts of suicide whatsoever. No matter, with just the right words on a piece of paper, the in-take coordinator had her paying involuntary patient. Johnny was committed and drugged into insensibility.
After a few days Johnny got out. But the hospital was paid in full by his insurance provider, even though he called them and specifically ordered them never to pay a single dime. Johnny also had a new label, "bipolar", which would be with him for life. After several days of being constantly asked about suicide and surrounded by people who were suicidal, he had actually become slightly obsessed by the idea.
After a year Johnny was pretty well back to normal. He had stopped all psych meds, stopped seeing "counselors", and pried various records out of the hospital, which convinced him that the in-take coordinator and others had broken the law and committed various torts. It took awhile for him to reconcile with his family, but he finally decided not to make them defendants in the lawsuit he intends to file.
Johnny remains outraged by what was done to him. He was assaulted, insulted, falsely imprisoned, dehumanized. He is determined to get justice. The idea of just forgetting about it is contrary to any sense of legitimate society or self respect.
I met with Johnny and his family. Nobody believes that what happened was OK. They are all horrified by the actions of the so-called "mental health system" and happy to tell anyone who asks to stay as far away from psychiatrists as they possibly can.
(To be continued...)
Johnny was having business problems, and stress at home due to his basement flooding repeatedly. He had also decided to get himself off Ambien, which he worried he had become physically dependant upon.
Johnny's family actually did not know about the Ambien. When he began getting up in the middle of the night to battle mice and bugs which he believed were infesting the furniture, they figured he was having a psychotic break. Finally one morning the police were called and Johnny was packed off to a local emergency room. Although he had no previous psychiatric issues, the behavioral health in-take coordinator (after scouting out the insurance coverage) assured everyone that Johnny was in serious need of treatment whether he wanted any or not. She coerced family members to re-write their initial affidavits and add statements about fears of suicide.
Johnny had never been violent or suicidal in his life. He was not violent that morning, and he had no thoughts of suicide whatsoever. No matter, with just the right words on a piece of paper, the in-take coordinator had her paying involuntary patient. Johnny was committed and drugged into insensibility.
After a few days Johnny got out. But the hospital was paid in full by his insurance provider, even though he called them and specifically ordered them never to pay a single dime. Johnny also had a new label, "bipolar", which would be with him for life. After several days of being constantly asked about suicide and surrounded by people who were suicidal, he had actually become slightly obsessed by the idea.
After a year Johnny was pretty well back to normal. He had stopped all psych meds, stopped seeing "counselors", and pried various records out of the hospital, which convinced him that the in-take coordinator and others had broken the law and committed various torts. It took awhile for him to reconcile with his family, but he finally decided not to make them defendants in the lawsuit he intends to file.
Johnny remains outraged by what was done to him. He was assaulted, insulted, falsely imprisoned, dehumanized. He is determined to get justice. The idea of just forgetting about it is contrary to any sense of legitimate society or self respect.
I met with Johnny and his family. Nobody believes that what happened was OK. They are all horrified by the actions of the so-called "mental health system" and happy to tell anyone who asks to stay as far away from psychiatrists as they possibly can.
(To be continued...)
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