A social worker on N Unit named Sebin at DSH (remember what the acronym stands for — it was originally all about L Unit!) has been going around telling patients not to sign anything attesting to true facts which have been omitted from or altered (to become false) in court reports about patients. One of my own favorite mini-causes, within the larger cause of abolition, has long been this actual perjury, committed habitually and continuously at Elgin Mental Health Center and every other state psychiatric facility in Illinois.
Judges rely on the truth and accuracy of the information that comes to them in court reports. These documents are filed as under oath. Of course, nobody easily believes doctors would lie about the details of their patients’ conditions and progress. What they don’t understand is that perhaps psychiatrists are in a sense not real doctors. And state psychiatrists who coerce people into accepting unwanted “treatment” are worse — they’re plantation overseers or gangsters.
The “facts” in court reports are mostly taken from daily progress notes or other reports (e.g., incident reports, security reports), written by staff who almost never end up under oath in court. I have gone out of my way several times to get low level staff into court under oath, precisely because I can often prove they have made mistakes or lied in the paperwork which is supposed to be exempt from hearsay rules as reliable “medical records”.
What happens is, some evil sleaze ball like Richard Malis-with-malice tells a social worker, “Don’t write so much positive stuff about patient X, because it will make it more difficult for me to get an involuntary medication order!” Or a little Hitler like James Patrick Corcoran tells clinical staff, “Change the court report to say patient Y was verbally aggressive, or you’re going to lose your job!” People know they’re supposed to be truthful, but it’s not hard to push them, little by little, into corruption. When the whole setting is as wrong as psychiatric slavery to begin with, everyone who gets their pay from the master quickly accommodates their “ethics” to the demands of whoever holds a whip just up the bureaucratic ladder.
Sebin’s social worker supervisor on N Unit is an experienced and well-intended staff member named Mario Rabaza. It’s hard for me to imagine that Mario would have been so stupid as to organize what can surely be portrayed later as evidence of a cover-up.
The question that comes to my mind is, who is going around Mario and using Sebin to make patients think they have no recourse and will be in danger of retribution if they tell the truth? Who’s really setting Sebin up to take the fall?
Friday, February 21, 2020
Sunday, February 16, 2020
Malis-with-malice, personality and moral reason
I recently heard that the psychiatrist Richard Malis-with-malice will soon no longer be in the employ of the Illinois Department of Human Services. It has long seemed over-obvious to me that an organization aspiring to provide services to humans should never tolerate a guy like him; but apparently IDHS is just coming around to that.
When the rumor came to me, I quickly checked to find out where Malis-with-malice will go from Elgin Mental Health Center. He’s the sort that I would not like to lose track of: there’s security only in knowing exactly where he is on a daily basis. It turns out Malis is just moving “across the street” to the Department of Corrections.
I told several people about this whom I thought might be interested. The comments came back along the lines of, “Yes, that makes sense — he belongs in the DOC in more ways than one!” and “He’ll be safe with his own kind.”
I’ve mentioned Malis-with-malice in several blog posts. He’s a fanatic who has had a terrible impact on one client of mine in particular. Until fairly recently, James was a healthy 70-year-old who loved keeping up with much younger men on the basketball court. Now at 74, he can’t get out of his wheel chair, and there’s no way it’s not Richard Malis’ fault. There’s no way Malis didn’t do this to James on purpose, to punish him for recovering from Schizophrenia without drugs.
Of course, there’s not supposed to be any issue or purpose of punishment in a “hospital” — James is only supposed to be at EMHC to be helped, “treated” for any remaining mental illness like what supposedly caused his insanity, which was why the court found him not guilty 30-some-odd yeas ago. It’s a huge lie, of course. Nobody has any useful medical explanation for why he committed his crime; and medicine has not invented any improvement over merely punishing him.
A staffing I attended the same day I found out about Malis-with-malice moving over to DOC was instructive regarding this huge lie. My client, whom I’ll call Jack, has been stable and asymptomatic for major mental illness for many years. But nobody wants to go along with a conditional release because they think he may have “personality problems” or slightly “questionable moral reasoning”. He’s in his fifties now, and not really amenable to the idea that the clinicians at EMHC know how to “treat” his personality or his morality. He thinks that sounds like pure bullshit, and he’s right.
The big push at the moment is to get Jack to enroll in a program called MRT. It stands for Moral Reconation Therapy, which is the trademarked innovation of Correctional Counseling, Inc., a Germantown, TN based company. As the corporate name may imply, MRT was conceived as a process for rehabilitating criminals. A website explanation of why it works reads:
MRT essentially tells criminals that their problems are caused by lying, cheating, stealing, victimizing and blaming other people, and the fact that they’re locked up is entirely their own fault.
Psychiatry essentially tells NGRI acquittees that their brain disorder is not their fault, it’s genetics or chemistry after all, and they just need the drug (or shock) cure in the hospital to fix it.
So... do we make people change their behavior, or do we cure them? Are they bad, or mad? Should we invest in governmental departments of corrections, or human services? These are very different perspectives and social strategies.
The fact that most of us who pay taxes to support both of them simultaneously don’t really ever think about the difference... may shed some light on how Richard Malis-with-malice can just be quietly moved across the street.
What about investigating and charging him for crimes against humanity?
When the rumor came to me, I quickly checked to find out where Malis-with-malice will go from Elgin Mental Health Center. He’s the sort that I would not like to lose track of: there’s security only in knowing exactly where he is on a daily basis. It turns out Malis is just moving “across the street” to the Department of Corrections.
I told several people about this whom I thought might be interested. The comments came back along the lines of, “Yes, that makes sense — he belongs in the DOC in more ways than one!” and “He’ll be safe with his own kind.”
I’ve mentioned Malis-with-malice in several blog posts. He’s a fanatic who has had a terrible impact on one client of mine in particular. Until fairly recently, James was a healthy 70-year-old who loved keeping up with much younger men on the basketball court. Now at 74, he can’t get out of his wheel chair, and there’s no way it’s not Richard Malis’ fault. There’s no way Malis didn’t do this to James on purpose, to punish him for recovering from Schizophrenia without drugs.
Of course, there’s not supposed to be any issue or purpose of punishment in a “hospital” — James is only supposed to be at EMHC to be helped, “treated” for any remaining mental illness like what supposedly caused his insanity, which was why the court found him not guilty 30-some-odd yeas ago. It’s a huge lie, of course. Nobody has any useful medical explanation for why he committed his crime; and medicine has not invented any improvement over merely punishing him.
A staffing I attended the same day I found out about Malis-with-malice moving over to DOC was instructive regarding this huge lie. My client, whom I’ll call Jack, has been stable and asymptomatic for major mental illness for many years. But nobody wants to go along with a conditional release because they think he may have “personality problems” or slightly “questionable moral reasoning”. He’s in his fifties now, and not really amenable to the idea that the clinicians at EMHC know how to “treat” his personality or his morality. He thinks that sounds like pure bullshit, and he’s right.
The big push at the moment is to get Jack to enroll in a program called MRT. It stands for Moral Reconation Therapy, which is the trademarked innovation of Correctional Counseling, Inc., a Germantown, TN based company. As the corporate name may imply, MRT was conceived as a process for rehabilitating criminals. A website explanation of why it works reads:
“Moral reasoning is how people make decisions about what they should or should not do in a given situation. If judgments about right and wrong are made from low levels of moral reasoning, then counseling, job skills training, and punishment will have little long-lasting impact on behavior.
“Offenders must be confronted with the consequences of their behavior and the effects it has on their family, friends, and community. MRT addresses beliefs and reasoning. It is designed to alter how clients think and make judgments about what is right and wrong.”In a previous blog post, I once noted that there is a conceptual conflict between the idea that someone is not guilty of a crime by reason of insanity caused by a medically diagnosable and treatable mental illness (theoretically a brain disease, such as anyone at Elgin Mental Health Center is supposed to have), and the idea that someone’s thinking and judgment can change or improve.
MRT essentially tells criminals that their problems are caused by lying, cheating, stealing, victimizing and blaming other people, and the fact that they’re locked up is entirely their own fault.
Psychiatry essentially tells NGRI acquittees that their brain disorder is not their fault, it’s genetics or chemistry after all, and they just need the drug (or shock) cure in the hospital to fix it.
So... do we make people change their behavior, or do we cure them? Are they bad, or mad? Should we invest in governmental departments of corrections, or human services? These are very different perspectives and social strategies.
The fact that most of us who pay taxes to support both of them simultaneously don’t really ever think about the difference... may shed some light on how Richard Malis-with-malice can just be quietly moved across the street.
What about investigating and charging him for crimes against humanity?
Tuesday, January 21, 2020
Research
SURVEY
Introduction and purpose.
It is often said that serious mental illnesses, e.g., depression, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia are a result of or caused by a “chemical imbalance” in the brain. While this idea seems likely to many people in Western cultures, it is in fact arbitrary and unscientific. Perhaps the best evidence of this comes from Ronald Pies, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University, Lecturer on Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and author of several leading textbooks on psychiatry and psychopharmacology. As one of America’s most eminent and prestigious psychiatrists, Pies has argued repeatedly since 2011, that the so-called “chemical imbalance” theory was always an urban legend, and it was not primarily promulgated by knowledgeable psychiatric experts.
Nevertheless, the urban legend of the chemical imbalance continues to thrive. There is considerable evidence that this idea is quite unhelpful for the development of rational public policies to advance scientific research, education, mental health, and juvenile and criminal justice.
This survey is intended to help sort out why an unhelpful idea continues to be so widely and frequently repeated. It should be directed to celebrities, thought leaders and influencers who have been noticed to repeat or refer to the “chemical imbalance” explanation of mental illness in recent years. We may publish the results, however we will not identify any individual participants in the survey.
We believe that anyone who participates will find the experience to be self enlightening and personally useful.
Questions.
1.) Do you believe that such problems as mental illness, depression, anxiety or ADHD are related to a chemical imbalance in the brain?
2.) Does treatment for any of these problems consist in some measure of correcting a chemical imbalance?
Then, if so:
3.) How do you know about this?
4.) Who first told you or suggested to you that a chemical imbalance in the brain causes mental/emotional/behavioral problems?
5.) When did that person or source first tell you about this?
6.) Where were you when that person or source first suggested this to you?
7.) What exactly was said (as best you can recall)?
8.) Who else told you or suggested to you that a chemical imbalance in the brain causes mental/emotional/behavioral problems?
9.) Repeat when? where? and what exactly? for this person or source.
Continue:
10.) Recall other persons or sources who told you or suggested that a chemical imbalance in the brain causes mental/emotional/behavioral problems, as well as when, where, and any other details, for as long as you find it interesting. If anything occurs to you that you hadn’t thought of before, or if you remember something surprising or something that seems especially significant, please make a note of it!
Introduction and purpose.
It is often said that serious mental illnesses, e.g., depression, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia are a result of or caused by a “chemical imbalance” in the brain. While this idea seems likely to many people in Western cultures, it is in fact arbitrary and unscientific. Perhaps the best evidence of this comes from Ronald Pies, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University, Lecturer on Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and author of several leading textbooks on psychiatry and psychopharmacology. As one of America’s most eminent and prestigious psychiatrists, Pies has argued repeatedly since 2011, that the so-called “chemical imbalance” theory was always an urban legend, and it was not primarily promulgated by knowledgeable psychiatric experts.
Nevertheless, the urban legend of the chemical imbalance continues to thrive. There is considerable evidence that this idea is quite unhelpful for the development of rational public policies to advance scientific research, education, mental health, and juvenile and criminal justice.
This survey is intended to help sort out why an unhelpful idea continues to be so widely and frequently repeated. It should be directed to celebrities, thought leaders and influencers who have been noticed to repeat or refer to the “chemical imbalance” explanation of mental illness in recent years. We may publish the results, however we will not identify any individual participants in the survey.
We believe that anyone who participates will find the experience to be self enlightening and personally useful.
Questions.
1.) Do you believe that such problems as mental illness, depression, anxiety or ADHD are related to a chemical imbalance in the brain?
2.) Does treatment for any of these problems consist in some measure of correcting a chemical imbalance?
Then, if so:
3.) How do you know about this?
4.) Who first told you or suggested to you that a chemical imbalance in the brain causes mental/emotional/behavioral problems?
5.) When did that person or source first tell you about this?
6.) Where were you when that person or source first suggested this to you?
7.) What exactly was said (as best you can recall)?
8.) Who else told you or suggested to you that a chemical imbalance in the brain causes mental/emotional/behavioral problems?
9.) Repeat when? where? and what exactly? for this person or source.
Continue:
10.) Recall other persons or sources who told you or suggested that a chemical imbalance in the brain causes mental/emotional/behavioral problems, as well as when, where, and any other details, for as long as you find it interesting. If anything occurs to you that you hadn’t thought of before, or if you remember something surprising or something that seems especially significant, please make a note of it!
Wednesday, January 8, 2020
CORRUPTION
This will be very short, because I’m busy as hell suing corrupt employees (overseers) in the Illinois Department of Human Services’ psychiatric slave plantation system...
A GREAT article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/01/08/global-health-care-corruption.aspx
Highly, highly, HIGHLY recommended reading. Every point applies more to Elgin Mental Health Center, James Patrick Corcoran, Richard Malis, Syed Hussain, et al., than to any other examples cited by the author, Dr. Mercola (an Illinois licensed physician). It’s almost startling to me that forensic psychiatry is not mentioned, and these entities are not named!
A GREAT article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/01/08/global-health-care-corruption.aspx
Highly, highly, HIGHLY recommended reading. Every point applies more to Elgin Mental Health Center, James Patrick Corcoran, Richard Malis, Syed Hussain, et al., than to any other examples cited by the author, Dr. Mercola (an Illinois licensed physician). It’s almost startling to me that forensic psychiatry is not mentioned, and these entities are not named!
Monday, January 6, 2020
WHAT SPIES KNOW (or so I’m told)
Happy New Year!
I was recently ruminating on a handful of apparently separate conceptual or artistic inputs, which I instinctively feel might relate to each other. I’ll try to make this coherent by the end of the article.
First input, The Morning Show.
I am SO ENTRANCED by this new, 10-episode Apple+ TV series! Before I started watching it, I was aware that it might have a “#MeToo” theme, and that made me think it would not be very interesting, there’s just been too much about that. My daughter claims that she predicted I would like it if I watched beyond the first two episodes, and she now says she told me so. (But of course there’s no way I ever remember that one of my children told me so!)
The series is promoted as, “An inside look into the people who help Americans wake up each day, exploring the challenges faced by the people who work in morning television.” It features big time stars, wonderful acting, and some of the best writing ever. The first season plot is about sexual abuse in the context of unbalanced power relationships.
The appeal for me is the realistic depiction of a common phenomenon. In high-powered, high-stress work environments, a tight-knit group of people may soon end up all having had sex with each other. (My wife says “all” is an exaggeration. Maybe, but not by much....) This always becomes a problem, because of course, the complicated relationships distract individuals from their jobs and their first loyalty to the purpose of the group. Thus rules, thus sexual morality, etc.
There’s an amazing scene, in Episode 4, I think, where the “independent investigator” and the new anchor are asking questions to get to the bottom of what happened, how the predatory behavior of a previous star on the show could have gone unchecked, what part the culture of the group may have played, etc. It becomes obvious that many people had known about what was going on. They could all pretend they didn’t know, and many of them had good reason to so pretend. The phrase uttered by one victim with much emotion was, simply: “Everybody knew.”
Second input, a Thomas Szasz quote: Understanding a person and coercing him are mutually antagonistic and incompatible functions and roles, and we all know it.
It seems to me that an implication of this is, sexual abuse or coerced “seduction” is not much fun for either person on either side of a power imbalance. A sexual relationship feels like understanding, a bodily understanding that’s often overwhelmingly wonderful. Any coercion involved, even subtle and complex coercion like what’s depicted in The Morning Show, would cut against understanding and dull the feeling. (So I relate the Szasz quote back to the TV series.)
Szasz was author of the most influential historic criticisms of psychiatry; however, he was obviously not a #MeToo spokesman. The quote was certainly aimed at coercive (“forensic”) mental treatment which yet requires understanding for any success if a human being is supposed to be helped. I.e.: any program for an individual’s mental/emotional/behavioral improvement must eschew coercion at all costs. This does not mean criminals or violent people shouldn’t be controlled. It only means we shouldn’t pretend our main purpose is to help them when it’s not. We shouldn’t give “help” a bad name.
The thing that happens if we pretend we’re helping people when we are really controlling them is, we build up entire corrupt and destructive bureaucracies like the Illinois Department of Human Services, which runs plantations using psychiatric slaves for about a billion dollars a year of the taxpayers’ money. People like James Corcoran, Richard Malis, Syed Hussain, Mark Roberson and others think patients are owned chattel: they don’t respect human rights, they don’t report abuse, they don’t take any responsibility or know anything.
I know many good people who work at Elgin Mental Health Center, Chicago Read Mental Health Center, Chester Mental Health Center, etc. They entered their profession at least partly because they wanted to help people. But they were confronted with the truth all too soon: understanding a person and coercing him are incompatible, and they all know it.
Third input, “Lake Shore Drive” song by Aliotta, Haynes & Jeremiah.
I recently instructed a friend from elsewhere, who needs to understand the unique importance of Chicago as culture, to listen to this song at least six times a week for a while. (I actually was driving south on Lake Shore Drive, heading into town, when I gave her this instruction. It was a glorious day, blue water on the driving side, so I spoke with inspired, natural authority!)
Many years ago, there was a party in my apartment overlooking Lake Shore Drive. Skip Haynes of Aliotta, Haynes & Jeremiah was there for some reason (I didn’t know him), snorting cocaine in my bathroom! Being enthusiastically opposed to drugs, this was an embarrassment to me, similar perhaps, to part of the lyrics of the song: ...slippin’ on by on LSD, Friday night trouble bound!
Alloying the natural beauty and the pure elation of driving south on the real Lake Shore Drive — the spectacular architectural wonderland of the city rising up as you come around the curve past Belmont Harbor — with such a spiritual atrocity as a psychedelic drug trip, is an example of the trademark psychiatric alloy, help with control. LSD was after all a psychiatric invention, and it is being pushed newly as “treatment” for depression, now that SSRI’s are such a proven failure. With no latest-and-greatest drug cure psychiatry could hardly claim to be a medical specialty.
That song came out when I was in college, young, dedicated to brown-eyed girls and saving the world, and wonderfully overwhelmed.
So... The Morning Show, Tom Szasz’s quote about coercion and understanding, and “Lake Shore Drive” coalesce into this feeling for me, that we humans are basically good creatures, sexy and creative; but we’re screwing things up and we must evolve. We must especially evolve as ourselves — without drugs, and for godsakes without psychiatric coercion.
I almost forgot... the reason for the title of this article. (Hmmm...)
I’m told that spies have to tie disparate things together to analyze situations. They have to love and hate, arbitrarily trust people to remain human and constantly distrust everyone to remain alive; they have to search for beauty and thrive on a daily breakfast of ugly. They have to know well what a person is, beyond or despite all brain science, all mechanics, and all force.
Watch the TV series, get an honest job, listen to the music. The sun shines fine in the morning time, tomorrow is another day.
I was recently ruminating on a handful of apparently separate conceptual or artistic inputs, which I instinctively feel might relate to each other. I’ll try to make this coherent by the end of the article.
First input, The Morning Show.
I am SO ENTRANCED by this new, 10-episode Apple+ TV series! Before I started watching it, I was aware that it might have a “#MeToo” theme, and that made me think it would not be very interesting, there’s just been too much about that. My daughter claims that she predicted I would like it if I watched beyond the first two episodes, and she now says she told me so. (But of course there’s no way I ever remember that one of my children told me so!)
The series is promoted as, “An inside look into the people who help Americans wake up each day, exploring the challenges faced by the people who work in morning television.” It features big time stars, wonderful acting, and some of the best writing ever. The first season plot is about sexual abuse in the context of unbalanced power relationships.
The appeal for me is the realistic depiction of a common phenomenon. In high-powered, high-stress work environments, a tight-knit group of people may soon end up all having had sex with each other. (My wife says “all” is an exaggeration. Maybe, but not by much....) This always becomes a problem, because of course, the complicated relationships distract individuals from their jobs and their first loyalty to the purpose of the group. Thus rules, thus sexual morality, etc.
There’s an amazing scene, in Episode 4, I think, where the “independent investigator” and the new anchor are asking questions to get to the bottom of what happened, how the predatory behavior of a previous star on the show could have gone unchecked, what part the culture of the group may have played, etc. It becomes obvious that many people had known about what was going on. They could all pretend they didn’t know, and many of them had good reason to so pretend. The phrase uttered by one victim with much emotion was, simply: “Everybody knew.”
Second input, a Thomas Szasz quote: Understanding a person and coercing him are mutually antagonistic and incompatible functions and roles, and we all know it.
It seems to me that an implication of this is, sexual abuse or coerced “seduction” is not much fun for either person on either side of a power imbalance. A sexual relationship feels like understanding, a bodily understanding that’s often overwhelmingly wonderful. Any coercion involved, even subtle and complex coercion like what’s depicted in The Morning Show, would cut against understanding and dull the feeling. (So I relate the Szasz quote back to the TV series.)
Szasz was author of the most influential historic criticisms of psychiatry; however, he was obviously not a #MeToo spokesman. The quote was certainly aimed at coercive (“forensic”) mental treatment which yet requires understanding for any success if a human being is supposed to be helped. I.e.: any program for an individual’s mental/emotional/behavioral improvement must eschew coercion at all costs. This does not mean criminals or violent people shouldn’t be controlled. It only means we shouldn’t pretend our main purpose is to help them when it’s not. We shouldn’t give “help” a bad name.
The thing that happens if we pretend we’re helping people when we are really controlling them is, we build up entire corrupt and destructive bureaucracies like the Illinois Department of Human Services, which runs plantations using psychiatric slaves for about a billion dollars a year of the taxpayers’ money. People like James Corcoran, Richard Malis, Syed Hussain, Mark Roberson and others think patients are owned chattel: they don’t respect human rights, they don’t report abuse, they don’t take any responsibility or know anything.
I know many good people who work at Elgin Mental Health Center, Chicago Read Mental Health Center, Chester Mental Health Center, etc. They entered their profession at least partly because they wanted to help people. But they were confronted with the truth all too soon: understanding a person and coercing him are incompatible, and they all know it.
Third input, “Lake Shore Drive” song by Aliotta, Haynes & Jeremiah.
I recently instructed a friend from elsewhere, who needs to understand the unique importance of Chicago as culture, to listen to this song at least six times a week for a while. (I actually was driving south on Lake Shore Drive, heading into town, when I gave her this instruction. It was a glorious day, blue water on the driving side, so I spoke with inspired, natural authority!)
Many years ago, there was a party in my apartment overlooking Lake Shore Drive. Skip Haynes of Aliotta, Haynes & Jeremiah was there for some reason (I didn’t know him), snorting cocaine in my bathroom! Being enthusiastically opposed to drugs, this was an embarrassment to me, similar perhaps, to part of the lyrics of the song: ...slippin’ on by on LSD, Friday night trouble bound!
Alloying the natural beauty and the pure elation of driving south on the real Lake Shore Drive — the spectacular architectural wonderland of the city rising up as you come around the curve past Belmont Harbor — with such a spiritual atrocity as a psychedelic drug trip, is an example of the trademark psychiatric alloy, help with control. LSD was after all a psychiatric invention, and it is being pushed newly as “treatment” for depression, now that SSRI’s are such a proven failure. With no latest-and-greatest drug cure psychiatry could hardly claim to be a medical specialty.
That song came out when I was in college, young, dedicated to brown-eyed girls and saving the world, and wonderfully overwhelmed.
So... The Morning Show, Tom Szasz’s quote about coercion and understanding, and “Lake Shore Drive” coalesce into this feeling for me, that we humans are basically good creatures, sexy and creative; but we’re screwing things up and we must evolve. We must especially evolve as ourselves — without drugs, and for godsakes without psychiatric coercion.
I almost forgot... the reason for the title of this article. (Hmmm...)
I’m told that spies have to tie disparate things together to analyze situations. They have to love and hate, arbitrarily trust people to remain human and constantly distrust everyone to remain alive; they have to search for beauty and thrive on a daily breakfast of ugly. They have to know well what a person is, beyond or despite all brain science, all mechanics, and all force.
Watch the TV series, get an honest job, listen to the music. The sun shines fine in the morning time, tomorrow is another day.
Saturday, November 30, 2019
Musings from the Madhouse Friday, April 25, 2003: Medical Miracle or Diagnostic Duplicity?
(This is the only guest blog article I’ve ever published here. I have not edited a single comma. C. Rodney Yoder wrote this over 16 years ago. He was released from custody only a year or two after he wrote the article, and he has been a fine and law-abiding citizen ever since. He pays his taxes, manages his several real estate properties, fixes things for people, and cares for his animals. Despite all the public resources spent over many years to call him “mentally ill” and to (unsuccessfully) force psychiatric “treatment” on him, he remains alive and well, usually in good humor, triumphant in the end, over the “psychoquacks” and slavers of the Illinois plantations.)
_________________________________
For nearly 12 years I languished at the Chester Mental Health Center. My captors asserted in sworn petitions for my involuntary commitment that I was “sick” with diseases dubbed “bipolar disorder, manic type, by history” and “paranoid personality disorder.” My captors further swore that the symptoms of these purportedly real diseases were my complaining about their deprivation of my liberty and attendant violations of my supposed rights as a so-called “mental patient.” No other “symptoms” were ever offered.
After about three years of having this alleged diagnosis inflicted on me, my captors then gave me a new diagnosis of “delusional disorder, persecutory type.” Their rationale was something like “His complaints against us should never be considered anything other than the gibberings of a lunatic and nobody should ever investigate what he is relating or intervene on such a fool’s errand. His complaints are symptoms of a disease and not a reflection of reality or any actual misconduct by the CMHC and its employees.” At the same time the ascription of “bipolar disorder” mysteriously vanished from my captors collection of fairy tales called a clinical chart.
At my trial in December handsomely paid so-called experts swore that I am afflicted with “delusional disorder” and that there was absolutely no question of this in their minds. When my lawyer cross-examined them he inquired about the diagnosis of “bipolar disorder” that was attributed to me by not just one or two potentially “mistaken” CMHC “clinicians” but by no less than over a dozen psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers. They all feigned ignorance and we had to dig through copies of their so-called “treatment” plans from 1991 through 1995 and show the signed diagnoses of all these supposed clinicians. No satisfactory explanation was ever given for this switch in diagnosis or abandonment of the first one.
Psychiatry claims that mental illness is a real and unmistakable disease akin to cancer or diabetes. Bipolar disorder and the psychoses, like delusional disorder, are further asserted to be actual diseases of a person’s brain. The so-called experts testifying at my trial were paid over $100,000 of Illinois’ tax dollars. Bipolar disorder, delusional disorder, schizophrenia and so on are alleged to be definable and different from each other.
Upon admission to the Elgin madhouse in April, a new psychiatrist, Syed Hussain, announced to me that I have bipolar disorder. I thanked him warmly for this confirmation of the utter quackery of psychiatry.
In the time it took for my Chester madhouse captors to drive me to another madhouse, I was miraculously cured of one real brain disease and came down with a different one. It’s a miracle. Or else it’s complete fraud.
Psychiatric diagnoses have nothing whatsoever to do with a person’s brain or body, neurotransmitters, chemical imbalances, vitamin deficiencies, or any other somatic component. If they did, psychoquacks would at least pretend to examine their victims’ bodies, brains, fluids, and so forth. Never, in 12 years of psychiatric incarceration during which my captors said they repeatedly “evaluated” me for mental illness, did anyone actually examine my brain or nervous system or even suggest doing so. The only person to ever do so was Nelson Borelli, MD of Northwestern University and his examination is recorded here on RodneyYoder.net. Dr. Borelli performed a standard neurological test and is 99% certain I have no diseases of my brain. He also performed a standard mental status examination and found no problems in my memory or functioning. This is something my government captors have never done. The examination is posted for the entire world to see, including my lying captors.
Although I continue to be deprived of my liberty, my new prison is at least infinitely more humane than my last. At Elgin madhouse I have not been subjected to any violence, guard engineered attacks, threats, or degradations. At Chester madhouse, I was daily demonized, ridiculed, threatened with violence, and dehumanized. I was regularly attacked by felons acting at the guards’ direction or with their permission. The guards told everyone that I was an outcast and they would never let me leave that facility. The Chester Mental Health Center is a renegade facility and the legislature of this state should immediately close its doors and disband the network of thugs running it before more lives are destroyed.
The diagnoses of psychiatry are never a description of a person but, rather, they are a disposition of the person. These labels declare that a person should be dealt with as garbage or as a child and be controlled, locked up, removed from the community, drugged, excluded, segregated and disenfranchised. Psychiatry lies when it claims to be involved in “helping” others. Psychiatry is a tool of social and political control and human garbage disposal.
For 12 years my rednecked torturers in Randolph County used psychoquackery to strip me of my precious freedom. When Governor Blagojovich intervened and ordered my removal from Chester madhouse, my captors tried to save face and deny this intervention by claiming they initiated it themselves in response to my supposed recovery from mental illness. Days later, the Randolph County State’s Attorney cooked up some bogus criminal charges against me. All the guards at the Chester madhouse boasted for years that if I were successful in procuring removal from their psychoprison, they’d persecute me with criminal prosecutions. They had to invent a crime to do so as self-defense is not a crime in Illinois and I will prove clearly that the alleged crime charged against me was an act of self-defense against actual criminals. Psychiatry was used to rip off 12 years of my liberty and when the fraud of it has now been fully exposed, my persecutors have resorted to the old standby of malicious criminal prosecution. It is time to bring these criminal psychoquacks to account in a court of law.
Monday, November 25, 2019
Federal Complaint in Case No. 19-cv-5078, Denzil Lawrence v. James P. Corcoran
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION
_________________________________________
)
DENZIL LAWRENCE, ) Case No. 19-cv-5078
)
Plaintiff, ) Hon. Mary M. Rowland,
) presiding
v. )
)
JAMES P. CORCORAN, individually, ) JURY DEMAND
as Statewide Forensic Medical )
Director for the Illinois )
Department of Human Services, )
Medical Administrator III, )
)
Defendant. )
________________________________________
COMPLAINT FOR DAMAGES
WITH REQUEST FOR TRIAL BY JURY
NOW COMES the Plaintiff, Denzil Lawrence,
by and through his attorneys, the Law Offices of Kretchmar and Cecala, P.C.,
with his complaint against the above-named Defendant and requests trial by
jury, and in support of his Complaint states as follows.
II. JURISDICTION AND
VENUE
1. This
action arises under the Constitution and laws of the United States, including
Article III, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, and it is brought pursuant to
42 U.S.C. §§ 1983 and 1988. The
jurisdiction of this Court is invoked pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331, 1343 and
2201.
2. This
case is instituted in the United States District Court for the Northern
District of Illinois pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §1391, as the judicial district in
which all relevant events and omissions occurred and in which Defendants
maintain offices and/or reside.
III. PARTIES
3. At
all times relevant hereto, Plaintiff Denzil Lawrence was a resident of the
State of Illinois and a legal resident of the United States of America.
4. At
all times relevant hereto, Defendant James Patrick Corcoran (“Defendant” or “Corcoran”) was a resident of the State of Illinois and a citizen
of the United States, and was acting under color of state law in his capacity
as an officer employed by Illinois Department of Human Services. Corcoran is sued individually for
actions and omissions taken under color law while working in his official
capacity as a senior administrator of Elgin Mental Health Center and/or
consultant in the Illinois Department of Human Services.
IV. BACKGROUND FACTUAL SUMMARY AND GENERAL
ALLEGATIONS BASED UPON INFORMATION AND REASONABLE BELIEF
5. Plaintiff
was adjudicated not guilty by reason of insanity (“NGRI”) in the Circuit Court
of Will County, on charges of arson and criminal damage to property in
February, 2018. He was had been committed
to the custody of the Illinois Department of Human Services (“IDHS”) for
inpatient mental health treatment, initially at Chester Mental Health Center (“CMHC”)
as unfit to stand trial on September 26, 2017, and subsequently beginning
August 18, 2018, he was held at Elgin Mental Health Center (EMHC). His Thiem
date (the date beyond which his involuntary NGRI commitment could not be
constitutionally continued) was March 20, 2019.
6. While
he was committed at CMHC, Plaintiff took psychotropic medications but
experienced unacceptable weight gain as a side effect. Ultimately, after researching risks and
benefits of medications, and after substantial remission of his earlier
psychotic symptoms, he made an informed choice to try to recover more fully
from mental illness without drugs.
He never ruled out medical treatment, including with psychotropic drugs,
in the event that he again became symptomatic. His psychiatrist at CMHC did not subsequently insist on
Plaintiff being prescribed any particular prescription medication.
7. When
he was transferred to EMHC in August 2018, he was assigned to the psychiatrist
Dr. Richard Malis. Dr. Malis
initially suggested (and the Plaintiff tentatively agreed) to take quetiapine,
an anti-psychotic drug, after giving him a “likely” diagnosis “in the spectrum
between delusional disorder and schizophrenia.”
8. By
early September 2018, the Plaintiff has lost confidence in Dr. Malis and
elected not to take psychotropic medications. He began to carefully document his disagreements with EMHC
staff, made various attempts to obtain relevant records, and filed many
specific written complaints with the Office of the Inspector General (OIG).
9. Despite
a handful of minor “incidents” involving disagreements with peers or staff on
the clinical units at EMHC, none of which involved any physical altercations or
violence, monthly Treatment Plan Reports consistently stated between August
2018 and March 2019, that the Plaintiff was making some progress, cooperating
with unit rules, and attending recommended therapy groups.
10. During
his entire time at EMHC, the Plaintiff was never considered to be in need of
emergency involuntary medication, restraint or seclusion, either for his own or
anyone else’s protection.
11. Throughout
his time at EMHC, up until mid-March of 2019, clinicians on the Plaintiff’s
treatment teams were collaborating with him to develop relapse prevention and
aftercare plans wherein he would be residing safely in the community with his
parents in Florida and receiving any needed outpatient psychiatric and
substance abuse treatment through a local Veterans’ Administration
facility. The expectation that he
would be leaving EMHC on his Thiem
date was entirely implicit and apparently unquestioned.
12. On
or about March 13, 2019, exactly one week before the Plaintiff had to be
released, unknown to the Plaintiff a decision was purportedly made by the
Plaintiff’s treatment team psychiatrist, Dr. Vikramjit Gill, M.D., to file an
involuntary civil commitment petition in Kane County Circuit Court (“Petition”),
alleging (in summary) that the Plaintiff was mentally ill and thereby dangerous
to himself or others, meeting the definition in Section 1-119 of the Illinois
Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Code, 405 ILCS 5/1-119, of a
“person subject to involuntary admission on an inpatient basis.”
13. Subsequently
on March 20, 2019, without the knowledge of the Plaintiff, some hours after the Plaintiff should legally have
been released, the threatened Petition was in fact filed, and the Plaintiff was
held at EMHC, rather than released.
14. Plaintiff’s
father had actually traveled to Elgin from Florida to pick him up and take him
home, fully expecting that his son would be released on his Thiem date of March 20, 2019, according
to the long-established plan.
15. The
Petition itself, alleging that the Plaintiff was a “person subject to
involuntary admission on an inpatient basis” was signed by Melissa Perkins, the
Plaintiff’s clinical social worker on N Unit at that time.
16. The
petition was accompanied by two certificates, one of Dr. Vikramjit Gill, M.D.,
and one of the Defendant James P. Corcoran, intended to certify pursuant to
Section 3-702 of the Illinois Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Code
[405 ILCS 5/3-702] that the Plaintiff was subject to involuntary admission on
an inpatient basis and containing other information.
17. On
information and belief, Defendant James P. Corcoran was the actual instigator
of the false involuntary civil commitment petition against the Plaintiff. Corcoran exerted undue influence upon
social worker Perkins and psychiatrist Dr. Gill, to file and certify the
petition at the last possible minute.
As a Medical Administrator III and Statewide Forensic Medical Director,
he was their boss, and he was in a powerful position to negatively impact or
even end their careers as state mental health professionals. But for Corcoran’s undue influence over
Gill and Perkins, the civil commitment petition against the Plaintiff would not
have been filed, and he would have been released on March 20, 2019. As a direct
result of the false Petition, the Plaintiff was falsely imprisoned for a period
lasting from March 20, 2019 for a period of ninety days, lasting until his
release from EMHC after the falsely
filed Petition was dismissed on June 20, 2019 in the state
court.
18. On
information and belief, Dr. Corcoran is well known to be unreasonably
prejudiced against forensic mental patients who decide to exercise their rights
to refuse psychotropic medication, even when such decisions are based on legal
and competent free choice, fully informed of risks and benefits. He has expressed opinions and directly
advised patients that if they do not comply with the recommendations of
orthodox American psychiatrists employed by the State of Illinois (including
taking of prescribed psychotropic medication), or do not convincingly profess
strong belief in the diagnoses given to them by orthodox American psychiatrists
employed by the State of Illinois, they should not and will not, if he has
anything to say about it, be released from involuntary commitment.
19. On
information and belief, one psychiatrist at EMHC who is most loyal and
supportive of Defendant Corcoran’s points of view is Dr. Richard Malis, the
Plaintiff’s treating psychiatrist who prescribed psychotropic medications.
20. The
Plaintiff, a well-educated East African immigrant who served honorably in the
United States military in a combat role in Afghanistan, not only successfully
refused to take psychiatric drugs, but also committed the affront of refusing
to accept Dr. Richard Malis as his psychiatrist, and subsequently Plaintiff was
able to fully recover drug-free and obtain the substantial collaboration of his
clinical treatment team toward his release from EMHC.
21. On
information and belief, Defendant Corcoran has directly, indirectly or
impliedly threatened both Dr. Vikramjit Gill and social worker Melissa Perkins
in the past, suggesting that they could suffer unfavorable employment
consequences should they fail to effectively coerce their patients to take
psychiatric drugs and profess full belief in their orthodox diagnoses.
22. In
short, anyone, patient or employee, who does not toe Defendant Corcoran’s line
in the forensic mental health system of the Illinois Department of Human
Services, or who gives any impression that they do not adequately respect his
status or his orthodox mental health culture, is threatened with negative
consequences. The Plaintiff
suffered retribution born of Defendant Corcoran’s unlawful coercion in
violation of the Constitutional rights of the Plaintiff when Defendant Corcoran
used fear of retribution perpetrated against both patients and staff who do not
comply with his illegal orders. Vikramjit
Gill and Melissa Perkins were credibly threatened with similar retribution and
acted from self protection.
V.
CLAIMS FOR RELIEF
False imprisonment, denial of due process
of law, violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 Under the Fourth and the
Fourteenth Amendment to
the
Constitution of the United States
23. Plaintiff
hereby incorporates Paragraphs 5-22, as if set forth here in their entirety.
24. Plaintiff
was in custody and under the control of Defendant during and at all times
described in this Complaint.
25. At
all times described in this Complaint, Plaintiff was an unarmed, defenseless
male and disabled person, such that he was no match for the trained and
sophisticated Defendant, who was an experienced mental health professional with
custodial authority over the Plaintiff as an educated and licensed as a medical
doctor specializing in psychiatry.
26. All of the described acts and/or
omissions by the Defendant were intentional, knowing, willful, wanton,
malicious and/or in reckless in disregard for the Plaintiff’s federally
protected rights and welfare, and these acts were done with deliberate
indifference by the Defendants, acting
under color of state law.
27. With deliberate indifference to the rights
of citizens to be free from false imprisonment, Defendant ordered, encouraged,
tolerated, ratified, and acquiesced to a dangerous environment of psychological
brutality through the false imprisonment of the disabled, and other
deprivations of essential, fundamental humanity under auspices of “mental
health treatment” by:
a. Falsly alleging that Plaintiff was mentally ill, filing
false court documents including coercion of other subordinate staff
in filing a civil commitment petition to force Plaintiff to
continue to be imprisoned in the Elgin Mental Heath Center
while also failing to subject himself or his staff sufficient
training or supervision with respect to the constitutional
limitations on the incarceration and false imprisonment
of patients, especially the Plaintiff;
b. failing to adequately punish unconstitutional false imprisonment
of patients, especially the Plaintiff;
c. ordering and tolerating the false imprisonment of patients, especially
the Plaintiff;
d. failing to properly or neutrally investigate whether his own
actions
and actions which he ordered others to take would create
the false imprisonment of patients, especially the Plaintiff;
and,
e. ordering, tolerating, encouraging, and permitting collusive statements
among the staff, investigators and the police to discourage
proper investigation and cover up crimes and illegal
abuse in such situations.
28. On information
and belief, Defendant ordered and/or permitted staff members at the Facility,
under a “mental health” pretense, to falsely imprison disabled individuals when
such activities are unnecessary, unjustified and contrary to any conceivable
standard as “treatment”. Defendant
also coerced staff or failed or refused to supervise and train staff in the
appropriate constitutional implications and limits on false imprisonment,
despite knowing that these staff are critical to the protection of the
constitutional rights of the patients, and therefore may create a significant
risk of injury to the public who are patients at Elgin Mental Health Center,
especially the Plaintiff.
29. Under a pretense and with the cynical, false justification
of “encouraging adherence” to treatment recommendations, the Defendant used
tactics of coercion, false imprisonment and mental abuse to punish and threaten
patients at the EMHC to establish a brutal and dehumanizing environment of
control, instead of collaborating and rationally explaining benefits and risks
of treatment in the spirit of their legal obligations under informed consent
and legal and moral obligation to provide real help to the Plaintiff.
30. Under
a pretense and with the cynical, false justification of “encouraging insight”
into mental illness, the Defendant used false imprisonment to punish and
threaten patients at the Facility, especially the Plaintiff,
into robotic “lip service” and enforced, totalistic faith in the orthodoxy of
mental-illness-as-brain-disease, instead of rationally explaining any actual,
existing science in the field of aberrant human behavior, cognition and emotion
to the patients, especially the Plaintiff.
31. The more Defendant Corcoran,
habitually resorted to coercion and false imprisonment to obtain what he called
“treatment adherence” and “insight” from patients, the more dependent he became
on such tactics, and the more he lost any abilities he might have had, which
courts and the public naturally expect him to employ, as a doctor and healer.
32. On
information and belief, Defendant actively worked to find no fault with staff
conduct, and to assure that no fault is found by any outside investigators, so
long as any story at all is offered by staff in response to a patient
complaint, regardless of how incredible such response is wherein the Defendant,
willfully failed to prevent the ongoing false imprisonment of the Plaintiff.
33. Defendant
routinely ratifies, acquiesces, rubber stamps, and tolerates malicious
collusive conduct and unconstitutional actions of staff by routinely ignoring
serious complaints of false imprisonment and other corrupt acts against
patients, especially the Plaintiff, and by encouraging fabrication of evidence
by the staff.
34. As a direct and
proximate result of the wrongful conduct of the Defendant, Plaintiff has been
substantially injured. These
injuries include, but are not limited to, loss of constitutional and federal
rights, loss of normal good family relations, loss of income, physical
injuries, physical and mental impairments, great pain and emotional distress,
and/or aggravation of pre-existing conditions, and ongoing special damages for
medically/psychologically related treatment necessitated by the
unconstitutional and brutal concerted conduct of the Defendant.
35. The Plaintiff
now suffers from these injuries, with an inability to consistently live a
normal life free from the trauma caused by the very staff charged with
responsibility for his treatment or rehabilitation.
36. The Plaintiff
also suffers persisting emotional damage the extent of which has not yet been
fully ascertained. Plaintiff
continues to suffer ongoing emotional distress, with significant stress related
symptoms.
37. Plaintiff is
also entitled to punitive damages on all claims against the individual
Defendants personally, to redress their willful, malicious, wanton, reckless
and fraudulent conduct.
PRAYER FOR RELIEF
Plaintiff
prays that this Court enter judgment for the Plaintiff and against the
Defendant and grant:
A. compensatory
and consequential damages, including damages for emotional distress,
humiliation, loss of enjoyment of life, and other pain and suffering on all claims
allowed by law in an amount to be determined at trial and in excess of the jurisdictional
limit;
B. economic
losses on all claims allowed by law;
C. punitive
damages on all claims allowed by law against the Defendant and in an
amount to be determined at trial and in excess of the jurisdictional limit;
D. attorneys’
fees and costs associated with this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1988, including
expert witness fees, on all claims allowed by law;
E. pre-
and post-judgment interest at the lawful rate;
F. Court-ordered
equitable and injunctive relief from all contact or communication
by the Defendant; and
G. Any further relief that this Court deems just
and proper, and any other appropriate
relief at law and equity.
PLAINTIFF
REQUESTS A TRIAL BY JURY.
Respectfully
submitted,
__/s/
S. Randolph Kretchmar
S.
Randolph Kretchmar
One
of the Attorneys for the Plaintiff
The Law Offices of Kretchmar
& Cecala, P.C.
1170 Michigan Avenue, Wilmette,
IL 60091
847-370-5410
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