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 more examples of unlimited variety. 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.

Incompetence or bad intent? (Tim C, RN on N Unit at EMHC)

"Never ascribe to bad motives those things which can just as easily be caused by incompetence." This is one maxim of investigation into bad results occuring in bureaucratic contexts.

On February 24, 2025, an N Unit staff named Tim C spoke with a doctor from an outside medical facility who called to consult with an EMHC doctor, regarding why an EMHC "patient" had not received prescribed medication. The doctor calling in mentioned that the "patient's" blood pressure was very high and the medication had been prescribed to deal with that specific problem. Why was EMHC incapable or unwilling to treat a clearly serious medical problem with the medication the doctor had prescribed? 

Tim is a nurse, and he blithely suggested that this particular patient was probably just clenching his fist to fake the high blood pressure reading. The doctor calling in was taken aback. Did this nurse think he was incapable of getting an accurate reading from a blood pressure cuff?! What kind of "hospital" or prison medical unit was this?!

It turns out Tim previously worked in security at EMHC, so maybe he was more into playing cop than playing medical professional. The security department at EMHC was reportedly very happy to get rid of Tim and his sarcastic, "know-best" attitude, when Tim was finally transferred to his current clinical job on N Unit. The outside doctor who called in on February 24 reacted to exactly the same, obnoxious attitude.

Just because Tim C might plead incompetence as opposed to intentional denial or attempted denial of necessary medical treatment (i.e., abuse!) for an EMHC "patient" (i.e., slave), it doesn't mean he's not in lots of trouble if that "patient" suffers some serious consequence due to the lack of treatment. When Tim glibly suggested to the doctor who called in to EMHC that the patient's blood pressure really wasn't high, he was questioning the doctor's competence as well as willfully or carelessly obstructing or discouraging proper medical treatment.

At the present moment there's no legal claim to which this evidence might be attached.

But we'll see.

Laura Delano and Unshrunk are a big deal!

This Psychology Today article is the latest of several extremely high-profile book reviews of Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance by Laura Delano (New York: Viking/Penguin Random House, 2025). Others are from New York Times, and Washington Post. It has been a grand total of two days since Laura's book was published, and already I can't even keep up with all the media attention it's getting.

I met Laura Delano many years ago at a conference in Portland, OR. I've corresponded occasionally with her ever since, and I had pre-ordered Unshrunk, so it was delivered to me the same day it was published. The first couple chapters, along with the media reaction, have already convinced me that this is an extraordinarily important book. Not only that, it's a delightful read despite the serious and socially problematic (perhaps dark) subject it presents.

I could actually predict (and hope) that Unshrunk will have major, lasting cultural impact such as I recall from The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich (circa 1968). That book seemed to more or less inspire the whole modern environmental movement, which had previously just been about Sierra Club-type interests in "conservation". Greenpeace and other radicals since the 1960's had very little in common with the earlier Teddy Roosevelt generation and the national parks crowd, who were a far cry from the SDS or the Black Panther Party.

I'll keep reading and see what I think, but Laura's book may turn out to be the biggest anti-psychiatry event since Jack Nicholson played Randle McMurphy in the 1975 film version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Anyone who doubts the impact of that film only needs to know that almost 1000 results will come up from a search for the title... on the American Psychiatric Association's website (which is not otherwise much about movies).

Judith Warner's Washington Post review asks, with obvious anxiety which she evidently expects her readers to share: "But what if she (Laura Delano) starts giving out life-and-death medical advice? What if that person, who also happens to be supersmart, attractive and compelling, is handed a bullhorn just when her message aligns perfectly with our post-covid, 'D.I.Y health' zeitgeist? What if she publishes a book at the very moment when her anti-expert, anti-science — in this case, anti-psychiatry — perspective aligns with U.S. government policy?"

Laura herself repeatedly claims that she wants little or nothing to do with radicalism. She explicitly denies being anti-psychiatry, or even anti-psychiatric drugs. Are the reviewers who clearly worry about her book afraid? If so, why?

Maybe they should be afraid. Laura Delano is a natural charismatic leader, just a bit like Randle McMurphy (or as I've said before, Mario Savio). She may change people's minds in a big way with her book.

And I say, psychiatria delenda est!

REALLY up fpr grabs! (addendum)

 

Mental Health and AI

"Artificial Intelligence" is first of all an obvious oxymoron. Machines simply are not intelligent in the sense of any living ability to create new stuff from nothing. Artificial means related to an artifice, or a clever, perhaps deceptive device, an expedient, or even a cunning trick. Intelligence necessarily indicates the ability or action of understanding, comprehending.

A machine does not understand or comprehend: it can only create a persuasive artifice of understanding and comprehension. Artificial intelligence, no matter how useful or dangerous it may become, cannot simultaneously be a machine, and alive.

An article in today's Chicago Tribune highlights a legislative effort in Illinois to regulate, among other things, the use of AI in medicine and mental health. State Rep. Bob Morgan of Deerfield is quoted: 

“(I)f somebody is going to hold themselves out as a health care professional they actually have to be a health care professional. But in this situation, AI is stepping in and not disclosing that they’re not a person. And they’re advising people on their health care, their behavioral health. And we’re going to put a stop to that.” 

I might ask why behavioral health advice should have to come from a licensed health care professional? What if a friend tells me I should be generally more polite so as not to upset my friends, or I should get a haircut or shower more often, or I should relax about politics and not watch the news so incessantly, but just do the sudoku and ken-ken puzzles in the paper? Isn't that behavioral health advice? Would my friend be violating the law which Rep. Morgan proposes if he/she is not a social worker or a psychiatrist/psychologist?

Kyle Hillman, a lobbyist for social workers, also pipes up to say:

“I’m sure this (AI-based advice on mental health) is something that individuals that just aren’t ready to make that call might look to. But it’s just not something that’s safe. We would never consider this as an option for physical health. Like, ‘hey, I have a laceration on my leg. I’m going to call an AI chat doctor on how to put stitches in my leg.’ … It’s not something we would do.” 

I think AI is a much better and much safer way to go, for behavioral health advice, than calling any random social worker, Ph.D. psychologist, or M.D. paychiatrist! It's far less expensive (which is probably why most people consider it). But even more importantly, behavioral health cannot pretend to be objective science. If medications are part of it, you certainly want somebody on hand (a pharmacist?) who is familiar with drug actions and reactions and interactions, etc. But that information is all available on line, too, it just lacks the perspective relevant to a particular individual in a particular situation.

Anyone who has a doctor (or a priest or coach...) who knows them and has given them good advice in the past, is certainly being reasonable to choose that health care professional over an un-person AI program. I just don't believe the decision should be enforced by law. Maybe that's only because I almost never go to doctors myself. And even though I don't admit to any scary symptoms at this moment, maybe I'll die tomorrow of something that could have been prevented. But I am 73, and for the last 50 years, I've virtually never bothered with or worried about tedious and unpleasant medical errands like proctology or cardiology or cholesterol tests. I never check my own blood pressure. Maybe it's a fair exchange.

Modern medicine does not represent the best prospect for personal salvation or social progress. The field even brags, I think, about being a system, or an objective, mechanical process for evaluation and decision making that can make everyone happier. That's a machine, or it aspires to (ideally) be a mere machine. What we need is creativity.

Our problem with so-called "artificial intelligence" is merely that we are unwilling to be alive, creative, and responsible.

And it's far worse in so-called "mental health."

Bob Morgan and Kyle Hillman are wrong.

REALLY up for grabs!

I've been hearing complaints recently from the IDHS plantations that toilet paper is rationed and nobody can do their laundry because there's no soap. I also had a "patient" (slave) call me to complain that psychotherapy cannot be provided any longer. Treatment is now being refused because there are no funds to pay for overtime. Clinical staff are not showing up for work, units are undermanned and it's not safe.

Downstate, there have been several recent cases when defense attorneys asked criminal courts not to place their clients at Choate MHC because it's so understaffed that it's dangerous and treatment is simply not possible. In at least one hearing recently, defense counsel called three separate Choate overseers (aka, "clinical staff") as witnesses to testify about how bad it is there for the slaves.

I got a call from a client just yesterday who was very frightened because she was assigned a new roommate who is unstable. My client is several months pregnant, and she's afraid there is a plan to traumatize her and cause her to loose her baby. The overseers probably would be greatly relieved if she had a miscarraige, because it's clear they are at fault for her pregnancy in the first place. They haven't been able to coerce her into an abortion, and they are quite impatient/unhappy about having to provide proper prenatal care for anyone, much preferring to follow the regular routines of just just drugging everyone into compliance and zombified sub-humanity, and punishing them when they cause extra trouble. This one will be a real shit show for the Packard plantation, however: when that baby is born, he or she should get a free ride to Harvard on the State of Illinois, and that's a whole lot of extra trouble!

The question of where a bunch of money went, that was supposed to buy toilet paper and laundry soap or pay for overtime psychological counseling, is unsettled at EMHC. Maybe it was stolen by the librarian who was recently allowed to retire with a pension based on his final, near-six-figure salary, after sexually harassing and abusing patients for many years; or maybe the thief was Nick Callapocalypse, who was supposedly the administrator responsible for ordering toilet paper, laundry soap and other supplies. I don't know Nick Callapocalypse, or even if my version of his name is close. I am told however, that whatever his name is, his "mismanagement of funds" caused him to be removed from his position, even though he was a loyal sycophant of Hospital Administrator Michelle Evans.

The "shortage" of psychological counseling doesn't seem to me like it should have anything to do with overtime. "Patients" are only held involuntarily on these plantations to be helped with "treatment" which includes not just psychiatric drugs or shock, but also counseling that might actually improve their mental and emotional/behavioral conditions. If the masters cannot provide counseling, the slaves are being held under unconstitutional conditions, in violation of their Fourteenth Amendment rights to substantive due process of law. The people running IDHS presumably know this as well as I do, so they have to schedule counseling where it is prescribed, overtime or no overtime.

An official publication entitled Patients and Support Persons Information Booklet, updated in 2023, tells the public that every clinical unit housing psychiatric slaves will have a staff psychologist to provide counseling. Well, guess what, that's just not true now. It might not have been true when it was written.

Housing male and female slaves on the same hallway and taking no responsibility to prevent or deal with entirely predictable unplanned pregnancies, rationing toilet paper and failing to enable laundry for a whole population of severely mentally ill people, allowing or failing to prevent staff financial misconduct and sexual abuse of patients for years, understaffing supposed "hospitals" to a point where they resemble medieval prisons.... These are signs of an enterprise which the public will sooner or later frown upon with a vengeance.

And incidentally, dealing with such crimes against humanity will not even require any Illinois version of Elon Musk and (the federal) DOGE. I note the Chicago Tribune headline just this morning announcing an eight-figure settlement agreement in a Federal lawsuit over the failure of DuPage County to effectively care for a 50-year-old mentally ill mother in their custody, who ultimately died as a result. Very likely, the DuPage Sheriff tried to defend by saying the state nuthouses just didn't have room, so he couldn't get the woman transferred to a proper mental "hospital".

But the state nuthouses are at least as hopelessly incompetent and downright dangerous as county jails ever were. The whole, laughingly-called, "forensic mental health system" is up for grabs.

No toilet paper for godsakes!