Fornits
Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform => The Troubled Teen Industry => Topic started by: Deborah on May 13, 2005, 12:19:00 PM
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Notice any similarities in this testimony?
May 12, 2005
Re S.B. No. 1305 Wanting to extend the time a person may be detained in custody for a preliminary examination from 24 hours to 72 hours (or 48).
I am adamantly opposed to this bill for many reasons, mostly because I value human rights such as liberty and freedom, and the notion that the state may not curtail these liberties without evidence of criminal activity and without due process for the accused citizen.
The interface between psychiatry and the law is intensely problematic. Psychiatry is coercive. In every one of our 50 states, psychiatrists use
involuntary commitment and threat of commitment. State laws protect and guarantee this practice, under the guise and rationale of "public safety"
and "concern for troubled individuals."
I know we are not here to question involuntary commitment per se, but to even begin thinking clearly in this arena, it must be recognized that
psychiatry is the one place where our society systematically disregards civil liberties. It is the one place where citizens can be locked up
indefinitely against their will, without any evidence, much less conviction of crime. I have worked with people myself who have been locked up for years upon years in this way, on someone's opinion that they were dangerous. I have seen how little validity there is to such practice. I have written about this at length in my books
As I value human civil rights, I don't like coercive psychiatry. I also don't like the euphemistic language of psychiatry that obscures the truth. You on this committee have heard my efforts to challenge the language that twists the truth that we are wantonly and unnecessarily drugging millions of our school age children into a virtuous claim that we are giving necessary
"medicine" to our poor, sick, mentally ill children. In a similar vein, we hear virtuous claims that these poor, sick, mentally ill adults are incapable of moral choice and responsibility, and therefore exempt from legal protection. So involuntary commitment is considered a necessary
medical treatment, and we are here today arguing about the "need" to "commit" people for a longer time before they get any due process whatsoever. Of course, the blinding rhetoric is that we are "committing" "patients." This obscures the more accurate language, which reveals the truth that we are talking about imprisoning citizens.
However prettily one packages the facts, the truth of coercion remains. Here are the words of CS Lewis, English scholar and writer:
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but
those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience ... Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason."
From the point of view of a free American citizen,
Involuntary Commitment = Imprisonment.
It is interesting that we say "involuntary commitment." Has anyone ever heard locking up convicted felons as "involuntary imprisonment?" Of course not. All imprisonment is by definition involuntary. The claim to virtue with psychiatry is that the mentally ill are incapable of doing things voluntarily. This is mostly a lie. The real problem is that our psychiatric system is so inhuman most folks try to stay away. My experience is that people generally like to get help if it is truly respectful and empowering.
Back on point with this bill. I will say this in a harsh way, because the reality of the use of state force on citizens by coercive psychiatry is
harsh. It is a bad idea to unnecessarily remove what paltry protections exist for those accused of mental illness and incarcerated in prisons,
euphemistically called psychiatric hospitals. Please do not pass this bill out of committee. Leave well enough alone with the 24-hour holding period.
Sincerely Yours,
John Breeding, PhD
Austin, Texas
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To bad you didn't write this when
involuntary committment was huge
in this country.
After de-institutionalization and
the closing of almost all state
psychiatric hospitals your angst
has become moot.
Where did you cut and past this
passionate post from?
Today anasognosia is the problem,
patients not realizing they need
treatment is what is ending them
up in jail.
You did watch PBS "The New Asylums?"
You are just arguing a point that
is no longer relevant, born too late?
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Moot? Hardly.
You're detained for exhibiting any human emotion. You're held 72 hours without being able to make bail, consult an attorney, or even assure your family that you are alright; while some shrink determines if you're dangerous. Senate Bill 1305, would do just that, it has passed the Texas Senate and will soon be referred to a committee in the Texas House of Representatives.
Or your employer (Ford Motor) sets about getting you labeled and drugged for opposing management.
Here's a really good story about what can happen once your tangled in the web... Crazy Until Proven Sane:
http://psychrights.org/Stories/CrazyUntilProvenSane.pdf (http://psychrights.org/Stories/CrazyUntilProvenSane.pdf)
Nifty little tricks for silencing those who exhibit justified opposition/anger about being oppressed.
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Georgia allows holding you for 72 hours for evaluation.
That doesn't mean they actually hold you for that long, just that they can.
When I hadn't been put on meds yet, I was diverted by a therapist for evaluation at the local mental hospital. The sherrif's department sent a car to drive me there.
They filled out papers on me and told me I was being evaluated for involuntary commitment. They also told me if I was committed my next of kin would become responsible for making decisions for me until I was stable and discharged, and that I would have the opportunity to challenge any decision to commit me. They told me that if I had a living will, any person named in my living will to handle my affairs if I became incompetent would become responsible for making decisions for me until I was stable and discharged.
Then they sat me down in a waiting room until their psychiatrist could see me. I explained to him that what I wanted was not to die, what I desparately wanted was medication to make the pain stop. He asked me a few more questions, said, "I think we can deal with this on an outpatient basis" and gave me a few tips on how to get the care I wanted and needed.
Then they let me go the same day, after less than six or so hours, and gave me back my stuff that they put away when searching me for weapons--an old-style airport kind of search, not a strip search--and let me use the phone (free) to call my roommate to come get me and take me back to pick up my car.
Conspiracy theories aside, I don't know anyone here other than me who's actually been through this civil commitment process. What happened was that there was no way in hell the state-run mental hospital wanted to keep me a minute long than they had to. And not because of my sparkling personality. :smile:
They didn't want to have to pay to feed me, they didn't want to have to assign me a room and take care of me, and they didn't want me taking up their doctors' and nurses' time. All those things cost money.
Private mental hospitals might have incentive to keep patients. State facilities would rather get rid of you as fast as they can.
The difference between voluntary and involuntary commitment--and it's *not* all involuntary---is that in voluntary commitment somebody goes down to the hospital, tells them they want to kill themselves or someone else, and checks themselves in. Of course, then your ability to check yourself out is limited--but not necessarily not there.
You can either go when they kick you out :smile: or if you choose to go earlier, you can check yourself out "Against Medical Advice"---but unless the doctor will affirm you are immediately dangerous to yourself or others, they have to let you leave. Again, if they try to keep you at that point, you can challenge being involuntarily committed when you decide you want to leave and they don't want to let you go.
While you are committed, if you choose not to take any psychiatric drugs, they can't make you. And they can't keep you indefinitely even if you don't take the drugs. When you are no longer immediately, actively dangerous, they have to let you go. And most mentally ill people will stabilize for short periods even without drugs--we just relapse more often and worse without the right meds.
I have a friend who committed herself to the same state hospital that didn't commit me. She stayed there for three weeks, they helped her get not suicidal, pointed her towards aftercare if she wanted it--with no compulsion to take it--and discharged her.
I have another friend who *was* involuntarily committed because she's schizophrenic and she held four members of her family at gunpoint for five hours. When I talked to her a few years after she'd been released--and they didn't keep her long--she was in group therapy and off her meds because she didn't like the side effects. Nobody was putting her back in, because her doctor didn't judge her to be immediately dangerous and she obviously wasn't holding any more people at gunpoint.
Beds are very limited, budgets are tight, and state mental hospitals really don't want to have you there unless you're an inch from suicide or psychotic and really homicidal.
I understand some people are paranoid enough to believe otherwise, but mostly if you're kept for evaluation and you don't talk about wanting to die or killing yourself, and you don't hallucinate bugs on your skin and talk to God as though God talks back, and you firmly deny having little voices in your head--especially deny having command hallucinations. As long as you don't tell them the aliens or the conspiracy are beaming thoughts into your brain or dead people are talking to you or things like that, they have to let you go, and they do.
Programs are getting paid the big bucks to keep kids.
State mental hospitals are losing money every day you're there, and if you *aren't* dangerous they've got five other people who *are* dangerous competing for your bed.
They never have enough beds for the people they believe need to be there, and they're always worried about the political black eye (and getting fired) if the guy they *don't* admit because they think some other guy is *more* dangerous---if the one they don't admit grabs an axe and starts hacking people up.
I don't always agree with psychiatry coercively stopping people from killing themselves.
I *do* always agree with psychiatry coercively stopping people from killing others.
The way the laws are, if you are an adult and you are not dangerous to yourself or others, there are *way* more mentally ill people fighting to *get* psychiatric treatment than there are people, mentally ill and not, fighting to avoid it.
You guys have firsthand experience with the Programs; I have firsthand experience with the commitment process and with *not* being committed even though I was mentally ill because the pshrink decided I was not actively dangerous.
By choosing to have a cow about this, you are way overreacting.
30% of homeless people are seriously mentally ill.
If you want to help those of us who have serious mental illnesses, do something about that.
Until then, Mr/Ms oh-so-concerned, don't do us any favors.
Timoclea
Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
Thomas Jefferson, 1787
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Deb and Tim,
In practical terms, it really just depends on who you run into. In Florida, Straight used the Baker Act to threaten to extend my intake "interview" for three days. I told them go ahead, so they came up w/ new and more interesting threats (2 year court order did the trick)
One of the times I ran, I landed up in a halfway house in Youngstown, Ohio. They had statutes built on the Baker Act there too, but they used them differently. There, you could be held for evaluation for up to 48 hours w/o anyone being obliged to report you as a runaway. There were about a half a dozen kids there who just didn't need long term treatment or incarceration but who couldn't go home either. So they'd just pack up their kit every two days and switch halfway houses. I should have joined them, but I got talked into calling my sister and giving away my location. Oh well. Ya' don't have to hit me up side the head w/ a 2x4 more than a few times....After all, who wouldn't prefer Middle Earth, unless they've been corrupted by a Ring of Power?
Jeff Elkins; Tolkien's Libertarian Vision
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Today the courts and the psych industry are intertwined. Many of the children who are in teen programs have been placed there by the courts. The courts also routinely recommend psych counseling for even the most minor offences. Their decisions often way heavily on the recommendation of psychologists. As a result the psych industry has become corrupt. There are many quacks out there. Of course there are good psychologists - but all can not be trusted.
Hear me people: We now have to deal with another race - small and feeble when our fathers first met them, but now great and overbearing. Strangely enough they have a mind to till the soil and the love of possessions is a disease with them. These people have made many rules which the rich may break but the poor may not. They take their tithes from the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule.
Chief Sitting Bull, speaking at the Powder River Conference, 1877
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On 2005-05-13 16:44:00, cherish wisdom wrote:
Of course there are good psychologists - but all can not be trusted
From the pov of anyone subject to involuntary commitment, it's a crap shoot. And you're not even the one thowing the dice, just the one wagering it all on the roll.May the fleas of one thousand llamas infest your armpits
--One ticked off sysadmin
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The very same dynamic is going on in programs to young, vulnerable, minds. People have dreamed of a plant infilrating a program... here's how that might go.....
http://members.aol.com/ahunter3/psych_i ... enhan.html (http://members.aol.com/ahunter3/psych_inmates_libfront/vol_2/Rosenhan/rosenhan.html)
If sanity and insanity exist, how shall we know them?
The question is neither capricious nor itseIf insane. However much we may be personally convinced that we can tell the normal from the abnormal, the evidence is simply not compelling. It is commonplace, for example, to read about murder trials wherein eminent psychiatrists for the defense are contradicted by equally eminent psychiatrists for the prosecution on the matter of the defendant's sanity. More generally, there are a great deal of conflicting data on the reliability, utility, and meaning of such terms as "sanity," "insanity," "mental illness." and "schizophrenia" (1). From as early as 1934, Benedict suggested that normality and abnormality are not universal (2). What is viewed as normaI in one culture may be seen as quite aberrant in another. Thus, notions of normality and abnormality may not be quite as accurate as people believe they are.
To raise questions regarding normality and abnormality is in no way to question the fact that some behaviors are deviant or odd. Murder is deviant. So, too, are hallucinations. Nor does raising such questions deny the existence of the personal anguish that is often associated with 'mental illness." Anxiety and depression exist. Psychological suffering exists. But normality and abnormality, sanity and insanity, and the diagnoses that flow from them may be less substantive than many believe them to be.
At its heart, the question of whether the sane can be distinguished from the insane (and whether degrees of insanity can be distinguished from each other) is a simple matter: do the salient characteristics that lead to diagnoses reside in the patients themselves or in the environments and contexts in which observers find them? . . . [T]he belief has been strong that patients present symptoms, that those symptoms can be categorized, and, implicitly, that the sane are distinguishable from the insane. More recently, however, this belief has been questioned. . . . [T]he view has grown that psychological categorization of mental illness is useless at best and downright harmful, misleading, and pejorative at worst. Psychiatric diagnoses, in this view, are in the minds of the observers and are not valid summaries of characteristics displayed by the observed (3-5).
Gains can be made in deciding which of these is more nearly accurate by getting normal people (that is, people who do not have, and have never suffered, symptoms of serious psychiatric disorders) admitted to psychiatric hospitals and then determining whether they were discovered to be sane and, if so, how. If the sanity of such pseudopatients were always detected, there would be prima facie evidence that a sane individual can be distinguished from the insane context in which he is found. . . , If, on the other hand, the sanity of the pseudopatients were never discovered, serious difficulties would arise for those who support traditional modes of psychiatric diagnosis. Given that the hospital staff was not incompetent, that the pseudopatient had been behaving as sanely as he had been outside of the hospital, and that it had never been previously suggested that he belonged in a psychiatric hospital, such an unlikely outcome would support the view that psychiatric diagnosis betrays little about the patient but much about the environment in which an observer finds him.
This article describes such an experiment. Eight sane people gained secret admission to 12 different hospitals (6). Their diagnostic experiences constitute the data of the first part of this article; the remainder is devoted to a description of their experiences in psychiatric institutions.
PSEUDOPATIENTS AND THEIR SETTINGS
The eight pseudopatients were a varied group. One was a psychology graduate student in his 20's. The remaining seven were older and "established." Among them were three psychologists, a pediatrician, a psychiatrist, a painter, and a housewife. Three pseudopatients were women, five were men. All of them employed pseudonyms, lest their alleged diagnoses embarrass them later. Those who were in mental health professions alleged another occupation in order to avoid the special attentions that might be accorded by staff, as a matter of courtesy or caution, to ailing colleagues (7). With the exception of myself (I was the first pseudopatient and my presence was known to the hospital administrator and chief psychologist and, so far as I can tell, them alone), the presence of pseudopatients and the nature of the research program was not known to to hospital staffs (8).
The settings were similarly varied. In order to generalize the findings, admission into a variety of hospitals was sought. The 12 hospitals in the sample were located in five different states on the East and West coasts. Some were old and shabby, some were quite new. Some were research-oriented, others not. Some had good staff-patient ratios, others were quite understaffed. Only one was a strictly private hospital. All of the others were supported by state or federal funds or, in one instance, by university funds.
After calling the hospital for an appointment, the pseudopatient arrived at the admissions office complaining that he had been hearing voices. Asked what the voices said, he replied that they were often unclear, but as far as he could tell they said "empty," "hollow," and "thud." The voices were unfamiliar and were of the same sex as the pseudopatient.
Beyond alleging the symptoms and falsifying name, vocation, and employment, no further alterations of persons' history, or circumstances, were made. The significant events of the pseudopatient's life history were presented as they had actually occurred. Relationhips with parents and siblings, with spouse and children, with people at work and in school, consistent with the aforementioned exceptions, were described as they were or had been. Frustrations and upsets were described along with joys and satisfactions. These facts are important to remember. If anything, they strongly biased the subsequent results in favor of detecting sanity, since none of their histories or current behaviors were seriously pathological in any way.
Immediately upon admission to the psychiatric ward, the pseudopatient ceased simulating any symptoms of abnormality. in some cases, there was a brief period of mild nervousness and anxiety, since none of the pseudopatients really believed that they would be admitted so easily. Indeed, their shared fear was that they would be immediately exposed as frauds and greatly embarrassed. Moreover, many of them had sever visited a psychiatric ward; even those who had, nevertheless had some genuine fears about what might happen to them. Their nervousness, then, was quite appropriate to the novelty of the hospital setting, and it abated rapidly.
Apart from that short-lived nervousness, the pseudopatient behaved on the ward as he "normally" behaved. The pseudopatient spoke to patients and staff as he might ordinarily. Because there is uncommonly little to do on a psychiatric ward, he attempted to engage others in conversation. When asked by staff how he was feeling, he indicated that be was fine, that he no longer experienced symptoms. He responded to instructions from attendants, to calls for medication (which was not swallowed), and to dining-hall instructions. Beyond such activities as were available to him on the admissions ward, he spent his time writing down his observations about the ward, its patients, and the staff. Initially these notes were written "secretly," but as it soon became clear that no one much cared, they were subsequently written on standard tablets of paper in such public places as the dayroom. No secret was made of these activities.
The pseudopatient, very much as a true psychiatric patient, entered a hospital with no foreknowledge of when he would be discharged. Each was told that he would have to get out by his own devices, essentially by convincing the staff that be was sane. The psychological stresses associated with hospitalization were considerable, and all but one of the pseudopatients desired to be discharged almost immediately after being admitted. They were, therefore, motivated not only to behave sanely, but to be paragons of cooperation. That their behavior was in no way disruptive is confirmed by nursing reports which have been obtained on most of the patients. These reports uniformly indicate that the patients were "friendly" "cooperative," and "exhibited no abnormal indications."
THE NORMAL ARE NOT DETECTABLY SANE
In spite their public "show" of sanity, the pseudopatients were never detected. Admitted, except in one case, with a diagnosis of schizophrenia (9), each was discharged with a diagnosis of schizophrenia "in remission." The in remission" should in no way be dismissed as a formality, for at no time during any hospitalization had any question been raised about any pseudopatient's simulation. Nor are there any indications in the hospital records that the pseudopatient's status was suspect. Rather, the evidence is strong that, once labeled schizophrenic. the pseudopatient was stuck with that label. If the pseudopatient was to be discharged, he must naturally be "in remission" but be was not sane, nor, in the institution's view, had he ever been sane.
The uniform failure to recognize sanity cannot be attributed to the quality of the hospitals. . . . Nor can it be alleged that there was simply not enough time to observe the pseudopatients. Length of hospitalization ranged from 7 to 52 days, with an average of 19 days. The pseudopatients were not, in fact, carefully observed, but this failure clearly speaks more to traditions within psychiatric hospitals than to lack of opportunity.
Finally, it cannot be said that the failure to recognize the pseudopatients' sanity was due to the fact that they were not behaving sanely. While there was clearly some tension present in all of them, their daily visitors could detect no serious behavioral consequences--nor, indeed, could other patients. It was quite common for the patients to "detect" the pseudopatients' sanity. "You're not crazy. You're a journalist, or a professor [referring to the continual note-taking]. You're checking up on the hospital."
While most of the patients were reassured by the pseudopatient's insistence that he had been sick before he came in but was fine now, some continued to believe that the pseudopatient was sane throughout his hospitalization (10). The fact that the patients often recognized normality when staff did not raises important questions.
Failure to detect sanity during the course of hospitalization may be due to the fact that . . . physicians are more inclined to call a healthy person sick than a sick person healthy.
The reasons for this are not hard to find: it is clearly more dangerous to misdiagnose illness than health. Better to err on the side of caution--to suspect illness even among the healthy.
But what holds for medicine does not hold equally well for psychiatry. Medical illnesses, while unfortunate, are not commonly pejorative. Psychiatric diagnoses, on the contrary, carry with them personal, legal, and social stigmas (11). It was therefore important to see whether the tendency toward diagnosing the sane insane could be reversed. The following experiment was arranged at a research and teaching hospital whose staff had heard these findings but doubted that such an error could occur in their hospital. The staff was informed that at some time during the following 3 months, one or more pseudopatients would attempt to be admitted into the psychiatric hospital. Each staff member was asked to rate each patient who presented himself at admissions or on the ward according to the likelihood that the patient was a pseudopatient.
Judgments were obtained on 193 patients who were admitted for psychiatric treatment. All staff who had had sustained contact with or primary responsibility for the patient--attendants, nurses, psychiatrists, physicians, and psychologists--were asked to make judgments. Forty-nine patients were alleged, with high confidence, to be pseudopatients by at least one member of the staff. Twenty-three were considered suspect by at least one psychiatrist. Nineteen were suspected by one psychiatrist and one other staff member. Actually, no genuine pseudopatient (at least from my group) presented himself during this period.
The experiment is instructive. It indicates that the tendency to designate sane people as insane can be reversed when the stakes (in this case, prestige and diagnostic acumen) are high. But what can he said of the 19 people who were suspected of being "sane" by one psychiatrist and another staff member? Were these people truly "sane?" There is no way of knowing. But one thing is certain: any diagnostic process that lends itself so readily to massive errors of this sort cannot be a very reliable one.
THE STICKINESS OF PSYCHODIAGNOSTIC LABELS
Beyond the tendency to call the healthy sick--a tendency that accounts better for diagnostic behavior on admission than it does for such behavior after a lengthy period of exposure--the data speak to the massive role of labeling in psychiatric assessment. Having once been labeled schizophrenic, there is nothing the pseudopatient can do to overcome the tag. The tag profoundly colors others' perceptions of him and his behavior.
From one viewpoint, these data are hardly surprising, for it has long been known that elements are given meaning by the context in which they occur. Once a person is designated abnormal,all of his other behaviors and characteristics are colored by that label. Indeed, that label is so powerful that many of the pseudopatients' normal behaviors were overlooked entirely or profoundly misinterpreted. Some examples may clarify this issue.
Earlier I indicated that there were no changes in the pseudopatient's personal history and current status beyond those of name, employment, and, where necessary, vocation. Otherwise, a veridical description of personal history and circumstances was offered. Those circumstances were not psychotic. How were they made consonant with the diagnosis of psychosis? Or were those diagisoses modified in such a way as to bring them into accord with the circumstances of the pseudopatient's life, as described by him?
As far as I can determine, diagnoses were in no way affected by the relative health of the circumstances of a pseudopatient's life. Rather, the reverse occurred: the perception of his circumstances was shaped entirely by the diagnosis. A clear example of such translation is found in the case of a pseudopatient who had had a close relationship with his mother but was rather remote from his father during his early childhood. During adolescence and beyond, however, his father became a close friend, while his relationship with his mother cooled. His present relationship with his wife was characteristically close and warm. Apart from occasional angry exchanges, friction was minimal. The children had rarely been spanked. Surely there is nothing especially pathological about such a history. . . . Observe, however, how such a history was translated in the psychopathological context, this from the case summary prepared after the patient was discharged.
This white 39-year-old male . . . manifests a long history of considerable ambivalence in close relationships, which began in early childhood. A warm relationship with his mother cools during his adoleseence. A distant relationship to his father is described as becoming very intense. Affective stability is absent. His attempts to control emotionality with his wife and children are punctuated by angry outbursts and, in the case of the children, spankings. And while he says that he has several good friends, one senses considerable ambivalence embedded in those relationships also.
The facts of the case were unintentionally distorted by the staff to achieve consistency, with a popular theory of the dynamics of a schizophrenic reaction (12). Nothing of an ambivalent nature had been described in relations with parents, spouse, or friends. . . . Clearly. the meaning ascribed to his verbalizations (that is, ambivalence. affective instability) was determined by the diagnosis: schizophrenia. An entirely different meaning would have been ascribed if it were known that the man was "normal."
All pseudopatients took extensive notes publicly. Under ordinary circumstances, such behavior would have caused questions in the minds of observers--as, in fact, it did among patients. Indeed, it seemed so certain that the notes would elicit suspicion that elaborate precautions were taken to remove them from the ward each day. But the precautions proved needless. The closest any staff member came to questioning these notes occurred when one pseudopatient asked his physician what kind of medication he was receiving and began to write down the response. "You needn't write it," he was told gently. "If you have trouble remembering, just ask me again."
If no questions were asked of the pseudopatients, how was their writing interpreted? Nursing records for three pseudopatients indicate that the writing was seen as an aspect of their pathological behavior. . . . Given that the patient is in the hospital, he must be psychologically disturbed. And given that he is disturbed, continuous writing msut be a behavioral manifestation of that disturbance, perhaps a subset of the compulsive behaviors that are sometimes correlated with schizophrenia.
One tacit characteristic of psychiatric diagnosis is that it locates the sources of aberration within the individual and only rarely within the complex of stimuli that surrounds him. Consequently, behaviors that are stimulated by the environment are commonly misattributed to the patient's disorder. For example, one kindly nurse found a pseudopatient pacing the long hospital corridors. "Nervous, Mr. X?" she asked. "No, bored," he said.
The notes kept by pseudopatients are full of patient behaviors that were misinterpreted by well-intentioned staff. Often enough, a patient would go "berserk" because he had, wittingly or unwittingly, been mistreated by, say, an attendant. A nurse coming upon the scene would rarely inquire even cursorily into the environmental stimuli of the patient's behavior. Rather, she assumed that his upset derived from his pathology, not from his present interactions with other staff members. . . . (Never were the staff found to assume that one of themselves or the structure of the hospital had anything to do with a patient's behavior. One psychiatrist pointed to a group of patients who were sitting outside the cafeteria entrance half an hour before lunchtime. To a group of young residents he indicated that such behavior was characteristic of the oral-acquisitive nature of the syndrome. It seemed not to occur to him that there were very few things to anticipate in a psychiatric hospital besides eating.
A psychiatric label has a life and an influence of its own. Once the impression has been formed that the patient is schizophrenic, the expectation is that he will continue to be schizophrenic. When a sufficient amount of time has passed, during which the patient has done nothing bizarre, he is considered to be in remission and available for discharge. But the label endured beyond discharge, with the unconfirmed expectation that he will behave as a schizophrenic again. Such labels, conferred by mental health professionals, are as influential on the patient as they are on his relatives and friends, and it should not surprise anyone that the diagnosis acts on all of them as a self-fulfiiling prophecy. Eventually, the patient himself accepts the diagnosis, with all of its surplus meanings and expectations, and behaves accordingly (5).
POWERLESSNESS AND DEPERSONALIZATION
Eye contact and verbal contact reflect concern and individuation; their absence, avoidance and depersonalization. The data I have presented do not do justice to the rich daily encounters that grew up around matters of depersonalization and avoidance. I have records of patients who were beaten by staff for the sin of having initiated verbal contact. During my own experience, for example, one patient was beaten in the presence of other patients for having approached an attendant and told him, "I like you." Occasionally, punishment meted out to patients for misdemeanors seemed so excessive that it could not be justified by the most radical interpretations of psychiatric canon. Nevertheless, they appeared to go unquestioned. Tempers were often short. A patient who had not heard a call for medication would be roundly excoriated, and the morning attendants would often wake patients with, "Come on, you m---f---s, out of bed!"
Neither anecdotal nor "hard" data can convey the overwhelming sense of powerlessness which invades the individual as he is continually exposed to the depersonalization of the psychiatric hospital. . .
Powerlessness was evident everywhere. The patient is deprived of many of his legal rights by deign of his psychiatric commitment (13). He is shorn of credibiilty by virtue of his psychiatric label. His freedom of movement is restricted. He cannot initiate contact with the staff but may only respond to any overtures as they make. Indeed, privacy is mininal. Patients' quarters and possessions can be entered and examined by any staff member, for whatever reason. His personal history and anguish is available to any staff member (often includinging the "grey lady" and "candy striper" volunteer) who chooses to real his folder, regardless of theIr therapeutic relationship to him. His personal hygiene and waste evacuation are often monitored. The toilet may have no door.
At times, depersonalization reaches such proportions that pseudopatients had the sense that they were invisible, or at least unworthy of account. Upon being admitted, I and other pseudopatients took the initial physical examinations in a semipublic room, where staff members went about their own business as if we were not there.
On the ward, attendants delivered verbal and occasionally serious physical abuse to patients in the presence of other observing patients, some of whom (the pseudopatients) were writing it all down. Abusive behavior, on the other hand, terminated quite abruptly when other staff members were known to be coming. Staff are credible witnesses. Patients are not.
A nurse unbuttoned her uniform to adjust her brassiere in the presence of an entire ward of viewing men. One did not have the sense that she was being seductive. Rather, she didn't notice us. A group of staff persons might point to a patient in the dayroom and discuss him animatedly, as if he were not there.
One illuminating instance of depersonalization and invisibility occurred with regard to medications. All told, the pseudopatients were administered nearly 2100 pills.. - Only two were swallowed. The rest were either pocketed or deposited in the toilet. The pseudopatients were not alone in this. Although I have no precise records on how many patients rejected their medications, the pseudopatients frequently found the medications of other patients in the toilet before they deposited their own. As long as they were cooperative, their behavior and the pseudopatients' own in this matter, as in other important matters, went unnoticed throughout.
Reactions to such depersonalization among pseudopatients were intense. Although they had come to the hospital as participant observers and were fully aware that they did not "belong," they nevertheless found themselves caught up in and fighting the process of depersonalization.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF LABELING AND DEPERSONALIZATION
Whenever the ratio of what is known to what needs to be known approaches zero, we tend to invent "knowledge" and assume that we understand more than we actually do. We seem unable to acknowledge that we simply don't know. The needs for diagnosis and remedistion of behavioral and emotional problems are enormous. But rather than acknowledge that we are just embarking on understanding, we continue to label patients "schizophrenic," "manic-depressive," and "insane," as if in those words we had captured the essence of understanding.
The facts of the matter are that we have known for a long time that diagnoses are often not useful or reliable, but we have nevertheless continued to use them. We now know that we cannot distinguish insanity from sanity. It is depressing to consider how that information will be used.
Not merely depressing, but frightening. How many people, one wonders, are sane but not recognized as such in our psychiatric institutions? How many have been needlessly stripped of their privileges of citizenship, from the right to vote and drive to that of handling their own accounts? How many have feigned insanity in order to avoid the criminal consequences of their behavior, and, conversely, how many would rather stand trial than live interminably in a psychiatric bhospital but are wrongly thought to be mentally ill? How many have been stigmatized by weil-intentioned, but nevertheless erroneous, diagnoses?. . . Psychiatric diagnoses are rarely found to be in error. The label sticks, a mark of inadequacy forever.
Finally, how many patients might be "sane" outside the psychiatric hospital but seem insane in it--not because their illness resides in them, as it were, but because they are responding to a bizarre setting, one that may be unique to institutions which harbor nether people? Goffman (4) calls the process of socialization to such institutions "mortification"--an apt metaphor that includes the processes of depersonalization that have been described here. And while it is impossible to know whether the pseudopatients' responses to these processes are characteristic of all inmates-they were, after all, not real patientst--is difficult to believe that these processes of socialization to a psychiatric hospital provide useful attitudes or habits of response for living in the "real world."
-
Typical anti-psychiatry babble.
Nice if you have created a market
niche and are getting paid to write
and present bull crap.
I guess your solution is enroll
in Dianetics and see you in the morning.
-
You got all the facts and current
trends correct.
Thanks for posting from first hand
experience.
The anti-pychiatry crowd will just
dismiss you as an anomoly.
That is sad, obviously.
I appreciate you stating it like it
is, those on the list who are seeking
the truth will appreciate your honesty.
The anti-psychiatrist will just keep
on hurting those that need help ...
-
Keep on hurting those who need help?
Did you take your meds today?
You have a very narrow view on this issue.
I have no intention of hurting anyone, and certainly have no intention or the power to interfer with their 'mental health' decisions. Nor do the "anti-psych" people I know.
I put psychiatry on the same page with religion.
Practice it if you like, don't subject me to it. And I certainly don't want to be subjected to any laws based on the flawed thinking.
Whose hurting who? I really would not like to be involuntarily committed, even for 72 hours, for getting smart with a surly cop.
Not sure HOW you think opposing this Bill would hurt you. I don't think you know either.
-
Yes, hurting those that are vulnerable.
Quoting anti-psychiatry dogma based
on emotion, not fact, influences
those that are not sure what treatment
to seek.
Please send the link, I tried to google
it for Texas to no avail.
Many patients go through the anti-pychiatry
phase of their quest for health. If they
are lucky and are not in jail or dead
then the next phase is to seek treatment
with evidence based practices.
Anti-psychiatry is far from an evidence
based practice.
Read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-psychiatry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-psychiatry)
-
Good link. Here's something I found there.
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Szasz/myth.htm (http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Szasz/myth.htm)The Christian God can be easily pictured as virtually the same as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, evil and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed, beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of the people who say they serve him. The are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites.
--Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President, author, scientist, architect, educator, and diplomat
-
Just bullshit, that is all.
If one wants to stick their head in the
sand and ignore people with psychiatric
illnesses that is fine.
For those who have not abandoned the
mentally ill and watched the progress
over the last 25 years has been remarkable.
To keep going over this book which was
financed by the Scientologist, so that
sales don't matter, just the concept
in such a legitimate format ... a book!
The stats on mental illness kept by
the people who pay for these services
just don't correlate to the emotional
hype of the anti crowd.
To debate this issue ad nauseum while
totally ignoring the evidence based
research and clinical practice system
here and around the world is a waste
of time.
Ginger, you and the folks on this list
are smarter than that!
-
The most telling sign of an anti-psychiatry
person is their acceptance of the mentally
ill going to prison.
As one of the top anti-psychiatry persons
in California told me two weeks ago, one
of the families I was helping with their
delusional son - it was bad karma that
brought it on the family. There fault.
I asked her to call them, handed her my
cell phone ... she refused.
That is a beautiful advocacy she performs, eh?
---
I would rather help.
---
Anyway, watch this Frontline program.
There is no mental illness huh, I guess
just mentally ill people, but no illness, duh!
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/asylums/ (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/asylums/)
-
Paul, I don't think you read the essay. It's a good essay. Szatz advocates for voluntary psychotherapy and draws the distinction between brain illness (neurological disease or injury) and behavoral or belief issues, which are not illnesses at all. He also has always advocated for leaveing people the hell alone unless and until they actually commit a crime against a non-consenting other. So no locking people up just for being different, weird, antisocial or whatever; either under the pretense of therapy or not.
"One commentator pointed out that when the mafia commits violence, no
one suggests we bomb Sicily. Today it seems we are, in a symbolic way, not only bombing "Sicily," but are thinking about bombing "Athens" (Iraq)."
Ron Paul, 11/29/01 Speech before Congress
-
On 2005-05-13 21:03:00, Paul wrote:
"You got all the facts and current
trends correct.
Thanks for posting from first hand
experience.
The anti-pychiatry crowd will just
dismiss you as an anomoly.
That is sad, obviously.
I appreciate you stating it like it
is, those on the list who are seeking
the truth will appreciate your honesty.
The anti-psychiatrist will just keep
on hurting those that need help ..."
I understand the terrible fear people who are not mentally ill have for being locked up, adjudged mentally ill, and (they think) forced onto psychoactive drugs.
And for a teen placed in a program, forced drugging is a real fear. For adults, it's paranoia. You *can* refuse the drugs even if you're loony as a toon and they can't make you take them.
This is why I like the SPECT scanning technology. It provides powerful objective evidence that, while not conclusive, can give people who are not mentally ill a tool for arguing against an involuntary commitment. I think anyone being involuntarily committed should be able to demand a SPECT scan.
On the other side of it, there are an awful lot of people out there who believe they aren't mentally ill when they really are.
There are way more non-mentally-ill people petrified of being labeled mentally ill, but among those of us who *do* have mental illnesses, there are many who firmly believe they don't.
Again, a SPECT scan, while not absolutely conclusive, provides some hard evidence that can support or refute what the doctor is saying.
Also, which areas of the brain are abnormal--and in what ways--matter to potential for aggressive, unwarranted violence. Even someone with a mental illness, armed with a SPECT scan, may be able to successfully make the case that they are not dangerous.
Anybody is *capable* of violence---look at any parent defending her child. The kicker is whether or not you're prone to irrationally initiating acts of violence yourself.
Personally, I'd allow the patient to decline the offer of a SPECT scan and challenge his/her commitment without it if he/she chose, but allow him/her to insist on and have a right to the scan if he/she wanted one.
But it's really hard to get people who aren't mentally ill to believe that if you scan their brain, their brain really is different from yours.
Which is one reason why those of us who *are* mentally ill are always running into people who think we could "suck it up" and "rise above it" if we "really wanted to." Or that we could "learn how to compensate for it."
Nothing you say can convince them that the doctors could tell you in advance what my brain would look like--general pattern--if you took me off my meds and scanned me, and what *their* brain would look like if you scanned them, and that the two pictures would be very, very different.
They just don't believe it.
Even not being mentally ill doesn't protect someone from having some irrational fears.
It's rational for kids to fear bad psychology and bad psychiatry being involuntarily foisted on them. That *is* happening.
When it's non-mentally ill adults fearing it, it's a *genuine* fear, but not a rational one.
Now, if anyone here has grounds to worry about ending up in the hands of bad psychiatry, it would be me---or any of us who are actually mentally ill. *I* have rational grounds to be concerned that if I ended up in government custody somehow, some goombah might misdiagnose me and *deprive* me of the very necessary meds that keep me sane, and then blame me for whatever I did in an unstable state---or worse, put me in a situation, out of my mind, where I could kill myself or someone else.
It's a lot easier for a pernicious government to find an excuse take someone's meds away, than to force them down someone else's throat.
My meds just make me, about many things, more stable than a whole lot of people whose eccentricities don't rise to the level of actual mental illness. Not "normal" exactly--there are some effects and damage from my illness that they just don't have treatments for yet, like the executive function problems.
But I don't tend to see conspiracies everywhere and jump at shadows.
Unfortunately, most eccentric people think they're normal. They don't realize they're missing maybe half a card in their deck. I don't think government should *do* anything about that, but it does mean that some people's fears about some things aren't real amenable to reason.
Ginger, I'm not talking about you. With what you went through, you have every reason to be a bit jumpy. I do think that since the 80's, with the improvements of various meds, it's gotten a whole lot easier to contest an involuntary commitment. As an adult, even a young one, you could not get court ordered to a facility for a couple of years now. (Maybe before you were 21 in a few states, but more probably not). They have to give you your own lawyer, and because of the new meds *anybody* can make a case, by being lucid in the hearing, that someplace that can't stabilize you for release within 3 weeks isn't trying very hard.
You guys have no idea how hard parents of seriously mentally ill and seriously unstable children have to fight to get hospitals and such to *keep* their kids longer than that. It can take longer to get someone newly diagnosed stable on the right medication because you usually have to try a couple before you get one that fits and isn't giving that patient problems with side effects.
Over on the boards for parents with bipolar kids, it's pretty much a given that after your kid turns 18, if he/she isn't stable, or believe's he/she isn't sick and won't take meds, there's not a blasted thing you can do about it. The sad bit is that that gets kids who can't survive independently kicked out of their homes because they're dangerous and violent to the parents and the younger children. Which is partly how new homeless mentally ill happen.
Because of the advances, it's a lot easier for a person who's not seriously mentally ill, or even one who is, to fight an involuntary commitment now.
For one thing, since very, very few real mentally ill folks have to be doped to the gills to be stabilized, if you produce someone for a hearing and they're drooling and have a vacant stare, the people arguing *for* the commitment have some serious 'splainin' to do. And the judge is far more likely to be very skeptical than credulous.
Improvements in treatments have made it *very* hard to credibly claim that drugging someone to zombiehood is anything but a ploy to limit their ability to contest the commitment.
And if they drug you with stuff to make you act dippy at the hearing, it's easy enough to say so, request your blood be drawn immediately and analyzed by a totally independent lab, and they are soooo busted. At which point the judge will be pissed and they'll have to produce you *off* meds if you request it--and the judge will *check*.
It's a lot harder than it used to be to lock someone up on a bogus claim of them being nuts.
I'm not saying it can't happen, just that instead of rolling a six-sided die, you're more like rolling a hundred-sided die with maybe five chances in a hundred that, if you contest the commitment and *aren't* dangerously mentally ill, you'll get wrongly committed.
If you're an *adult*.
Involuntary psychiatry for kids really is primitive as hell, and that's why I'm trying to bring the protections up to adult standards.
I think a kid that wants to contest a commitment ought to get a completely independent guardian ad litem, not mom and dad, to represent his case that he *shouldn't* be committed.
But most other average people, them not much interested in the issue but okay to discuss it if the subject comes up, have a case of the vapors if I even suggest it.
Timoclea
-
On 2005-05-14 16:12:00, Anonymous wrote:
Ginger, I'm not talking about you. With what you went through, you have every reason to be a bit jumpy.
What, so people who haven't got the benefit of my experience should just relax and enjoy their blissful ignorance? I'm really not jumpy over events that happened to me over 20 years ago. I'm jumpy because, having seen it happen firsthand and looking around seeing how the people who did it to me continue to expand their power and reach, I know very well that it can happen to damned near anybody.
I'm not saying it can't happen, just that instead of rolling a six-sided die, you're more like rolling a hundred-sided die with maybe five chances in a hundred that, if you contest the commitment and *aren't* dangerously mentally ill, you'll get wrongly committed.
If you're an *adult*.
And *if* you know something about how all this works. Most people really don't. If a neighbor gets dragged off the street and declared crazy, most people won't say "That's not right, she's not crazy." Most people will say "Well, who'd a thunk it!" That comes from personal experience too. Every time I run into an old friend from pre-program days, the first thing they want to know is how I'm dealing w/ my drug problem. :roll:
But we're missing each other on a significant point. You're talking about neurological disease that can be detected by objective lab work. I'll admit, I don't know much about that particular type of lab work. I do know that normal changes in mental state (fear, excitement, euphorea, etc) can also be detected w/ lab work, so I'm not very sure that that's a great way to draw the line.
But when most people talk about "mental illness" they're not talking about a medical condition that can be treated w/ medication. They're talking about behavior or beliefs that are disconcerting or otherwise unacceptable to some others. The "disease" of substance abuse is a big favorite among them others. Or expressing anger or exasperation toward any authority figure. Ok, maybe you do have to be a little touched to actually tell off a cop w/ no sense of humor. But it shouldn't be that way.
If we had had the ability and will to treat away what we now define as mental illness 100 years ago, my book collection would be far less interesting and we probably wouldn't even have any significant pop music industry at all.
I'm all for letting everyone alone, whether they choose to seek psyche treatment and drugs or not. But no one should be held against their will unless and until they infringe on the rights of others in very significant ways.
When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with all other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.
-- John Muir
_________________
Ginger Warbis ~ Antigen
Drug war POW
Seed `71 - `80
Straight, Sarasota
10/80 - 10/82
Anonymity Anonymous
return undef() if /coercion/i;
-
Ginger,
You are right, I only scanned it.
I will try to read the whole thing,
although it is difficult for me
to read anti-psychiatry literature.
---
Obviously we are talking about adult
vs children't rights, correct.
---
Adult's have the right to govt. paid
patient advocates to represent them
in involuntary committment cases ...
for free!
Children's, I don't know?
I am an adult mental heatlh advocate.
I am just now getting on some children's
workgroups, and my learning curve has
just begun.
---
FYI: San Diego County 3.3 million. Amount
of Adults in long term state psychiatric
hospital involuntary settings ... 17.
Amount in IMD, Institute for Mental Diseases,
this is a shorter stay, evaluated regularily:
100
Those numbers do not represent the epidemic
promoted by the anti crowd.
---
Another interesting factoid:
How many members of mindfreedom.org ?
David Oak's anti-psychiatry pulpit ...
600 in the whole USA.
How many counties in the US, 720 or so ...
It is rumured that many of the 600 members
of SCI are lurkers, just wondering what
the uninformed anti's are spouting off next.
-
California also has a 72 hour hold - but a "crisis team" must make that initial decision. Once institutionalized in a psych hospital they can keep one against their will for another 2 weeks. This all must be paid for by the person or their family - it is not at the government's expence. Found this to be true when this happened to my own child.....It's called 72 hour hold - then they have the right to keep them another 2 weeks - but this must be reevaluated daily. Once they are no longer a threat to themselves or to others they can leave.
Faith is a cop-out. It is intellectual bankruptcy. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits.
--Dan Barker, author and former evangelist
-
Ginger, I only favor involuntary commitment if the person is *actively, immediately* dangerous to self or others.
But I do support continuing outpatient commitment for psychotic people with a history of being actively, immediately dangerous to others---what outpatient commitment is, for anyone who doesn't know, is ordering a patient to take his meds as a condition of staying out of the hospital.
If they took me off my meds and did a SPECT scan on my brain, patches of it all over the top left and top right, all over the place, would be bright red among the blue lines (on the black background for that kind of picture), with some patchiness around the front. The red is from abnormally high blood flow to certain areas of the brain. Even on my meds, if they scanned me, the picture would be patchy, particularly on the upper left temporal lobe in the language area. It's why I write so much. I have hypergraphia and no meds they've got even touch it---but I can get paid for it, too, so it's not so bad. :smile:
Maybe if you have bad PMS when you were PMSing you'd have some red patchiness, but not a patch on mine.
Just about everyone even remotely normal has a scan almost entirely of blue lines with two little red eggs down in the forward center.
They've got another kind of picture the scan puts out where your brain looks like a fluffy cloud. ADHD? There's little swiss cheese holes in the fluffy cloud picture in your frontal lobe when you're trying to concentrate.
Schizophrenic or got general paresis(iirc)? Swiss cheese holes all over your brain.
Had brain damage from an injury? Most likely a swiss cheese hole or two where you got injured in the fluffy cloud picture, but maybe you've got the high blood flow for an oddly-located red patch or few.
The unusual red patches go around your brain kind of like a ring, or maybe you've got big red blotches down low in the back in your limbic system? Then chances are much higher that you have a problem with violence.
People shouldn't be imprisoned for their beliefs unless their belief is that they ought to or are justified in killing other people and they demonstrate a high willingness to act on those beliefs---like getting convicted of conspiracy to commit murder. Even then, that qualifies you for a jail cell, IMO, not a mental hospital.
People like me, with serious mental illnesses that are clearly biological---need to be left the hell alone unless we become immediately and actively dangerous to self or others. And the "self" bit is more a concession to the rest of society's norms than a personal belief.
People whose serious mental illness or serious brain damage makes them violent and actively dangerous to others really need to be quarantined in a mental hospital while they're dangerous so they won't hurt anybody; but with medications, those of us who have that happen to us can become not dangerous, get released, and live normal lives.
What it comes down to is none of the rest of you have to worry about someday, if someone *doesn't* commit you and needs to, maybe being so out of your head that you murder somebody.
Thank whatever you hold sacred that you *don't* have to worry about that personally.
Just about every mentally ill person I know would fall down on their knees and beg their family that if someday they got sick enough to maybe kill someone, and didn't know it, to be committed and stabilized so that that didn't happen and they didn't have to live with the realization that they had done horrible things when their mind finally cleared again.
Seeing how easy it is for seriously mentally ill adults to avoid treatment if we don't want it, I just have real trouble believing that non mentally ill adults can't *also* avoid it.
TimocleaAll national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
--Thomas Paine, American revolutionary
-
Yes, Tim, that all makes perfect sense if we're only talking about relatively sane people in charge who only want to help people who are really in need of help.
But the more commonly accepted reality is that we're dealing w/ people in power who view the first toke of a joint or even just attempted escape from the school system as tantamount to suicide and doing anything like that in the company of friends as tantamount to attempted murder.
History gives us a kind of chart, and we dare not surrender even a small rushlight in the darkness. The hasty reformer who does not remember the past will find himself condemned to repeat it.
--John Buchan
_________________
Ginger Warbis ~ Antigen
Drug war POW
Seed `71 - `80
Straight, Sarasota
10/80 - 10/82
Anonymity Anonymous
return undef() if /coercion/i;
-
Paul, I think psychiatry vs antipsychiatry is very much a straw man. What's happening is that various people operating from various agendas are using serious mental problems as a way to market their ideas about how to force everyone to conform to a very narrow, often a very neurotic, world view.
You say you need meds and a good shrink, I believe you. I have a brother who did almost as well on cannabis as he did on Xanex. I don't dismiss out of hand that some people are better off on some meds. Not at all.
But my dear brother choose cannabis over xanex because he was afraid of getting tagged w/ a psyche dx, which seems to be a whole other ordeal in Florida from what you describe in Cali. Then his kid hit gradeschool (DARE age) and he tossed out the bongs and trays and papers and such in trade for good old, legal beer (again!) and hit the skids.
We're doing something very, very wrong here! Patients who need and want treatment are unwittingly advocating for policies that are routinely used to put down various social and political activity that bears no resemblance to what you describe as mental illness.
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.
Gandhi
-
***Quoting anti-psychiatry dogma based
on emotion, not fact, influences
those that are not sure what treatment
to seek.
That hasn't been my experience. My batting average for 'influencing' people's decisions about psychiatric or program fraud is very low. One parent ignored my warnings and her son died at a wilderness program. Another parent disregarded my warnings about the military academy my son was heinously abused in (and sued) and I just heard they are pulling thier child.
I tend to believe that people can make their own decisions. I share what I know. What they choose is their business and I don't loose any sleep over it.
***Many patients go through the anti-pychiatry
phase of their quest for health. If they
are lucky and are not in jail or dead
then the next phase is to seek treatment
with evidence based practices.
Um huh, where have we heard 'deadorinjail' before?
***Anti-psychiatry is far from an evidence
based practice.
Paul, this is your opinion. There is much you don't know, and probably don't care to know. Debating this issue is about as useful as debating religion. We could say that you're a fundamentalist and I'm an atheist/agnostic.
Word of god being synonymous with 'Evidence based'. Pooey.
-
Ginger,
Sorry to hear about your brother.
Could you expand on this statement
a little bit:
We're doing something very, very wrong here! Patients who need and want treatment are unwittingly advocating for policies that are routinely used to put down various social and political activity that bears no resemblance to what you describe as mental illness.
Thanks ...
-
Remember that I am talking about the adult
and older adult system of care.
If there are specific problems to children's
civil rights due to being under 18, then I am
not familiar with these issues.
Dead or in Jail, for adults I should have included
broke, homeless, isolating, in trouble with the law,
suicides and/or jail. Not true? Then who are these
folks in jail? Who are the 30% of homeless with mental illness. Did you watch the PBS show?
'Evidence based'. Pooey.
Right, and some members of the OJ jury stated
that there was too much evidence, so they voted
innocent.
-
Every county in the US has a local Mental Health Board, they can also be called local Mental Health Advisory Board, or a local Mental Health Commission.
If you are interested, check one out.
-
Perhaps this is where the problem
lies in this discussion.
I am talking about diagnosable
mental illness. Where psychotherapy,
medications, ECT and various programs
will help in recovery ... to hopefully
leave the mental health system, or
have a maintenance only protocol.
The list is talking mostly about behavioral
issues where people are getting into trouble.
Trouble does not necessarily fit a mental
"hold" for a psychiatric assessment. If
the doctor at the facility determines that
it is drugs, or criminal not a potential
mental illness then a psychiatric hold
will not occur.
Then it is up to the police to process the
individual through the criminal system,
or not. Usually at this point the police
cannot make this decision and the courts
are the next decision making body.
It does not matter who makes the call on
a potential psychiatric hold, called a
5150, in California. If the psychiatrist
does not agree, no hold will be started.
After 72 hours, there has to be a Reese
hearing, and a judge will hear the evidence
if the facility is recommending an additional
14 day evaluation hold. The state will pay
for representation via the local Patient
Advocate program.
In California not every hospital is approved
for these holds. The must be an LPS hospital
and follow strict guidelines.
All the guidelines are set up to protect
the patient from abuse. The LPS law was
passed about 40+ years ago as part of
the de-institutionalization of the mentally
ill from large state hospitals to communities.
The community mental health programs where
mandated, but never adequately funded. This
is the current situation today.
---
The way that society has resolved the involuntary
treatment dilema is to let the courts handle the
crimal aspect of an indivuals behavior, regardless
of mental illness, or behavioral choices.
In California the mentally ill comprise 30,000 inmates of 160,000 in jails and prisons.
---
When someone is symptomatic and the laws prevent
them getting treatment the saying is:
"dying with their rights on" and if jailed,
"sitting in jail wondering where their rights where"
---
Again, I am talking about mental illness, not
behavioral choices.
---
Please watch the PBS special, I don't think there
is any doubt that mental illness is real, regardless of Szasz and his small band of niche
anti-psychiatry celebrities.
-
Paul,
I believe that the problem with homelessness goes much deeper than 'mental illness'.
Had a professor once who told the class, mostly young impressionable students, that poor/homeless would benefit from anitdepressants, implying that 'mental illness' was the source of their inability to provide for themselves.
Give me an f-in break.
Yep, let's drug em up. If they're lucky and the drugs work as intended, perhaps they will no longer feel distressed about economic injustices, lack of pro-life policies, lack of a living wage, and growing reduction of social services/welfare.
Tax payers will pay for their drugs (that's you and me bud) when the poor would probably be 'happier' with $250 rather than a rx for Prozac. I'm sure some are smart enough to sell them for cash in order to acquire the basic necessities they really need.
Just another way to subvert our tax dollars and ignore the real needs of the poor/homeless.
http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/0603/24a.php (http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/0603/24a.php)
The escalating cost of healthcare is in large measure due to the spiraling expenditure on drugs--many of which are misprescribed. The Boston Globe reports about one Medicaid patient who is prescribed 18 medications at a cost of roughly $16,000 a year-- "all at the expense of the financially struggling Massachusetts Medicaid program."
[$16,000 !!! My opinion is that it would be more altruistic to give the woman 16K a year to live on, rather than putting it into the pockets of big pharma.]
The woman (who was alcoholic) is a pharmaceutical company's dream consumer. Thanks to psychiatrists' poly-pharmacy prescribing practices she is taking multiple costly drugs of the same class. Such prescribing practices are more likely to generate drug-induced new pathologies than to cure the condition for which they are prescribed. What some would call malpractice, is an incredibly lucrative marketing strategy.
According to Massachusetts Medicaid, the 10 most prescribed drugs under the Medicaid program are:
1. Zyprexa (antipsychotic) costs Massachusetts taxpayers $4.2 million,
2. Protonix (heartburn) costs $3.6 million
3. Risperdal (antipsychotic) costs $3.1 million
4. Lipitor (anti-cholesterol) costs $2.8 million
5. Seroquel (antipsychotic) costs $2.8 million
6. Neurontin (neuropathic pain...) $2 mill
7. Depakote (antidepressant) $1.7 million
8. OxyContin (narcotic) $1.6 million
9. Zoloft (antidepressant)$1.5 million
10. Paxil (antidepressant) $1.2 million
7 of the 10 drugs are expensive psychiatric drugs that are eating up the Medicaid budget. The Boston Globe reports that about 40,000 patients in the Massachusetts Medicaid program take eight or more medications. "Thousands of other patients take five or more psychiatric drugs, more than one newer antidepressant, or more than one newer antipsychotic."
Furthermore, "For patients on eight or more drugs or five or more psychiatric drugs, Medicaid officials will try to educate doctors about why this could be a health problem."
One must wonder about the professional competence of State licensed psychiatrists who prescribe powerful, mind altering drugs, yet are ignorant about these drugs' potential to cause patients harm.
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***Please watch the PBS special, I don't think there is any doubt that mental illness is real, regardless of Szasz and his small band of niche
anti-psychiatry celebrities.
You just keep missing the point and arrogantly misrepresenting anti-psychs. There isn't one anti-psych person who doesn't believe that some people have problems with living. That perhaps, through their life some neural pathways were established that result in anti-social behavior, that they lack skills/education necessary to economically provide for them selves or families, etc. etc. etc.
Psychiatric treatment and drugs is not the end all. Most times the person's real needs go unmet while their emotions are suppresed with mind numbing drugs that ARE dangerous, and at the very least damage major organs and at the very worst, can cause worse side-effect, including suicide/homicide. Now, that's hopeful. Not.
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A recent study here, that was not a double
blind study, but probably accurate enough
was that ignoring the homeless costs society
in all about $65,000 per year.
I don't know what type of professor you had
make that comment. The facts are that 30%
of the homeless have mental illness. I don't
know what percentage of that makes homelessness
inevitable, but untreated mental illness doesn't
bring about good results.
Giving someone meds, alone, is hardly the answer
and has never been a recommendation that I have
seen in goverment, or public, mental health programs.
It is very complex how one gets into, and then
out of homelessness. In California we had a pilot
program called AB 2034 that funded a wrap around
program for the homeless. It worked, but it was
only a pilot program and the funds are gone now.
Those that participated are living in a home
and working and paying taxes ...
Those that did not get a chance to be in the AB
2034 program are status quo.
Mental health care is hardly meds alone, but
apparently to the anti-psychiarty crowd that
is all it is. How can I argue that the $208
million dollar San Diego County mental health
budget is not a medication budget alone? I
would be wasting my time. All those employed
in the various prorams must feel insulted
when they are written off as drug pushers.
Regarding the Massachusetts article, there
should be a couple of answers culled before
any judgement is made. We all know that private
insurance has a safety net for high volume
utilizers of insurance dollars, that is SSDI
and SSI.
Given that, of those 40,000 on multiple medications did they all have a single
mental diagonosis? Or did they have multiple
diagnosis? If multiple diagnosis then perhaps
additional perscriptions would have to be
justified. In California all prescriptions
for all patients need to be justified, in
Massachusetts the article makes it sound
like a free for all. Is there no quality
assurance in Massachusetts or is the article
mis-representing the complex role of public
health and the ever so profitable role of
private health insurance?
-
I admit it here, I am a dolt, and
couldn't find the bill online.
Could someone post the link so
I can read the details?
Thanks!
-
"their emotions are suppresed with mind numbing drugs that ARE dangerous"
What decade are you talking about?
My roomate was in a state psych hospital and I
would suspect that is where you would be quoting
the worst abuses, except it doesn't happen. It
doesn't happen in reports, it doesn't happen
asking my roomate and the biggest complaint
in public health is that the jailed, or hospitalized
are getting inadequate mental health services.
I don't know which public policy meeting you
attend that are proposing medications only,
but I have been active since 1998 and have
never heard it, except for the ir-relevant
anti-psychiatry speakers who get the right
to speak at these conferences and local meetings
because of their stance against mental health.
To me, it is the only time I wish I could claim
that I don't have mental illness. These folks
embarras the heck out of me. Never are they
well researched and are always off topic to
what the meeting is about.
Everyone just rolls their eyes, and they
get dismissed. It is so damn sad how much
the anti-psychiatry crowd has hurt themselves
and others. But those making money never leave
and have carved out a profitable nice for
themselves.
The one's that follow rather than think are
just being taken advantage of, and they will
be the last to know, sadly.
"at the very least damage major organs"
Name each medication that you are referring
to and the statistical incidence report, please.
"can cause worse side-effect, including suicide/homicide"
Take Schizophrenia, if 85% are unmedicated, then are you saying all the problems associated with this illness are from the 15% that take medication?
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OK, I am off to play water volleyball,
while I am gone you are welcome to
post the anti-psychiatry mental health
platform.
Please state your bias, before the
roll out of your platform, such as,
Mental Illness is a Myth, or whatever
else is driving your belief system.
If attacking the current system, then
please state your references and fact.
Emotional comments do not count in
public policy.
I am looking forward to your information.
-
I use to attend county public mental
health meetings with Dr. Mosher.
I liked him as a person, as far as
his contributions to public policy
there were none.
It was like he was in a different
decade.
Programs that had been in place for
years, non-medication, he would advocate
for, even though we had them already.
He pretty much would express his
displeasure, not offer any solutions,
and would be dismissed by all, except
the loyal anti crowd.
He was a very big person in the small
anti-psychiatry movement, but ineffective
in public policy and a failure as
San Diego's County Mental Health Director.
-
What I wish we could all get behind is more research to develop objective, biological, lab tests to differentiate those of us with serious mental illnesses from those without them.
I want a computer program that will take a SPECT scan and spit out a diagnosis with a confidence interval, and spit out a violence risk, again with a confidence interval.
Violence risks are tricky, because even a sane person who's pissed off enough will do horrible, violent things to another person. Just listen to sane people describing what they want done to particularly horrible murderers, rapists, or child molesters.
But what you probably *can* get is a percent risk increase--this brain pattern increases this patient's risk of violence X% plus or minus Y% at the 95th percent confidence interval.
I don't think someone should be locked up just because of their scan, I think their scan should be an important tool for *them* to use in making the case that they should *not* be locked up.
I think that even though most of the people we involuntarily commit are seriously mentally ill, we probably commit more people than are actively dangerous---and release some that were a hair's breadth from being committed because the bed went to someone who isn't dangerous enough to be in it, but fewer, I think.
One of the reasons I'm such a big fan of brain scans is that a scan after you put the patient on meds can tell you if the meds are working or not. And seeing the before and after scans, to compare with the scans of typical "normal" brains, is often real helpful for convincing people to take and stay on their meds, and for showing their family in concrete terms what the meds are doing for them.
The other thing the scans show is which problems in which parts of the brain *aren't* being helped by a particular med. That can be hard for patients to put in words to a doc, but seeing it on the scan, it's obvious which lobes of the brain the patient is still having problems with.
A lot of times this is why one patient will have to be on multiple medications---different medications do a better or worse job of normalizing problem areas in different lobes of the brain.
So you're taking one med for your temporal lobe problems, but if it's not touching your frontal lobe problems, you may have to add a med on to take care of those---and seeing the scan helps the docs a lot in narrowing down *which* meds to try, one after the other, to see if one works without bad side effects.
And, of course, SPECT scans help with crafting *non* drug interventions to help the patient, as well. If your meds or therapies take care of certain big problems, but still leave some troublesome little ones hanging around in other parts of the brain, a lot of times the docs can help improve your abilities in those areas by having you do targetted therapeutic tasks specifically aimed at the parts of the brain where you're having trouble. Tasks related to the other things that part of the brain handles, that may seem to the layman to have not a lot of relationship to the stuff you're actually having trouble with---but that, when you work the tasks and work the tasks, your ability to do the tasks that were unusually hard for you gets better.
It's kind of like physical therapy has you do bizarre things that don't seem to have any relationship to what your trouble is, but darned if they don't help you get better.
I would think the people who are anti-psych would be all over the task-based therapies for problems in different parts of the brain like white on rice.
Maybe they are and I just missed it.
Go figure.
But the point is that regardless of ignorant yahoos' bad motivations in applying the laws for how to deal with people who really are dangerously mentally ill, we would *all* benefit from research that would make it less a matter of *anyone's* subjective opinion who those folks are.
SPECT scanning still seems fairly subjective in some ways--it could be that I just don't know enough about it, though. But it has the promise of, with a lot of data, giving us much better ideas of what makes various kinds of problems better or worse for which people, and what combinations of problems are a stick of dynamite waiting for a fuse.
For those of you who are normal, no matter what you decided to think about or try to feel while being scanned, you *could not* make your brain do the patchy shite *my* brain would do if they took my off my meds and scanned me.
And you almost certainly could not, no matter what you did, make your brain do what mine does in the verbal areas despite the meds.
Believe me, if it were possible, aspiring writers would have "how-to" pages all over the net telling each other how to trigger hypergraphia in themselves. It's a specific brain abnormality that there are plenty of people who don't have it think they want it.
A sharp blow to the head in the wrong/right place has been known to *accidentally* turn someone into a hypergraph without causing a full-on mental illness, but nobody's got any way to turn it on, or off, on purpose.
You can meditate and therapize and change your diet (without drugs or pharmeceutical grade supplements) until you're blue in the face, and so can I, but without heavy duty drugs, your (normal) brain SPECT scan will look nothing like mine, and mine will look nothing like normal.
Not everyone who argues against people having actual physical neurological problems that affect their thinking and behavior is going to have a normal SPECT scan, because some of those folks are pretty eccentric, and there's probably something "different" that makes for those eccentricities that would show. But mere opinion and belief system isn't going to be enough to change your scans one way or another.
I guess a way to explain the difference between someone "faking nuts" for a pshrink and "faking nuts" for a SPECT scan is that anybody can *say* they hear voices, but making yourself believe you actually hear them is a whole 'nother ballgame.
Conversely, anybody can *say* there aren't any little voices in their head even if the little voices are chattering away like mad. Shutting off the little voices is a whole 'nother ballgame.
Timoclea
Okay, I misremembered where the "normal" red blotches were on a brain. I'm not a neurologist But here,
Your Brain:
http://www.brainplace.com/bp/atlas/ch2.asp (http://www.brainplace.com/bp/atlas/ch2.asp)
See? Nice fluffy cloud, mostly blue, a few red blotches in very specific places.
My Brain:
http://www.brainplace.com/bp/atlas/ch8.asp (http://www.brainplace.com/bp/atlas/ch8.asp)
Not the schizophrenic one, the bipolar one. Although you'll notice in the schizophrenic one that the right level of risperdal makes the swiss cheese go away. :smile:
Some of the brain problems seen in violence cases:
http://www.brainplace.com/bp/atlas/ch14.asp (http://www.brainplace.com/bp/atlas/ch14.asp)
Notice that different kinds of things can cause violence, from impaired decision making abilities, impulse control problems, overactivity in emotional areas that involve rage--there are normally several systems keeping our "fight" actions in check. Disable one of those systems and the wrong kind of stimulus can trigger violence that in a normal person that system would have prevented, and in a damaged person, the system that would have stopped it just isn't working.
Like, impulse control: God, I want to strangle that obnoxious sonofabitch---but you don't. Killing the guy at the DMV who's being a prick about your license renewal. Yeah, he's a real prick, but he doesn't really deserve to die.
Decision making: That sonofabitch is evil, but killing him is not a very good way of dealing with it. Killing the girlfriend who was smarming up to you and spending your money while flagrantly cheating on you behind your back. She's a really horrible person, true, but there are better ways of dealing with that than killing her.
Rage: Dammit, that fucker just cut me off, I am so pissed! But I take a deep breath and start to calm down almost immediately, or don't get nearly as pissed as I would if my rage circuits were on overdrive. Killing the guy that's mowing his lawn at 8am on a Saturday because that really bugs you and you just happen to explode with rage right then. *You* didn't really think the guy deserved to die, but you were so mad nothing could have stopped you.
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NIMH is the largest provider of funds for mental health research:
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/ (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/)
If you are in a big city, your universities
are probably doing some of this research.
I have participated in brain scan studies
at UCSD.
Any findings have to be reproducable and
evidence based before they can be put
into practice.
There are many theories, and much more
research to be done to prove those theories
and put them into practice and to develop
new theories and test them.
It takes seventeen years from the first
research until it is proven and put into
clinical practice.
-
Here is a great website, loaded with
information and a free newsletter,
all researched and compiled by a
Bipolar consumer:
http://mcmanweb.com/ (http://mcmanweb.com/)
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Paul,
I am not going to do research for you while you spend your Sunday afternoon playing water volleyball. Get a grip. Is a ?superiority complex? part of your ?mental illness? dx?
As to your arrogant comment ?welcoming? me to present my platform? I?ve already said that I don?t care to debate the ?religion? of psychiatry with you.
As for the damage psych drugs do? see the Psychiatrist?s Bible. Right there in their diagnostic manual, which most people don?t even read before swallowing the pills. All pharmaceuticals are very hard on the liver and kidneys, brain and heart. Some will even increase suicidal ideation, and possibly homicidal tendencies.
One blatant discrepancy in your comments is the claim that drugs are not the only services provided, then you tell how the funds for the AB 2034 program had disappeared. There?s theory and what we hope would happen, and then there is the reality of what?s being practiced? that too many get their rx without having any of their problems with living addressed.
The ?anti-psych crowd? in Texas has protected those under 18 from having their brains fried with ECT, have confronted and educated lawmakers on the realities of foster children being over medicated, ensured that public school staff/adm can not diagnose mental illness or demand psychiatric treatment, exposed TMAP/ Teen Screen for what they are, among other very useful and beneficial things. Some testified for ?Black Box Warnings? on SSRIs. Roll your eyes until you?re dizzy, but that kind of activism is not going to come from the pro-psych crowd.
Let?s talk about ?profitable niches?. Does the comment that ?30% of homeless have mental illness? have any basis in reality? Who determined this? How was it determined? Might it rather be a projection of how much $$$ big pharma would like coming into their bank accounts, asap? At $200+ per month, I?d say they probably have a significant stake in 30% having ?mental illness?. Same with the stats on how many teens have undiagnosed ?mental illness? they are using to justify screening in public schools. Care to disclose if any of your personal assets are invested in big pharma?
Hey, a point we can agree on, ?The one's that follow rather than think are just being taken advantage of, and they will be the last to know, sadly.?
Emotional comments don?t count in public policy. Damn straight. So post up concrete evidence that ?mental illness? DOES exist, short of neurological damage. While you?re at it, post up any evidence (not assumptions or wishful thinking) that might prove ?mental illness? is genetic or can't be overcome by any other method than drugs. Don?t bother with all the ?evidence? that claims that it ?might? or ?appears to be?. Just the FACTS, Paul.
Dr Mosher did good work. You claim ?we?ve had non-med programs for years?. Where are they Paul? How many exist? Where is the funding? Why are people who?d would rather not damage their organs and brains, if they knew, not educated on other options? Did you ever visit or know anyone who visited Mosher?s ?non-drug, non-hospital, specially designed and staffed home-like residential treatment facility??
http://www.ahrp.org/about/Mosher.php (http://www.ahrp.org/about/Mosher.php)
Excellent video: http://www.moshersoteria.com/ (http://www.moshersoteria.com/)
Or were you too busy rolling your eyes? If the ?eye rollers? (holy rollers) can?t even entertain the success of Mosher?s work, how could you begin to expect him to make any dent in public policy?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mo ... ty+program (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mosher+%2B+non+drug+community+program)
Your experience may be different, but what I notice is that public policy is based on thinking (beliefs), which is heavily swayed by those who stand to gain most. Anti-psychs know that public policy is not going to change, other than small gains here and there, until the prevailing thinking changes. You are not going to change the public policy on subjecting teens to ECT, for example, until you?ve educated those who have the power to change that policy. And let?s face it Paul, non-med options are not profitable to those who are making public policy and have investments in big pharma.
Here?s one of my favorite arguments against coercive psychiatry by one of my favorite ?antis?.
There is a widespread misconception in society that Institutional Mental Health (this term is intended to cover psychiatrists, psychologists and other ?mental health? professionals) provides valuable services to individuals in need of help and generally attempts to foster personal change or ?growth? I argue in this paper that the praxis of Institutional Mental Health is based on a model that is not oriented primarily toward generating change, but toward maintaining social control. Thus, this model is problematic on ethical as well as on epistemological grounds: it underestimates the individual?s capacity for change and it consequently undermines this very capacity?..
http://www.academyanalyticarts.org/farber.htm (http://www.academyanalyticarts.org/farber.htm)
Who funds NIMH?
?Any findings have to be reproducable and evidence based before they can be put
into practice.?
Paul, that?s nice wishful thinking buddy, but has no basis in reality. Have you not read anything about the FDAs role in obscuring inaccurate research data? It?s near impossible for any research to be completely objective.
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:smile: Well, it's a good day when you have the perspective to laugh at yourself, I guess.
Yes, yes, it's all a conspiracy to fry our minds with chemicals and take our money and those of us who feel like our lives are better on psychiatric meds are just stupidly deluding ourselves and doomed to perish in a pile of gooey chemical sludge Any Day Now.
[yawn]
Timoclea
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The Soteria site is packed with very useful information:
http://www.moshersoteria.com/ (http://www.moshersoteria.com/)
To the rational human, this should speak volumes:
Soteria Associates:
Mental Health Consulting from an Alternative Viewpoint
What We Are About
Our mission is to provide evidence based alternative (to the currently dominant biomedical model) explanatory concepts and practices for the mental health community. We offer educational materials, lectures, seminars, consultations, support groups, advocacy, and expert testimony.
Our name has its origin in the Soteria project. In a random assignment study the Soteria Project demonstrated that acute psychosis could be treated successfully in the context of caring human relationships without the use of anti-psychotic drugs. Soteria is a Greek word meaning salvation or deliverance. For more information about the Soteria Project see the articles on this website.
The alternative evidence we present stands in contrast to the currently dominant biomedical hypotheses about the nature of major "mental illness". The alternative practice we espouse is not based on the medical model that treats nearly everything with psychotropic drugs. Rather, our model is voluntary, need and problem focused, relationship based, holistic, consumer (including families and social networks) driven and recovery oriented.
While we may offer various drugs (including dietary supplements and herbal remedies) they are viewed as adjunctive and used in as low a dose as possible for the shortest period of time that will allow evaluation of their usefulness.
There is no methodologically sound scientific data that what is labeled "serious mental illness" is genetically determined, is the result of identifiable biochemical abnormalities, is associated with specific brain lesions or is due to known etiologic agents (see bibliography on this site). Basically, the current hypothesis that "mental illness" is a "brain disease" is unsupported by data, making its continued propagation as "true" a myth or a delusion or a fraud. As such, we are in the realm of religious dogma -- not science. Pity the non-believers, for they shall be punished as deviants.
We do know that there are a number of psychosocial factors associated with the development of problematic behaviors:
poverty
childhood sexual and /or physical abuse
parental neglect
dysfunctional family behaviors such as the inability to communicate clearly and cogently, a pervasive family context of hostility and criticism, serious addictions, parental emotional divorce, high levels of stress secondary to chronic intra-familial conflict and an absence of a supportive social network.
Fortunately, by being able to understand the relationship of problematic behaviors to these psychosocial factors the kinds of interventions most likely to ameliorate their impact on those embedded in these psychonoxious contexts can be defined and implemented. Basically, being able to define the nature of a problem makes it possible to develop a potential solution. For example, if family conflict seems to be the main issue, it can be dealt with in family therapy specifically focused on reduction of conflict.
We believe that operating within a psychosocial paradigm can avoid many of the problems associated with the medicalization of what is labeled as "mental illness".
As we see it, the downside of the biomedical model of treatment is:
A labeling process that does not allow for unlabeling and hence, almost inevitably, produces marginalization and discrimination
Institutionalization that disrupts family and social network relationships and does little to help find meaningfulness in relation to crises, further escalating anxiety and perplexity in all those who care
The introduction of the current (but erroneous) biomedical view of serious "mental illness" as being "incurable", "chronic", and/or "deteriorating". Maintenance is possible but-hope-so necessary for recovery, is nearly impossible in this conceptualization
Medication, viewed by most as a required part of treatment, may actually impede or prevent recovery by aborting a potentially helpful psychological process that needs to be related to and understood rather than suppressed. It has, for example, been shown that the use of the anti-psychotic drugs, at least for what is called "schizophrenia", has resulted in poorer long- term outcomes than was the case prior to their use. In addition, suicide rates have not been reduced as a result of the use of the anti-depressant medications
In violation of the Hippocratic dictum to "above all, do no harm", excessive reliance on medications has produced enormous rates of iatrogenic (doctor induced) diseases such as tardive dyskinesia and dementia, neuroleptic malignant syndrome, akathisia, suicidality, obesity, reproductive difficulties, and addiction-to name but a few
The model has induced a sense of powerlessness in individuals, families and social networks because of its ability to use coercion in the name of providing "medical treatment"
Medicalization has produced a psychiatric/drug company/hospital industrial complex that has such power and control over theory and practice as to make a change to a humanistic, psychosocial paradigm virtually impossible.
Many mental health professionals -- especially psychiatrists -- will attempt to invalidate and refute this argument -- while defending the status quo -- by referring to the "miraculous" effects of drug treatment. In addition they will contend that clinical practice is actually based on a "biopsychosocial model." It takes a very serious case of denial not to see what is before your eyes: Mental health treatment for the so-called "seriously mentally ill" is centered on medication with lip service at best being given to the "psychosocial" part of the model.
Consider these questions: How many adult mental health consumers in the mental health systems you know about are not being prescribed medications? What percentages are receiving regular psychotherapy of any type? How many are regularly able to access peer support groups? Is client input into program planning and development real -- or is it just tokenism? Are there client run programs? Are the expressed needs of clients taken seriously?
We believe the alternative voice provided by Soteria Associates and other similar organizations that provide accurate information (that is, with no conflict of interest) and education about the realities of today's mental health context -- via critical examination of current research on mental illness -- is much needed. Without critical dissident voices the real recovery oriented needs of persons with complex and recalcitrant problems will never be addressed.
There are many, many consumers and families coming to the realization that today's treatment landscape is desolate of any real understanding, help or hope for them. Soteria Associates hears from these dissatisfied persons daily by phone, email and regular mail. Among the many issues they raise, the following are common themes:
They inquire whether there are any treatment centers that do not use psychotropic drugs routinely -- at present there are five in the entire country.
They ask to be withdrawn from psychotropic drugs because of the terrifying and painful effects they have experienced from them -- but there are no doctors or facilities willing to take on the arduous task of withdrawing these drugs. Many report that the drugs have not really helped them -- only caused them problems. Many of those who have tried to withdraw experienced very frightening and unpleasant withdrawal reactions --often of sufficient magnitude to make them restart the medication.
They seek to understand and deal more effectively with their experiences but can not find persons willing to join with them in this difficult collaborative endeavor. Basically, no one wants to hear them out. Psychiatric residents (trainees) are taught that you "can't talk to disease" (ie, "schizophrenia" and severe depression or mania).
They wonder why it is so difficult to find decent affordable housing with interpersonal support, if needed, in such an affluent country.
They seek almost any alternative way of dealing with their problems but there are few professionals willing to offer anything outside the current dogma. Even asking, or questioning, may be viewed as non-compliance, further damaging their reputations.
The list goes on, but these are representative examples of what is wrong with the system. We find ourselves empathizing with their powerlessness and hopelessness.
It would be delusional to believe that Soteria Associates, a very small voice in a vast wilderness, can, by itself, address these needs. What is required is the formation of many communities of persons (and their friends) who have been failed by biomedically focused mental health treatment, the formation of groups demanding an alternative: Interventions that are humane, focused on understanding the meaningfulness of subjective experience, and on filling legitimate needs is what we espouse. Soteria Associates will be glad to be facilitators in so far as our resources allow.
However, the system will not change without the MOBILIZATION OF MANY VOICES OF ANGRY, DISAFFECTED CONSUMERS -- and those who care about them -- collectively directed to changing the status quo and replacing those perpetuating it.
Soteria Associates
(Loren R. Mosher M.D.- Psychiatrist, Director)
Dr. Mosher is dead. His widow and co-worker,
Judy Schreiber, may be reached at this address
Mental Health, Research and Forensic Consultation
2616 Angell Ave., San Diego, CA. 92122
Phone 858-550-0312 Fax 858-558-0854
E-mail
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Tim, are you saying that your psyche drugs have no side effects whatever? Please!
Of course there's conspiracy involved. Whenever two or more people make plans, that's a conspiracy. Conspiracies abound.
How about this? Having carefully considered all options, you take meds that you and your doctor deem to be well worth the potential side effects. It's all good between you, the doc, the pharmacos and the rest of society.
But, at the same time, the pharmacos and mental health industry are very openly conspiring to get a large segment of the population taking their drugs. For most of these people, the drugs are not worth the risks because, unlike you, they don't have any sort of organic brain problem. They're just teenagers and younger children who stubbornly fail or refuse to conform to the educrats' latest definition of "normal" or they're people on the skids for a wide variety of reasons that have nothing whatever to do w/ organic illness of any kind, let alone those very specific conditions that can be improved w/ certain psyche drugs.
Not to push your buttons, but I think you have to be bug all nuts to believe that money and social control play no part in saga. Applying computer technology is simply finding the right wrench to pound in the correct screw.
--Bastard Administrator
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Try and check into the program,
let me know what happens?
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Ginger,
I am also on psychotropic medications
with no side effects.
Not all patients have side effects.
You know that, you know better than
to assume that "all" have side effects.
We have had early and periodic testing
in San Diego and California for three
or so years, we have gotten no complaints
on the mental health board.
There is criteria for diagnosis. Social
control is not one of them.
Medications do not turn people into
lemmings, you should know that also!
What is up with these "absolute" beliefs,
what is your agenda.
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Yes, there are still non medication clinics to go.
The one my roomate went to shut down. It was
called Morning Star in San Diego County.
Safe Harbor is having a non medication conference
in June.
I offered to get the folks at Safe Harbor going
with the Mental Health Services Act for funding,
but they where not interested. I tried ...
Do you need these links?
BTW, since Dr. Mosher is been dead for for
three quarters of a year, will there be
a replacement on the board:
http://www.ahrp.org/about/Mosher.php (http://www.ahrp.org/about/Mosher.php)
-
On 2005-05-15 16:54:00, Paul wrote:
"Ginger,
I am also on psychotropic medications
with no side effects.
Not all patients have side effects.
That's absolutely incorrect. I won't ask you to state publicly which drug you take. That's a private matter. But I would highly recomend that you find a copy of the PDR (all libraries and pharmacies have them) and look into it. Not so that you'll be needlessly scared of your drugs, but so that you'll know the long term effects on various of your body's systems and be able to take steps to mitigate the damage. SSRIs and amphetamines, for example, are known to be very hard on your liver. So you might check into milk thistle or Actigall if you prefer pills to raw herbs.
You know that, you know better than
to assume that "all" have side effects.
Evidently, much of what you know simply isn't true. There is not a single drug in all of the pharmacopea w/o some side effects.
We have had early and periodic testing
in San Diego and California for three
or so years, we have gotten no complaints
on the mental health board...
... that you know of.
There is criteria for diagnosis. Social
control is not one of them.
Sure, in a perfect world. In this world people are generally in charge of all of these altruistic efforts. And people are as easily seduced by personal power as by any drug or money.
Come on, Paul! Do you honestly believe that each and every child dxed w/ ADD, ADHD, ADD/ADHD, ODD is actually disordered? Or do you suppose that some of the adults in charge of these kids might be unable or unwilling to handle normal kids? The benevolent dictators at the DOE have stated publicly that over half of school aged kids are disordered and need to be drugged. This can't possibly be true, of course. By definition, over half would be the majority and would dictate what is normal.
Medications do not turn people into
lemmings, you should know that also!
Some of them do. Thorazine is well known for that. MDMA and LSD are both known to induce a highly suggestible state. That's one of the reasons why old hippies try to caution young psychadelic adventurers to never, ever try these drugs in strange company or, indeed, w/o a trusted person to stay straight and look out for their wellbeing.
What is up with these "absolute" beliefs,
what is your agenda."
What absolute beliefs? Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?"
Priest: "No, not if you did not know."
Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?"
--Annie Dillard, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek"
-
I meant check into Dr. Mosher's program:
The Soteria site is packed with very useful information:
http://www.moshersoteria.com/ (http://www.moshersoteria.com/)
Let me know what happens?
You do know that Dr. Mosher was head of the
Schizophrenia research division at the NIMH.
He knows all about evidence based practices
and chose to go a different path ... to
obscurity.
-
Two years ago Dr. Mosher offered to
pay consumers memberships in this
organization.
No one took him up on it.
It was at that time I asked how many
members are in the US, his response
was 600 in total ...
-
Here is a good compilation of mental health
sites:
http://www.geocities.com/postcard_Cathy/ (http://www.geocities.com/postcard_Cathy/)
If they are all wrong then you all better
get busy and tell them that inspite of their
better mental health, either with or
without medications, they need the advice
of the anti-pschiatry movement to save
themselves from believing how they feel.
-
I am on 225 mg of Effexor
and 75 mg of Lamictal.
No biggie, I lead a very public life,
and I don't feel stigmitized or victimized.
The most progress I had in my recovery
was from ECT in 2001.
I have had no major depressions since, and
my volume of medication is way, way down.
-
OK Ginger, you are right, I have side
effects, it is terrible ... oh my!
They are controlling me, I must do
what they say, I repeat everything
I read and hear ...
If I feel normal, I know it is a trick,
...
Do you feel better now?
You win, every damn person who has had
positive results from medications is
wrong, just plain wrong.
That BTW is what the high fa-lutin,
anti-psychiatry lady told me about
my roomate who was in a state psych
hospital. I told her he is doing
fine, since he got away from Morningstar
and went back on his meds.
He is working, dating, and well living
a pretty normal life as far as I can see.
She told me it is a shame he was tricked
into medications and that he is doing
it all wrong ...
If that is wrong, then I am wrong ...
OK, everyone happy now?
Except Timoclea and I, we of course, have
it all wrong!
Now that we know it too the world is a better
place, yippie!
-
On 2005-05-15 17:29:00, Paul wrote:
"I am on 225 mg of Effexor
http://www.biopsychiatry.com/ssristox.html (http://www.biopsychiatry.com/ssristox.html)
and 75 mg of Lamictal.
Couldn't find much on this one. Interestingly, 3 times when I clicked on results I got sites that spawned multiple pop-ups and tried to install spywear. Once? Ok, could be just another mad spammer capitalizing on popular search terms. But 3 times??? I give up! I guess I'm just not that curious about it after all.
No biggie, I lead a very public life,
and I don't feel stigmitized or victimized.
The most progress I had in my recovery
was from ECT in 2001.
I have had no major depressions since, and
my volume of medication is way, way down."
Bottom line, at least as regards this discussion, is that you and your medical professionals have concluded that these interventions are worth the risks to you. I have no problem w/ that. I have a daughter who must take highly toxic crap every day in order to stay alive. We were just fortunate enough to land in the lap of a medical team that has a profound respect for the first tenet of the Hypocratic Oath. We work w/ them to ensure that she's taking as little as is prudent and that we're doing all we can to mitigate the long term damage.
However, that's not how shrinks normal practice their craft. And that's what we're talking about here, isn't it? Weren't we talking about expanding involuntary commitment powers? Dude, I spent two years imprisoned by total lunatics under threat of Florida's whack involuntary commitment powers. You see, whether you view it that way or not, there are people out there who are drawn to vocations and activities which place them in positions of authority over vulnerable others. And some of them are sadistic idiots who think everybody could use a dose or two of their good medicine. They have too much power already. They don't need any more.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of it's victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busy-bodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
-- C.S. Lewis.
He who laughs lasts
--Crazy Mac
-
Ginger,
I don't know what happened to you prior
to age 18, that caused you to be involuntarily
committed to a? Hospital, School or Jail ...
As an adult, you would have rights, paid for
by the government to guarantee that the law
is upheld.
Where are all these people that are involuntarily
committed?
Psychiatric hospital beds accross the country are down.
State run psychiatric hospitals are down.
As stated on the PBS Frontline show, "The New
Asylums" the jail beds are up, way up.
Is that the population that you are referring to?
Regarding using http://www.biopsychiatry.com/ (http://www.biopsychiatry.com/) as
a reference website? Hmmm, I have never heard of
it before. Getting spiders from their links? Got me.
There is sites available for both Effexor and
Lamictal, I don't think you should be worried
about any sinister plot from you trying to
link on to learn some information. I am not
worried.
-
If anyone cared to figure out the 40,000
patients with over eight perscriptions
in Mass, the total comes to 4.2% of all
Medicaid in that state.
Since Medicaid/Medicare is the safety
net for high volume users of private
health insurance, the amount invested
to look into and "manage" these cases
may backfire. They just may meet medical
necessity standards.
BTW - do you all remember during the 90's
when welfare fraud was the big rage in
the US? Does anyone know what percentage
of welfare recipients where fraudulant?
one percent ...
Sometimes the hype and anger that is
directed towards immaterial numbers
ends up costing more to remedy a
system that is not broken.
I would be curious as to what happened
in Mass when they got done investigating
those 40,000 patients.
-
"Dude, I spent two years imprisoned by total lunatics under threat of Florida's whack involuntary commitment powers."
What law where you committed under?
Where did you spend your time?
How did you become free?
---
"You see, whether you view it that way or not, there are people out there who are drawn to vocations and activities which place them in positions of authority over vulnerable others. And some of them are sadistic idiots who think everybody could use a dose or two of their good medicine. They have too much power already. They don't need any more."
I agree. That is why being accurate and not over
hyping problems where they don't exist is important. When there is a problem being vigilant
is very important.
Understanding the law, and complying with the
law are paramount.
BTW - I still can't find the law proposed that
started this thread? Anyone have a link for me?
-
Has Fornit's come up with a list of
"Best Practices" or is it just a
bitch list?
I would be interested in reading the
recommendation of those who have
been through the private industry's
solution to teen "problems" and to
compare that to how public schools
handle the same populations.
Regarding children's mental health.
If you all look up the mental health
board in your county and attend the
meetings you will find a children's
system of care department. Join a
committee or as a member of the public
you are welcome to sit in on meetings.
I would be curious as to how you all
would feel about the mental health
system if you started to attend the
administrative meetings?
-
???
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fl ... gle+Search (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=florida%27s+baker+act&btnG=Google+Search)
You do know that the reformed law in New York
is reducing hospital stays, by improving
AOT, or Assisted Oupatient Treatment ...
[So where is the involuntary committment here?]
"The results are clear. Kendra's Law works."
- New York Gov. George Pataki, Newsday, March 8, 2005. Read a summary of the results Gov. Pataki cites.
ASSISTED OUTPATIENT TREATMENT:
RESULTS FROM NEW YORK'S KENDRA'S LAW
READ THE REPORT: N.Y. State Office of Mental Health (March 2005). Kendra's Law: Final report on the status of assisted outpatient treatment. New York: Office of Mental Health.
READ TAC's PRESS RELEASE
SUMMARY: Kendra?s Law is New York?s law for assisted outpatient treatment. The New York State Office of Mental Health released its ?Final Report on the Status of Assisted Outpatient Treatment? on March 1, 2005, which details the outcomes for the first five years of Kendra?s Law. Assisted outpatient treatment drastically reduced hospitalization, homelessness, arrest, and incarceration among the people with severe psychiatric disorders in the program, while at the same time increasing their adherence to treatment and overall quality of life. The adoption of assisted outpatient treatment also resulted in fundamental changes to the overall New York mental health system, leading to enhanced accountability and improved treatment plan collaboration for all service recipients ? effectively committing the system to the patient, not just the patient to the system.
* * *
Kendra?s Law helps those who need it most
As of March 1, 2005, 3,908 individuals received treatment orders under Kendra?s Law.1 An average of 62 individuals per month, or 747 individuals per year, were ordered to maintain treatment under the program.2 That is approximately 39 per year per million people in the state population.3
As intended, the individuals placed in assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) were among the most severely ill. In the three years prior to the court order, almost every participant ? 97 percent ? had at least one psychiatric hospitalization (with an average of three hospitalizations per recipient). When compared with a similar population of mental health service recipients, those placed in AOT had been twice as likely to have been homeless, 50 percent more likely to have had contact with the criminal justice system, and 58 percent more likely to have a co-occurring mental illness and substance abuse condition.
Kendra?s Law reduces the severest consequences from lack of treatment
During the course of court-ordered treatment4, when compared to the three years prior to participation in the program, AOT recipients experienced far less hospitalization, homelessness, arrest, and incarceration. Specifically, for those in the AOT program:
*
74 percent fewer experienced homelessness;
*
77 percent fewer experienced psychiatric hospitalization;
*
83 percent fewer experienced arrest; and
*
87 percent fewer experienced incarceration.
Kendra?s Law reduces costs for the most expensive services
Inpatient hospitalization is by far the most expensive form of psychiatric treatment available today. One of the most dramatic benefits to individuals participating in the Kendra?s Law program was a marked reduction in the total number of days spent hospitalized. On average, AOT recipients spent 50 days in the hospital for psychiatric care during the six months prior to AOT, a number that was reduced 56 percent for participants during a matched period. Even after the termination of the court order, the decline continued ? during the first six months following the end of the AOT order, total hospital days were reduced to an average of 13, a 73 percent reduction from the pre-AOT total. Individuals who meet Kendra?s Law strict eligibility standard typically already consume significant inpatient and outpatient treatment dollars. The majority received case management, medication management, and/or individual or group therapy prior to AOT. Assisted outpatient treatment can reduce costs by reducing the ineffective use of existing services.
Kendra?s Law reduces harmful behavior
Kendra?s Law also resulted in dramatic reductions in the incidence of harmful behaviors for AOT recipients at six months in AOT as compared to a similar period of time prior to the court order:
*
55 percent fewer recipients engaged in suicide attempts or physical harm to self;
*
49 percent fewer abused alcohol;
*
48 percent fewer abused drugs;
*
47 percent fewer physically harmed others;
*
46 percent fewer damaged or destroyed property; and
*
43 percent fewer threatened physical harm to others.
Overall, the average decrease in harmful behavior was 44 percent.
Kendra?s Law improves treatment compliance
Individuals in the Kendra?s Law program were also much more likely to regularly participate in services and take medication as prescribed by the treating physician.
*
The number of individuals exhibiting good adherence to medication increased by 103 percent (from only 34 percent to 69 percent).
*
The number of individuals exhibiting good service engagement increased by 51 percent (from 41 percent to 62 percent).
Kendra?s Law recipients value the program
Researchers with the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University conducted face-to-face interviews with 76 AOT recipients to assess their opinions about the program, perceptions of coercion or stigma associated with the court order and, most importantly, quality of life as a result of AOT. While the interviews showed that the experience of being court-ordered into treatment made about half of recipients feel angry or embarrassed, after they received treatment, AOT recipients overwhelmingly endorsed the effect of the program on their lives:
*
75 percent reported that AOT helped them gain control over their lives;
*
81 percent said that AOT helped them to get and stay well; and
*
90 percent said AOT made them more likely to keep appointments and take medication.
Additionally, 87 percent said they were confident in their case manager?s ability to help them ? and 88 percent said that they and their case manager agreed on what is important for them to work on. AOT had a positive effect on the therapeutic alliance.
Kendra?s Law improves the system?s ability to help those in need
Not only is Kendra?s Law helping the individuals in the program, it is also helping the system better provide treatment to all those in need. The New York Office of Mental Health detailed some of these systemic benefits in its final report: "Counties and stakeholder groups statewide have reported that the implementation of processes to provide AOT to individuals under court orders has resulted in beneficial structural changes to local mental health service delivery systems? The implementation of AOT has also supported the development of more collaborative relationships between the mental health and court systems. AOT has been instrumental in increasing accountability at all system levels regarding delivery of services to high need individuals.?
The increased accountability led to a shift in the manner in which treatment to high need individuals was viewed: ?Local mental health systems began to identify the potential risk posed by not responding to individuals in need, and as a result, those systems improved their ability to respond more efficiently and effectively.?
ENDNOTES
1 This statistic and all others cited in this summary, unless otherwise noted, are from the following source: N.Y. State Office of Mental Health (March 2005). Kendra?s law: Final report on the status of assisted outpatient treatment. New York: Office of Mental Health.
2 3,908 individuals over the first 5.23 years of the program (11/8/99 ? 2/1/05) = 747.7 individuals per year, or 62.3 per month. This is notably fewer people than the 10,000 people per year that Kendra?s Law opponents predicted would be swept into the ?dragnet? of the law.
3 New York?s population is approximately 19 million. See http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/36000.html (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/36000.html).
4 The average timeframe for court orders was 16 months, and ranged from six months to more than 30 months.
-
On 2005-05-15 21:14:00, Paul wrote:
""Dude, I spent two years imprisoned by total lunatics under threat of Florida's whack involuntary commitment powers."
What law where you committed under?
I wasn't committed, just threatened. I had to sign myself in "voluntarily" or my parents and a couple of other program parents w/ the necessary credentials said they would have me court ordered for two years.
Where did you spend your time?
In a blue chair in a warehouse on Cattlemen Road in Sarasota, Florida.
How did you become free?
I ran, repeatedly. Then, just prior to my 18th b-day, I ran again. Got lucky. HRS (Florida's old name for CYS) was at odds w/ the program and gave me free housing and a lawyer. Now here's the interesting part that you don't seem to understand about how things really work. When I ran, I ran to Georgia where 17 is the default age of majority for most purposes. So they couldn't just call me a runaway and force me back in. So they got a program friendly judge to sign an extradition order for the "crime" of being a chronic runaway in Florida.
It almost worked, too. I was arrested and held in Cobb County then Macon County JDC for a couple of weeks, flown to Florida where I was told an HRS worker would meet me at the airport. Instead, my mother and a couple of Program staffers tried to kidnap me upon landing. I was just lucky that the plane deboarded out on the tarmack instead of one of those closed walkways leading right into the terminal or I would not have seen them. I refused to get off the plane w/o a security escort, who took me to a customs room where I waited another hour or so for the HRS caseworker.
I then spent about a month voluntarily confined to a group home while I waited for a hearing. By voluntarily confined I mean that they asked me not to leave the property w/o checking my plans w/ the house parent or staffer on duty and definitely not w/o a group of at least 3 other pple, preferably including Willy the boxer. The reason for this was that they had had escapees from Straight, Inc. there before and there had been kidnapping attempts.
Now, I recognize that this is probably a bizarro world grade worst case scenareo. These people are bug all crazy lunatics who have strong connections that go all the way to the Whitehouse. Sound daffy? Ok, here it is from the horse's ass. http://thestraights.com/video/bush.rm (http://thestraights.com/video/bush.rm)
However, my experience is far from unique. This is a growth industry. It's the fastest growing industry in this country next to public prisons. And TOUGHLOVE parent hategroups have always offered nifty tips and suggestions to their new members on how to employ every loop hole and dirty trick in the book in order to get your troubling teenager under legal coercion.
I just don't think they need any more tricks in their bag. Do you? Oh yeah. On your planet, there's no such thing as a sadistic psycho fronting as a therapist. :roll: God did not reward men for being honest, generous and brave, but for the act of faith. Without faith, all the so-called virtues were sins. and the men who practiced these virtues, without faith, deserved to suffer eternal pain.
--
-
Wow, like I said, I am uninformed on the
laws for those under 18.
Thanks for writing up your experience.
I don't take it lightly.
Does the law have two components,
under 18 and adult?
-
It depends on the state. I did a lot of research in Utah. One of the laws allows a child who is over 16 and a voluntary patient to be discharged within 72 hours. They can not legally hold them unless they get a court order. Of course this law is totally ignored in the youth industry because they have somehow been able to circumvent it.
The fact is the fact, the program is evil, and every attempt to make
chicken salad out of chicken shit has resulted in a Chicken shit
sandwich, No pickle on the side could ever change that.
BINGO!
-
Perhaps under 18 it is a question
of legal guardianship.
The youth industry may have temporary
guardianship as part of the paperwork
parents sign upon admission. (I would
be surprised, but...)
-
http://www.fda.gov/medwatch/index.html (http://www.fda.gov/medwatch/index.html)
-
Paul,
Pay attention. They aren?t investigating 40,000 for welfare fraud. They are investigating the practice of poly-prescribing. 40,000 (4.2%) are on 8 or MORE drugs.
What?s relevant:
*escalating cost of healthcare
*drugs--many of which are misprescribed
*financially struggling Massachusetts Medicaid program
*poly-pharmacy prescribing- multiple costly drugs of the same class
*more likely to generate drug-induced new pathologies than to cure the condition
*40,000 Medicaid patients take eight or more medications
*THOUSANDS of other patients take five or more psychiatric drugs
*Eight or more drugs or five or more psychiatric drugs, could be a health problem
*poly-prescribing has gotten out of hand
Poly-pharmacy replacing all other services?
Desio is having symptoms Folino said could be the result of multiple drug interactions. Her roommate has called an ambulance many times because Desio has gotten dizzy, fallen, and been unable to stand up.
Explain this comment:
Since Medicaid/Medicare is the safety net for high volume users of private health insurance.
Makes no sense to me.
-
Deborah,
I used the 4.2% alledged polypharmacy abuses
compared to the 1% of welfare fraud to spell
out that when fixing a percieved problem
that is immaterial in dollars often more
money is spent than trusting the checks
and balances that are set up.
In Mass, there must be medically necessary
criteria that the doctors have to put in
the charts for each perscription. If I
where in a position of power I would do
an audit, of a sampling, to see if there
is a real problem or a perceived problem.
"Poly-pharmacy replacing all other services?"
I didn't see this statement. What percentage
of the budget is medication. That will tell
me if "all other services" are being eliminated.
Safety net?
Read the fine print in your private insurance
documentation. If you go over a certain amount,
or have to many appointmnets for certain diagnosis
then cancellation is mandated.
This will get you on social security. This is
by design of the private insurance protocols.
That is why the social security system generally
has the sickest, most expensive patients.
-
This paragraph snipped from:
http://www.inequality.org/safetynet.html (http://www.inequality.org/safetynet.html)
Why we have a safety net
The idea for Social Security was dreamed up by Labor Secretary Frances Perkins and signed into law by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935. Unemployment insurance and welfare were parts of the original scheme. Medicare was President Johnson's doing, 30 years later. The broad idea was easily understood by the generations that experienced the Depression, World War II, the Cold War and some deep recessions. Any family could find itself down on its luck through no fault of its own. Family savings could go down the drain if the economy turned really sour. Its breadwinner might lose his (almost always "his") job and have a hard time finding another. Or he might become disabled or die, leaving his wife and children destitute. An elderly person or couple might lose everything in an economic down draft and face their twilight years in grinding poverty. A humane society, it was assumed, would pool some of its resources to guard against these personal misfortunes. Like any insurance system, citizens would be expected to pay small premiums. But unlike private insurance, everyone would be included regardless of the likelihood that they'd need to draw on the insurance pool. Rich and poor, healthy and sick, young workers and older workers--all would pitch in.
-
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/co ... _mz001.htm (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_20/b3933001_mz001.htm)
MAY 16, 2005
"I Want My Safety Net"
Why so many Americans aren't buying into Bush's Ownership Society
George Silli, a 66-year-old waiter from suburban Philadelphia, had a brush with President Bush's Ownership Society, and it was an experience he'll not soon forget. Silli's psyche and his wallet still bear the scorch marks of the 2000 market meltdown. He saw the value of his mutual funds drop by 60% and is convinced that opening Social Security to individual investing would produce similar results on a massive scale. ``If people are left to their own devices, we'll become top-heavy with poor people,'' Silli says.
A political independent, Silli has learned enough about the market to be pessimistic about a small fry's chances. He not only wants to leave Social Security alone but also thinks politicians should expand entitlements by mandating near-universal health insurance as a shield against soaring medical bills.
Although Silli may not know it, he has plenty of company from all walks of American life. He's part of a diverse group that includes the pathologically risk-averse and those who are willing to take the Ownership Society for a spin -- as long as it's equipped with air bags.
April Tsirigotis, a 30-year-old Republican and an information technology executive from Lusby, Md., is a big fan of the President and applauds his efforts to solve Social Security's fiscal woes. But, says Tsirigotis, the divorced mother of a 7-year-old, ``I disagree with the idea of giving people private accounts in which their annual returns and their eventual benefits would be based on the stock market. It's too risky. No one knows how much will be there in the end.''
While many members of Safety Net Nation have nothing against investing and choice, they're worried that the country's web of public and private social protections is fraying. They believe in more, not fewer, safeguards against downward mobility in a world that's already pulsing with economic uncertainty. Safety Netters include plenty of card-carrying Republicans and independent swing voters, and the group may represent a broader swath of America than the White House imagines.
A Sept. 2-5, 2004, survey by the Civil Society Institute, a Newton Centre (Mass.) nonprofit group, found 67% of Americans think it's a good idea to guarantee health care for all U.S. citizens, as Canada and Britain do, with just 27% dissenting. Support for a government-directed universal insurance system is strong, despite GOP warnings about socialized medicine. Similarly, a Feb. 3-5 Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 47% of respondents believe the government ought to guarantee a minimum standard of living for retirees, vs. 35% who felt that was an individual's responsibility.
The most predictable members of Safety Net Nation are liberals who favor activist government. The really crucial bloc, however, is made up of those who backed Bush in 2004. They still approve of his overall job performance but have soured on Wall Street and dislike the President's approach to Social Security. This faction -- estimates range from 17% to 22% of the electorate -- rejects both traditional liberalism and conservative laissez-faire. In an era of rampant job insecurity, when employer-provided pensions and health coverage can no longer be taken for granted, they want a middle-class security blanket that gives them protection as they build wealth.
Stretched Thin
Safety netters' fear of social unraveling comes amid some disquieting trends. Big swings in family income, according to studies by Yale University political scientist Jacob S. Hacker, have increased markedly over the past two decades as the finances of two-earner households have been stretched thin. Even houses -- most Americans' entrée to the Ownership Society -- are increasingly in hock: In the past 15 years, mortgage and home-equity borrowing has risen from 35.1% of home values to 43.9%. That has made families, especially those with unskilled workers, more vulnerable to a catastrophic jolt such as job loss or serious illness. Personal bankruptcies increased fivefold from 1980 to 2002, with many filers citing a layoff or medical emergency as the tipping point.
As income volatility has grown, government -- prodded by free-market Republicans out to reverse the New Deal -- has been offloading ever more responsibility onto individuals. The financial pressure has become much more acute because of another squeeze occurring in the private sector. Corporations vying to compete globally have steadily shifted costs and responsibility for pensions and health care to their employees as part of the restructuring wave that began in the 1970s.
The Sellathon That Didn't
Conservatives see disentitlement as a recognition of new economic realities -- and the death rattle of the Nanny State. But skeptics, among them prominent New Democratic thinkers, counter that America's safety net can be both modern and market-based without piling still more financial burdens onto the stooped shoulders of Joe and Jane Average.
Because social engineering through tax breaks, preferential loan and savings plans, and other indirect subsidies favors those with good jobs and income to invest, New Democrats advocate policies that tilt savings incentives toward lower-income Americans. They include universal 401(k)s, compulsory savings plans set up for kids, and mandated social insurance -- a subsidized rainy-day fund for financial emergencies. Hacker is working on ``a kind of catastrophic insurance plan that could be administered by the private sector but heavily regulated by the government.'' Employers would be required to match employee contributions to the new financial umbrella. The price tag, he concedes, ``would not be trivial'' -- meaning a multibillion-dollar commitment.
Conservatives dismiss such proposals as security pie-in-the-sky. But they've got their own problems in the here and now trying to generate momentum for personal accounts and other becalmed elements of the Bush ownership initiative.
The centerpiece is an audacious bid to ``modernize'' the government's retirement system by letting workers divert part of their payroll taxes into stocks and bonds. On the road, Bush tells audiences he's selling a retirement iPod -- sleek, shiny, and designed for the Digital Age -- while Democrats cling to a system as retro as an LP record. Besides, he says, the downside of personal accounts will be limited. Those who opt in will have a carefully chosen range of investment options, selections modeled on conservative fund choices found on 401(k) menus.
Trouble is, the President, in his guise as Salesman-in-Chief, may have done too good a job raising alarms about Social Security's imminent implosion. ``Bush said, 'We're going to have a crisis,' and offered private accounts as part of the solution,'' says James K. Glassman, an American Enterprise Institute scholar. ``But the two things are really separate, and the President was never able to make a connection between them.'' What's more, the crisis-mongering only served to heighten anxiety among the risk-averse cohort.
Bush made an overture to critics on Apr. 28 when he offered to protect payouts for the poor. His idea: preserve the current benefit structure for the bottom third of wage earners while progressively reducing guaranteed payments for those up the income scale. The result is a means-tested version of Social Security. But despite such gambits, the President has little to show for a 60-day national sellathon that took him to 23 states. If Congress enacts Social Security reform this year, it could be a far cry from reformers' dreams of big private accounts carved out of payroll taxes. ``Bush will come out of this with something, some change or other that allows him to say he moved the ball,'' predicts pollster John Zogby. ``But it won't be what he wanted.''
Down on Wall Street
Objectively, this is not a bad time to be raising the issue of reform. Baby boomers are about to retire en masse and on paper, family balance sheets have improved. Americans' household wealth has floated upward of late, propelled by recovering stock valuations and soaring real estate values. Moreover, real wages for the civilian workforce have grown 8% in the past decade after a long stretch when they fell. And the family poverty rate, tallied at 10% in 2003, has improved from the 13.9% numbers recorded four decades earlier.
Still, what private-account backers seem to have misjudged is the public's current jaundiced view of Wall Street and investing risk. America, unlike most other advanced nations, has a dual welfare system. There are direct government-transfer payments to the poor and elderly -- programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. But there is also a huge set of private-sector protections for workers, largely underwritten by employers -- items such as subsidized life insurance, disability coverage, and help with day care. Plus, powerful groups in society snare subsidies in the form of preferential loans offered to farmers, disaster relief, tax-deductible flood insurance for beachfront property owners, and a fistful of tax breaks for small businesspeople.
While federal spending on the safety net for the poor has grown briskly, it hasn't kept pace with society's needs. Medicare is straining to cover seniors' bills, and some states are downsizing Medicaid programs. In 1996, strict time limits were put on welfare dependency, a step that slashed the rolls by half. Meantime, huge holes have been ripped in the private safety net as the cost shift to workers has accelerated.
The result is riskophobia. ``With a far greater portion of family budgets devoted to the mortgage, car payment, and health insurance, a transitory shock to wages becomes much more menacing,'' says Raj Chetty, a University of California at Berkeley economics professor who studies risk. ``Equities are seen as risky, and if people aren't jumping for the investment option [as part of Social Security reform], there's a reason. Risk in general has become a much more pervasive issue.''
In January, 2000, before the dot-com bubble burst, 67% of Americans said that if they had $1,000 to spare, investing it in stock would be a good idea, according to the Gallup Poll. By April, 2005, that percentage had fallen to 45%, with 51% saying the stock market would be a bad choice. Among the groups whose faith in the market dipped most are three key Bush constituencies: baby boomers, college grads, and suburbanites.
Chasing Gushers
To George W. Bush, a Texan who revels in the myth of the wildcatter, running risks in pursuit of the big gusher is a quintessential part of the American character. But as the scion of an aristocratic Eastern dynasty, the budding young tycoon always had a network of family friends and relations to call on. Those golden connections bailed George W. out of his early forays into the oil business.
The not-as-well-fixed Net Setters want some bedrock guarantees in turbulent times, too. Private Social Security accounts? Sure, in addition to core benefits. Portable medical savings accounts? Fine, but not as a replacement for employer-provided health insurance. ``They want the Ownership Society -- but they want it with a warranty,'' says Representative Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), who has introduced legislation to expand tax credits for lower-tier families and to make college savings easier.
According to a BusinessWeek analysis of data compiled by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, at the core of Safety Net Nation are white men. You read that right. These are the same white-male swing voters who have been trending strongly Republican in recent Presidential contests. They tend to be socially conservative and patriotic. They have average incomes and are slightly less educated than the citizenry as a whole.
The Safety Netters are not monolithic, however. They include aging men who are suspicious of Big Government and Big Business and who view private accounts as a giveaway to Wall Street and a gamble for their children and grandchildren. There are suburban Security Moms -- convinced by Bush that Uncle Sam should aggressively protect them from terrorists and cultural pollution -- who worry that the President is making retirement dicier. And there are the burned investors of the Baby Boom generation, who want some government safeguards from the serrated edge of globalism -- from corporate downsizing to vaporware pensions and rampant outsourcing.
Bush über-strategist Karl Rove, who commands the White House's Social Security war room, sees personal accounts as vital to shifting the allegiance of younger voters to the GOP. But there's a glitch in Rove's machine: Polls show that, rather than flocking to Bush over Social Security, the under-40s are growing skeptical of his approach.
Among those resisting a Bush move to pare middle-class entitlements are thirtysomethings who feel squeezed between saving for their kids' college education and taking care of retired or soon-to-retire parents. Then there are disillusioned techies who once wanted government to get out of the way and let them get rich by age 30 but who now favor a federal role in shielding them from the excesses of capitalism.
Put these pieces of the electorate together, and you have the makings of a political boulder that stands between Bush and his shining city on Ownership Hill. ``We are now living in the Security Society,'' says independent pollster Thomas H. Riehle. ``People say, 'Protect me.'''
If the President can't win over some of these skeptics, GOP knees will continue to buckle on Capitol Hill. More important, other elements of his agenda, from new savings plans to personal health-care accounts, could be imperiled by the flight to safety. ``If Social Security reform stalls, blood will be in the water,'' warns Daniel J. Mitchell, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. ``Democrats fighting for what I prefer to call the Dependency Society will be emboldened to oppose all of Bush's ownership agenda.''
To complicate the President's push for private accounts, the performance of stocks in what was supposed to be a sprightly spring has led to more skepticism. In April, the Dow Jones industrial average hit a new low for the year on stagflation worries, and the major indexes gave up most of their '05 gains as investors fled from risk.
``Bush's timing is not good,'' notes Eva Bertram, a political scientist at the University of California at Santa Cruz. ``The public is leery of becoming more dependent on the market, and there is great anxiety over employment prospects and stagnant incomes. Right now it's just very hard to give up the security offered by things like Social Security and traditional Medicare.''
Shifting the Risk
Democratic pollster Stanley B. Greenberg is more blunt. ``I never believed this Investor Class hype for a minute,'' he says. ``What happened is that Bush gave the nation an extended tutorial on risk, and that came on top of growing awareness of the risk shift from private institutions to individuals'' as both traditional pensions and 401(k)s fell short of offering true security. The result, Greenberg's data show, ``is a collapse in support for Social Security reform.''
What the White House proposes, in fairness, is not a complete swap of a public retirement supplement for a private one. Bush says that letting workers voluntarily set aside a chunk of their payroll taxes -- say, 4 points of the 12.4% tax -- in conservative investment options will let retirees reap a richer reward than the government system's puny 2% return. But if guaranteed benefits are slashed for the middle class and above, more Americans will be drawn into private accounts to make up the difference, changing the nature of Social Security. ``The plan does have a guarantee in it in the form of the core benefit,'' says Kent Smetters, a Wharton School associate professor and former Bush Treasury official. ``Since it's only partial privatization, Bush needs to play up the safety net angle.''
The model for private accounts is the 401(k) system of workplace savings. But critics claim Bush is overselling the ability of such self-directed plans to build a nest egg. Former Clinton economist Alicia H. Munnell, director of Boston College's Center for Retirement Research and an expert on 401(k)s, says the numbers don't bode well for Social Security.
Skimpy Savings
Munnell's research shows that 26% of eligible people never opt in to 401(k)s, fewer than half of the participants take the advice of financial planners and diversify their holdings between stocks and bonds, and 55% cash out their savings when they change jobs -- which is frequently. Models project that a median-wage worker contributing 6% of pay, plus a 3% employer match, should have about $300,000 in his 401(k) as he approaches retirement. The actual figure: $42,000.
``People have not done a very good job with 401(k)s, and it weighs on them,'' Munnell says. ``I don't see any sign that they're dying to take on still more of this kind of responsibility. The Social Security debate may be testing the limit of the swing to individualism we have seen for the last 20 to 30 years.''
To the counter-reformers who believe Bush is misguided in his ownership strategy, the question is not whether to kill off market-based measures that aim to increase family savings or health-care security. It's how to use markets and choice in a more effective way.
Democrats would keep core Social Security intact but are willing to augment it with an add-on investment option. ``If the President says individual accounts would be separate from Social Security and was willing to make the financing of reform progressive, he could get Democrats to sit down, and [he would] have a shot,'' says Gene Sperling of the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank. ``If he wants to start down the slippery slope toward privatization, why should we work toward goals that are the antithesis of what Democrats believe in?''
Other Dems are more forgiving. ``The President has the right idea to strive and make more people own more of America,'' says Ray Boshara, director of the asset-building program at the New America Foundation (NAF), a centrist think tank. ``Owners are better citizens. But we need to preserve the safety net while helping people build wealth.''
The NAF is pushing two pet ideas: a tax-favored savings account for every child, seeded with a $500 grant at birth and with government subsidies for low-income kids, and an option for taxpayers to direct the IRS to channel part of their tax refunds into savings accounts. If savings can be made automatic, backers claim, taxpayers are less likely to spend refunds.
An Elemental Struggle
The ``kid-save'' idea is no pipe dream. An early fan was former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill, and conservatives such as Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) are mulling legislation to create the accounts. Projected cost over 10 years: $38 billion.
Yale political scientist Hacker and economist Peter R. Orszag of the Brookings Institution are thinking on a larger scale. Hacker's plan for a universal family savings account is being fleshed out and is scheduled to be unveiled in August. ``You have to provide workers with a basic form of protection that follows them from job to job and covers big risks,'' Hacker says. Universal insurance would be regulated by the government, and employers would have to kick in mandated matching payments. But administration of accounts would be left to the private sector.
Not so long ago, Republican economists would have been delighted to hear political rivals floating ideas for boosting savings and shoring up Social Security's solvency. But in today's hyper-partisan climate, the fight over the ownership agenda has taken on a larger dimension. Bush wants to wind down dependence on the bureaucratic welfare state. Democrats want to revalidate government by weaving costly new safety nets for workers. It's an elemental struggle, but one in which outcomes can be perverse.
In 2003, for instance, the White House set out to revamp Medicare by putting a lid on runaway costs of the huge entitlement program for seniors. GOP lawmakers, though, feared they would be hammered over the issue in the '04 election, so tough cost controls went out the window. What Bush wound up signing into law still has many conservatives seething: a $1.3 trillion expansion of entitlements in the form of a new Medicare prescription-drug benefit. It was hardly the monument he envisioned. But it was a testament to the raw power of Safety Net Nation, which -- for now -- seems to be just saying no to more financial risk.
By Lee Walczak and Richard S. Dunham, with Mike McNamee in Washington and Ann Therese Palmer in Chicago
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I didn?t get that there were any checks and balances or criteria. They did do an audit and perceive a problem, hence the investigation.
Since when does excessive drug bills and doctor appointments result in someone being put on Medicaid/SSI? My understanding is that no one gets Medicare/Medicaid unless they are determined to be ?disabled?, which is VERY difficult, or economically destitute, and I mean destitute.
If one's Insurance is cancelled, that person will pay their med/drug bills out of their pocket unless or until they become destitute or deemed disabled.
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On 2005-05-15 22:09:00, Paul wrote:
"Wow, like I said, I am uninformed on the
laws for those under 18.
Well, it's not really the laws that are the problem, but people's false belief that the laws are usually followed and the people enforcing them usually have everybody's best interests at heart.
"Laws are like spider webs. If some poor weak creature comes up against them - it is caught. But the bigger one can break through and get away."
-- Solon; Greek philosopher - c.630-c.555 BC
This hasn't changed in 2500 years and probably won't change anytime soon.
Thanks for writing up your experience.
I don't take it lightly.
Does the law have two components,
under 18 and adult?"
NP. You need only wander around these forums a bit to find a lot more stories like mine.
Yes, there are two componants. But the actual difference in the laws for minors are not as different as people's perception that minors have no rights. And, in practical terms, neither do people deemed mentally ill. You know that and I applaud your efforts to address it.
But I think maybe you spend too much time in close company w/ those review boards and such. The way you frame the issues, and I'm sure you and the pros really believe it, you'd think that no one ever abused this set of legally debilitating policies.
Deb is exceptionally well informed on this issue. And she's providing us w/ data that suggests a fairly broad pattern of abuse. And it's seems asthough the victims are always the most vulnerable among us; children and broke people.
Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name. Thy kingdom nada, thy will be nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.
--Ernest Hemingway, American author
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The trouble w/ the great safety net is that it's pie in the sky. All good intentions aside, a healthy free market economy provides better for everybody than a contrived attempt at equitable redistribution. The people preaching most loudly about free trade these days would be the first up against the wall if we ever attained anything close to a real free market. If they understand the concept at all they're laughin' up their sleeves knowing that the American education system hasn't taught ecconomics in nearly 100 years. And 3 generations is quite enough to kill a body of knowledge for all intents and purposes.
The drug industry is a perfect example of that. It's one of our more overly regulated industries and, therefore, among the most corrupt.
The last struggles of a great superstition are very frequently the worst.
--Andrew Dickson
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Deborah,
There is always a medical necessity requirement
for anything paid for by any insurance company,
public or private. This provides an audit trail.
Questions on someone's care can easily be audited.
40,000 audits is expensive. The way an audit works
in accounting, for instance, is that one does a sampling to verify the validity of the system. The same way Mass. should do it for these 40,000.
They will find out pretty quickly if there is a problem.
Then the solutions can begin, rather than assumption generated accusations.
There is also quality control audits built into every system of care. Another question, if there
is a problem, is why didn't the QA dept catch this 4.2% abuse, as accused.
---
Regarding the simplicity of getting private insurance cancelled and then ending up on Medicaid/Medicare?
You got it:
"If one's Insurance is cancelled, that person will pay their med/drug bills out of their pocket unless or until they become destitute or deemed disabled."
A good way to create disabled people is to take away their health care! Need I say more?
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Most of what you said is right on.
Except, any third party payment scheme
is an attempt at attempt at equitable redistribution. Any time you don't take
money out of your pocket to pay for
an unsubsidised item is an attempt
at equitable redistribution.
The problem with capitalism, here and
internationally is that there is none.
Lobbying and changing laws to favor
a business, automatically stops free
market enterprising.
The US, as you probably know, has more
lobbyist that the rest of all the nations
combined. Lot's of interference with a
true capitalistic society.
Sadly, in health care the biggest abusers
of ripping people off for their money is
private insurance. Cancellations due to
needing it, and having gatekeepers to deny
services should be illegal instead it is
embraced and given a nice monicker: HMO.
The interesting thing about Big Pharma is
that their financials are not so good that
they are the only stock to buy. In fact
if you follow the industry many are not
doing so well, that has created the big
buyouts, because the ones with strong
cash positions will buy out others that
promising new novel medications in the
pipeline.
For all its criticism, and I think the sin
here is being a slave to the quarterly mentality
of the stock market rather than to social
engineering, they do not make "all the money"
as it is often suggested.
They make money, certainly, but not enough
to call them the trigger industry in political
and social direction.
-
You know, part of the problem is not that the market is risky but that some investors don't know what they're doing.
I got out of that part of the market before the dot bomb and kept my profits (900%, in three years, no that's not a typo) because I saw the bubble and knew bubbles burst.
Maybe in private investment retirement accounts you should have to pass a test on how the stock market works, how to read a balance sheet, and how to tell what range of risks/benefits you are likely to have with various hypothetical profiles of fictional stocks.
Maybe also some investment ratios in kinds of stocks, stock funds, bonds, or bond funds that reasonable money managers recommend based on the investor's age.
Also, what commission practices are typically in what segments of the market and what they mean, and what various levels of stock quotes mean, and the *relative* risk of different kinds of investments.
Also maybe they give you a lot of information, much relevant and much not, on a fictional company and you have to determine what the stock price would need to be to be equal to the company's capital assets.
Then say you have to make a certain score on the test to be allowed to use a private account for your social security.
The biggest risk of private accounts is that a lot of people would invest very badly because they *don't* know a lot of those things, and they couldn't figure it out even on an open-book test.
Investing privately is *not* risky if you know what you're doing. You can regularly make reasonable, steady returns on investment if you know what you're doing, and better gains if you're young and have the time and the seed capital to take *calculated* risks. I would never have taken the risk on the stock I made so much money on if I hadn't understood exactly what I was buying, understood *why* the stock was a winner (it was, but I got way more profit than I could have anticipated because some other investors were really dumb and bid the price up way more than the company was worth--which was *why* I sold when I sold--but it still would have been a good stock even if those other buyers hadn't made a really bad decision because when I bought it it was very undervalued). And I also never would have bought a stock that I might have had to wait so long for other investors to catch on that it was undervalued if I hadn't been young enough to wait it out. There *was* risk of loss, of course, but it was reasonable and calculated risk and I had balancing investments that were a lot less risky.
It's not that the stock market is risky, it's that a lot of the people who are in it shouldn't be or are okay to be in but should *know* assessing risk isn't their strong suit and should be in very conservative investments, like T-bonds or public utilities.
The worse you are at valuing a company or assessing risk or all that "technical stuff," the more conservative your investments should be, and you really should be in a deep-discount brokerage firm where your broker *cannot* churn your investments to fleece you for extra commissions because you do all your own trades, and you should pick conservative investments and leave that money in the same conservative investment for years at a time.
Yes, you're leaving money on the table, but as they say in the market, "Little pigs get eaten."
If you don't know how to swim, you're better off staying in the shallow end of the pool. You won't get to swim as much, but you'll still cool off on a hot day without drowning.
Timoclea
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In some respects, Ginger, you are correct.
In others, not.
I try my best to identify the problem,
see if there is facts, or distortions.
Then I try to see if there is mechanism
built in to protect consumers, like in
any business.
Then I try to inform.
Where it gets nasty is when the basis
for someone's argument is not understood
by themselves, and I, or others try to
introduce facts. Then personal attacks
like "arrogance" get tossed around rather
than rebuttals.
For example:
Dr. Mosher happened to be living in
San Diego. I knew him personally. I was
at many meetings with him. So I
know his effectiveness locally and his
reputation. Should I keep it a secret?
Should I introduce it? It is difficult
when one introduces logic into an emotionally
based argument. There is no doubt that
just about everyone in San Diego liked
Dr. Mosher, it is just that his dogma
didn't hold up.
I would rather that both sides of the
fence use the same business, and beurocratic
examination of the issues to prove their
point and improve the system. Just like
improvements in a product, such as cars,
for example.
It is very frustrating to have a patient
referred to me that hit rock bottom because
of the influence of the anti-psychiatry crowd.
What can I say? The latest is a lady who
at 38 years old, and is a victim of spousal
abuse, was told by friends, family and the
abuser himself to stay away from psychiatry
and never mention she hears voices. Ok, she
stayed away, and did crystal instead. She
lost her kids, permanently, her husband is
being allowed to relocate out of state. She
lost her house, her section 8, her medi-cal
(which is Medicaid) all of her friends except
two, most of her family ... why ... she is
labeled a drug addict. What about the voices,
well, that is secondary. That is my reality.
It is sad to watch, and even sadder when the
patient is so out of control that she cannot
follow any advice, or make any phone calls
for herself. I am just a little ole voluntary
advocate. Free will for her, sadness for me.
She is sick and needs help ...
Anyway, I digress from the review boards, I
used to do the alternative stuff, until I
figured out that they where lying more than
the MDs.
I got involved beurocratically because I
was asked questions at a Medi-cal quality
insurance audit. I asked questions back
and asked how I could participate. One
referral led to a committee, and on and
on it went.
I don't do wholesale criticisms of the
system, I try my best to understand, teach
and improve it.
The one's that only complain are not
effective and often interfere with a
symptomatic persons ability to make
informed decisions on their own health
care.
I have never been bored in these meetings.
Trying to help from within the system is
very rewarding for me ... and that is why
I continue.
emotional argument. There is no doubt
that I
-
(oops, I just realized that I hadn't logged
in for my last two posts.)
All good points about private accounts.
The way that Bush has his private accounts
set up is a lose, lose.
The numbers have been run, and even at
an above historical market return any
person is better staying with the current
system.
---
One way I think Social Security would do
better is to include the whole country's
health care system.
Don't elimate the private sector but let
them bid for services. The government would
manage these contracts. San Diego County
Mental Health does about 70% of their
$208 million dollar budget this way, and
it looks darn good to me.
Then we could take the 30% profit off the
top of the private insurance industry and
re-invest it into health care for all.
The absolute best thing about socialized
medicine is that no longer would people
be bound to jobs because of health insurance
reasons and people on disability could
return to work without the fear of losing
insurance. The bubble that keeps people
on disability would be gone. People could
just work, how refreshing.
My favorite, is socialize medicine, let
the government manage it, let both private
and public entities bid and the contracts,
called Managed Competition. Then, get
the employees out of the health business
and let them focus on business!
-
The safety net in society works
for roads, sewage, drinking water, etc.
Why not health care?
-
I wish Fornits had a
"understanding your rights"
"what to do, who to call, in
an emergency for these types
of incidents:
a)
b)
c)
"Best Practices for Teen Behavioral Industry"
and items like this.
Complaining is good, and often good for
one's soul. Compiling great information
and providing it to those in need is
the next step. Then influencing public
policy is next. Then, of course, policing
those policies so that they become the
normal way of doing business would be
success.
If this is already done, I am a novice, and
my apologies.
Anyway, that is my wish.
There are many, many knowledgable people
here, that now know more than the policy
and law makers. Band together, get involved
join and advocate!
In my little world of mental health I find
it very rewarding.
-
Oh, if anyone hates admistrative
policy making and hearings, this
idea of joining local, state
and national boards and committees
may not be for you.
I don't imply it is for everyone,
and please don't think I believe
others will enjoy it like I do.
I am surprised how much I enjoy it.
Rather, please spread the word that
it is possible to get involved and
be heard, and to bring your experience
and suggestions to the table.
-
On top of the US having one of the most HORRIBLE health care systems in the world....Our lovely Bush mafia (and I mean that in the most loving way) has now made it so that its even harder for people to file bankruptcy even if it is due to being unable to pay medical bills. So the 64 yr old couple on SSI who make under 1,200 a month and don't have health insurance and had to have a $95,000 heart bypass surgery can't even stop the daily phone calls from the collection agencies. How does this couple find relief??? They dont. They dont qualify for medicaid because they make too much money, and they cant file bankruptcy to stop the phone calls. So the only option is to disconnect their phone??? PULEEZE. This administration does not give a shit what their populace is going through on a daily basis. And now they make it even harder. How nice. I know someone who had to go through hoops to qualify for medicaid even though he has Diabetes, congestive heart failure, and an amputated leg. He is 64 and isnt old enough for medicare health insurance, and only makes $450 a month in SSI yet his 11 medicines cost over $750 a month. There will be no relief for this horrible situation in this country until we change the way the government runs it. It is inhumane.
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You are correct!
That is the Republican way ...
Over time, or throughout history, check
it out. Generally Republicans act in a
very selfish myopic way wrecking things
in the US. Then Democrats get in power
for short period of times and fix things.
The cycle goes over and over.
The greatest wealth in the US, was after
the US was stabilized via the Social Security
system. I believe I have posted here before
on this most misunderstood program.
Democrats know that a strong middle class
means a strong US. Republicans know if
they can bend the rules, individually
those in power will make more money.
Both statements are true! Which one
benefits the common good, and the rich?
The people of the US, they have spoken,
they are buying into this Republican
say whatever is necessary and cheat
in the elections protocol. The masses
did not come out against Bush, and
we all pay. Even the rich, ironically.
---
BTW - I hope your friend with the Diabetes
and other disorders is not in Massachusetts
because some non-medical people don't believe
that there are complicated medical cases
out there that require poly-pharmacology.
-
George Bush is one of the most ignorant politicians I have ever seen, in my 26 years.
I really do not understand why people would vote for him! What were these people thinking?
If we were allowed to import cheaper drugs, then the cost of health care would go down signifigantly. It is just plain criminal, that we are not allowed to do that. It is absolutely criminal, and guess who is responsible? Any citizen who does not see that is really dumb and should be allowed to vote. (I'm only half kidding).
Also, people really need to stop with all these lawsuits against doctors. The fact is, when you go in and have a procedure done, you sign a paper stating that you understand the risks that are involved. Doctors are not robots, they are human, and so are patients. Sometimes, the outcome may not be what was expected, thats just the way it is. It doesn't mean that the doctor did something wrong (not always, anyway). People need to take some personal responsibility for their own bodies, and not try to blame doctors for everything that goes wrong. That is why there aren't enough doctors today. The older generation of doctors in my family have warned their children and grandchildren *not* to become doctors, for this very reason. This is also why we import so many foreign doctors (not that there is anything wrong with that).
But unless there is a clear case of gross negligence, then people need to just realize that their body is not perfect, and they should not be sueing doctors.
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I think your comment is too general.
When a doctor removes both your breasts and subjects you to radiaiton and chemo, and you never had cancer to begin with. When a doctor performs surgery on your son's left knee, and it was the right knee with the problem, etc.etc.etc. a lawsuit is in order.
When someone makes a mistake, by running a red light and consequently totals another's car (because they are human)... sorry, but they don't get off with an apology. Their insurance is going to pay for the damages, and they in turn might pay higher premiums. That's why doctors have medical malpractice insurance, for those human errors, which are expected. Like it or not, we live in a culture where there are consequences for human mistakes.
Do you think there would be fewer mistakes if there was no longer the threat of lawsuits? I don't.
Search around the internet on this issue. The "excessive lawsuits" defense for rising medical costs is a scape goat.
Perhaps we need a better way to evaluate the competency of doctors in this country. Used to be in China a doctor had to hang a lantern outside his practice everytime a patient died. Too many lanterns and you were looking for a new career.
Yeh, folks should take responsibility for their own bodies/ health, but few have the knowledge to do so because this country/ government has brainwashed/ conditioned its citizenry to be dependent on doctors who haven't a moment of training in the prevention of disease/illness.... To believe that science has all the answers and that there's a pill for every ill. No discipline, no moderation, no self control, except for what's necessary to remember to take your drugs, few of which actually 'cure' anything and many that cause further problems.
So it could be perceived that the lawsuits are kinda poetic justice.... a consequence, for all intents and purposes, for the AMA gradually removing from citizens the ancient wisdom of self care, and subjecting people to harmful interventions from the moment of conception.... sonograms, C-sections, infant formula, excessive immunizations, excessive antibiotics followed by overgrowth of yeast, and on and on and on till one dies on the table having an angiogram. Come to think of it, there should be more lawsuits. And people should learn to take care of themselves, forcing doctors to persue right livelihood.
-
Deborah,
You are right on the "excessive lawsuit" argument.
Public Citizen, http://www.citizen.org/hrg/ (http://www.citizen.org/hrg/) has been pointing out that the majority of the lawsuits are
brought against repeat medical doctors who should
have their licenses taken away. I think it is like
2% of the doctors cause most of the lawsuites.
Your argument against how bad the system is performing is difficult to measure when the life
expectancy keeps going up and up.
The system needs improvement, but I wouldn't toss it out.
-
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/co ... _mz001.htm (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_13/b3926001_mz001.htm)
[There are many individual articles to the topic
of digitizing medical records and medical transactions, click to link above]
MARCH 28, 2005 ? Editions: N. America | Europe | Asia | Edition Preference
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Peter A. Gross has been a doctor for 40 years, rising up the ranks to become the chairman of internal medicine at Hackensack University Medical Center in Hackensack, N.J. But one day this winter, a homeless man checked in to the hospital with HIV, and Gross made a decision that could have seriously harmed his patient. He chose to give the patient an HIV drug, tapping a request into a hospital computer and zapping it off to the two-year-old digital drug-order entry system. Moments later he got back a message he never would have received before the system was in place: a warning that the drug could mix dangerously with an antidepressant the patient was already taking. Gross got on the phone to figure out the problem, eventually asking the man's psychiatrist to reduce the dosage of his antidepressant. "There's no way I would have picked that up," Gross says. "It was totally unexpected."
-
People with mental illness, yet no substance abuse problem, are as peaceful as the general population.
Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC) is a Beltway offshoot of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), an advocacy group consisting largely consumers of mental health services and their families. Its funding comes almost entirely from the Theodore and Veda Stanley Family Foundation. Since the late 1980s, the Stanley Family has spent more than $20 million for research into the causes of schizophrenia and bi-polar illnesses, as well as the benefits of unconventional drug therapies. But the Stanley Foundation is not known for its scientific achievements as much as it is for its most prominent spokesperson, psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey.
As president of TAC, and executive director of Stanley Research, Torrey is a man with a mission: to force people with schizophrenia and manic-depressive illness into involuntary treatment. Once considered the patron saint of the family advocacy movement, his clamor for involuntary outpatient treatment in the last five years has dimmed his leadership and threatened the coherence of the movement he helped shape (Mental Health Weekly, 2/19/01).
Torrey explains his obsession with forcing people into treatment--it even crept into testimony about homelessness before the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services (3/5/97)--by discussing a unique category of "untreated" people with schizophrenia and bi-polar disorders, a category he created that remains unrecognized in both government and academic research. These folks, he says, are responsible for 20 murders a week, 1,000 a year.
The National Stigma Clearinghouse, which monitors reports of mental illness and alleged violence, challenges TAC's message. According to a letter to the editor Clearinghouse director Jean Arnold wrote to Behavioral Healthcare Tomorrow (4/00), "Actual acts of violence by psychiatric survivors are few and far between. TAC embellishes each episode with bogus homicide numbers."
Others at TAC have acknowledged that the focus on the violence of the mentally ill is in part a cynical ploy to encourage funding for treatment. "People care about public safety," TAC publicist D.J. Jaffee told a workshop at the 1999 meetings of NAMI. "Once you understand that, it means that you have to take the debate out of the mental health arena and put it in the criminal justice/public safety arena." He had earlier advised a local New York advocacy group (SIAMI Newsletter, Vol. 9/12, 1994), "It may be necessary to capitalize on the fear of violence."
To accomplish this goal, TAC has devised a strategy to romance the press--producing material for soundbites, scenarios and statistics that can be used to pitch to the media. These efforts have borne results. Dan Rather led with "1,000 homicides" on a 48 Hours broadcast (4/12/00); Lesley Stahl included it on 60 Minutes (5/7/00). Judging by several dozen op-ed pieces on editorial pages in the last three years, TAC's tactics seem to work.
One gambit involves carefully timing op-ed pieces to appear after specific incidents involving a mentally ill person in a violent episode. After a mentally ill woman was killed by a police officer in California, allegedly in self-defense, several TAC op-eds appeared around the state, beginning with the Los Angeles Times (5/27/00). Later, while the state legislature debated legalizing forced treatment, two more appeared ( San Diego Union-Tribune, 2/16/00; San Francisco Chronicle, 7/6/00).
When the bill failed, Torrey and Mary T. Zdanowicz, TAC's president and executive director, wrote another L.A. Times op-ed (11/13/00), which concluded, "Perhaps next year, policymakers will come to understand that being psychotic can be deadly." This was a time-tested formula for them: The month before, a piece of theirs in the Orlando Sentinel (10/27/00) ended with, "When will Florida legislators realize that being psychotic is mindless and deadly?" And before that, in the Salt Lake City Tribune (4/16/00): "How many more preventable tragedies must Utahans bear before lawmakers realize that being psychotic is mindless and deadly?"
Part of TAC's successful strategy for linking mental illness with violence rests on a press corps that has welcomed stale soundbites used for political purposes. As New York Times columnist Frank Rich (7/29/98) wrote in the aftermath of one high-profile incident, "It's not only politicians who are complicit in this discrimination [against the mentally ill]. The media sometimes compound the ignorance that feeds it."
-
Deborah, you must have missed what I said- that lawsuits should be curbed *except in cases of gross negligence, ect*
I know lots of doctors who have been sued (frivilously), but mostly, those cases don't make it into court. Actually, medical students are told that they should expect to get sued at least once in their career.
And, actually, this does drive up the cost of health care (though it is certainly not the only thing that does so, I could go on and on about those other things...). Now there is a shortage of obstetricians, because doctors don't want to deliver babies, because the risk of being sued is so high. I don't work on an OBGYN floor, so I can't totally elaborate on that, but this is a statistical fact, which has been discussed in non-medical publications.
But I have seen frivilous lawsuits. Lots of them. Emotionally, it's very difficult on physicians. Just the threat of lawsuits effects practice- for example, doctors may refuse to perform a certain procedure, even if there is no one else around to do it, for fear of getting sued.
But, yes, the whole system really needs reformation.
-
Where did you cut and paste this tasty morsel from?
Where did it fit into tonight's discussion?
Hello, Deborah, are you OK?
On 2005-05-16 21:12:00, Deborah wrote:
"People with mental illness, yet no substance abuse problem, are as peaceful as the general population.
Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC) is a Beltway offshoot of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), an advocacy group consisting largely consumers of mental health services and their families. Its funding comes almost entirely from the Theodore and Veda Stanley Family Foundation. Since the late 1980s, the Stanley Family has spent more than $20 million for research into the causes of schizophrenia and bi-polar illnesses, as well as the benefits of unconventional drug therapies. But the Stanley Foundation is not known for its scientific achievements as much as it is for its most prominent spokesperson, psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey.
As president of TAC, and executive director of Stanley Research, Torrey is a man with a mission: to force people with schizophrenia and manic-depressive illness into involuntary treatment. Once considered the patron saint of the family advocacy movement, his clamor for involuntary outpatient treatment in the last five years has dimmed his leadership and threatened the coherence of the movement he helped shape (Mental Health Weekly, 2/19/01).
Torrey explains his obsession with forcing people into treatment--it even crept into testimony about homelessness before the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services (3/5/97)--by discussing a unique category of "untreated" people with schizophrenia and bi-polar disorders, a category he created that remains unrecognized in both government and academic research. These folks, he says, are responsible for 20 murders a week, 1,000 a year.
The National Stigma Clearinghouse, which monitors reports of mental illness and alleged violence, challenges TAC's message. According to a letter to the editor Clearinghouse director Jean Arnold wrote to Behavioral Healthcare Tomorrow (4/00), "Actual acts of violence by psychiatric survivors are few and far between. TAC embellishes each episode with bogus homicide numbers."
Others at TAC have acknowledged that the focus on the violence of the mentally ill is in part a cynical ploy to encourage funding for treatment. "People care about public safety," TAC publicist D.J. Jaffee told a workshop at the 1999 meetings of NAMI. "Once you understand that, it means that you have to take the debate out of the mental health arena and put it in the criminal justice/public safety arena." He had earlier advised a local New York advocacy group (SIAMI Newsletter, Vol. 9/12, 1994), "It may be necessary to capitalize on the fear of violence."
To accomplish this goal, TAC has devised a strategy to romance the press--producing material for soundbites, scenarios and statistics that can be used to pitch to the media. These efforts have borne results. Dan Rather led with "1,000 homicides" on a 48 Hours broadcast (4/12/00); Lesley Stahl included it on 60 Minutes (5/7/00). Judging by several dozen op-ed pieces on editorial pages in the last three years, TAC's tactics seem to work.
One gambit involves carefully timing op-ed pieces to appear after specific incidents involving a mentally ill person in a violent episode. After a mentally ill woman was killed by a police officer in California, allegedly in self-defense, several TAC op-eds appeared around the state, beginning with the Los Angeles Times (5/27/00). Later, while the state legislature debated legalizing forced treatment, two more appeared ( San Diego Union-Tribune, 2/16/00; San Francisco Chronicle, 7/6/00).
When the bill failed, Torrey and Mary T. Zdanowicz, TAC's president and executive director, wrote another L.A. Times op-ed (11/13/00), which concluded, "Perhaps next year, policymakers will come to understand that being psychotic can be deadly." This was a time-tested formula for them: The month before, a piece of theirs in the Orlando Sentinel (10/27/00) ended with, "When will Florida legislators realize that being psychotic is mindless and deadly?" And before that, in the Salt Lake City Tribune (4/16/00): "How many more preventable tragedies must Utahans bear before lawmakers realize that being psychotic is mindless and deadly?"
Part of TAC's successful strategy for linking mental illness with violence rests on a press corps that has welcomed stale soundbites used for political purposes. As New York Times columnist Frank Rich (7/29/98) wrote in the aftermath of one high-profile incident, "It's not only politicians who are complicit in this discrimination [against the mentally ill]. The media sometimes compound the ignorance that feeds it."
"
-
On 2005-05-16 21:23:00, bandit1978 wrote:
But I have seen frivilous lawsuits. Lots of them. Emotionally, it's very difficult on physicians. Just the threat of lawsuits effects practice- for example, doctors may refuse to perform a certain procedure, even if there is no one else around to do it, for fear of getting sued.
But, yes, the whole system really needs reformation.
"
I agree w/ this entirely. One other little shout out to the law of unintended consequences, too. Here in PA it's not just a bothersome issue, it's all out war between doctors and lawyers. It's gotten to the point where it extremely difficult to find a doctor willing to act as a professional wittness in even the most horrible cases of negligence. Never mind even thinking about trying to pursue any kind of administrative action directed entirely at censuring hack medical ppl purely for the good of the profession and institutions. Nobody's willing to put anything in writing. You almost can't act to improve an institution w/o destroying it and no one wants to destroy them.
I honestly think the best way to improve healthcare would be to get the third party 'providers' (who pull the purse strings but actually provide nothing) out of the picture.
Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status
--Laurence J. Peter
-
No, I didn?t miss what you said. I don?t know what you consider ?negligence? and ?frivolous?. I don?t know where all these people are who are filing these suits, but I?ve never encountered ONE.
This is my personal opinion, but women and infants might be better off with fewer obgyns and more midwives/doulas. Women have been birthing babies forever without the ?help? of a doctor. And many a cab driver has delivered a baby. Some Native American women birthed their babies alone.
Talk about lowering medical costs?. I don?t know what she?s charging now, but I paid my midwife $800, twenty years ago, which included pre and post natal care. She has delivered 1000+ babies and still going strong, and has never been sued. And never injured/killed a baby, to my knowledge.
Might many of the complications/injuries/deaths actually be due to unnecessary medical intervention? Like C-sections? Birthing rarely requires heroic surgical intervention. It?s more often done to meet the schedules of doctors and parents. In at 9, out at 5. Pick your child?s birthday.
I?d like to sue the SOB who convinced my daughter that she couldn?t deliver my second grandson, having successfully delivered the first vaginally. He rushed the process, neither in distress, and scared her into agreeing, putting both her and the baby at risk of complications unnecessarily. Although she was angry in hindsight, a lawsuit was never entertained. Are you aware of all the special attention a baby born C-section requires because they weren?t massaged coming down the birth canal. To subject an infant to that unnecessarily should be considered abuse, and most definitely neglect, and illegal- a violation of the infant's rights.
If an obgyn harms an infant with his/her barbarian practices, I see no problem with his/her insurance company paying for that child's care, possibly for the reaminder of the child's life, depending on the circumstances.
Might there be other reasons people are choosing not be to obgyns? I can think of a few...
Lots of frivolous lawsuits? Hmmm. That may be true. I don?t hear about them and personally know no one who has sued a doctor, but many who have been harmed.
-
Deborah,
You seem to be a re-actionary advocate,
not a pro-active advocate.
I am curious as to why are are able to
complain after your daughter's C-Section
but not explain and teach her your belief's
before the end of her pregnancy.
Did you read the doctor's notes, was there
really no reason? Did it state: "no reason"
Your daughter still has the rights to her
medical records if you forgot to find out.
I would love to hear your solutions!
Ginger states you know your stuff ...
so let's hear something other than complaints.
Jeeperz, you say natural unassisted childbirth,
then use a mid-wife!
Now you are saying there are no frivolous,
or numerous medical malpractice suits?
Did you read this in a book called:
"The Myth of Medical Malpractice Suits"
perhaps also by Thomas Szasz?
-
This is my third time asking?
Deborah, where is the link, as I stated
before, I could not find it!
-
Deborah-
before we had "heroic surgical interventions" during labor and delivery, how many women died giving birth??
I have heard of doctors pushing ahead with c-sections, because the risk of complications from some vaginal births often outweighs the risk of complicatins from c-section. and even if the woman wants to take those risks, the doctor is (and should be) concerned about getting sued. many times the risks of vaginal birth don't become evident until way into the labor process. For example, an extended labor can put the baby into distress. If you are not a medical professional (midwife or whathaveyou), then you probably aren't aware of all the risks. And if you do not personally know a number of people who work in the medical profession, then you may not have heard so much about frivilous lawsuits, and you may not understand the physicians' need to practice "defensive medicine" (which may lead to more c-sections).
-
before we had "heroic surgical interventions" during labor and delivery, how many women died giving birth??
It will only upset Deborah ...
-
Not so many as you might think, Paul.
Back to the topic at hand, though:
Townsend Letter
for Doctors and Patients? Archives Part 1 (Issue #162)
The Hidden Side of Psychiatry
by Gary Null, PhD
Mental illness is at an all-time high, with 40 million Americans affected, according to reports emanating from organized psychiatry. But just how accurate is this account? As you will see, people seeking help from the mental health industry are often misdiagnosed, wrongfully treated, and abused. Others are deceptively lured to psychiatric facilities, or even kidnapped. No matter how they arrive, though, once they are there, inmates lose all freedoms and are forced to undergo dangerous but sanctioned procedures, such as electroconvulsive therapy and treatment with powerful drugs, that can leave them emotionally, mentally, and physically marked for life.
Full text: http://www.tldp.com/issue/162/162psych.htm (http://www.tldp.com/issue/162/162psych.htm)
The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this.
--Albert Einstein, My First Impression of the U.S.A., 1921
_________________
Ginger Warbis ~ Antigen
Drug war POW
Seed `71 - `80
Straight, Sarasota
10/80 - 10/82
Anonymity Anonymous
return undef() if /coercion/i;
-
Ginger,
I was trying to find the peak of involuntarily
committed psychiatric patients in the US,
compared to today. I guess my research skills
are not to good, yet.
I think one could safely assume if the large
state run psychiatric hospitals where dramitically
closed 40 or so years ago, those patients released.
That that would have been the peak.
At first glance I thought when you where posting
from the Townsend Letter, it would be good. But,
Gary Null, made a hysterical claim in your quote
that just cannot be so.
Where are all these kidnapped patients held?
Where? Local hospital beds are tightly regulated,
and I don't think a patient can get lost at
your local hospital ...
Who is paying for these people to be locked up in hospitals that don't exist anymore?
These claims that intelligent people such as yourself and Deborah are so willing to embrace
just don't pass the common sense test. Sorry.
Eveyone loves a good conspiracy, but come on ...
---
Regarding the per capita death rate of mothers
at birth during at intervals such as centuries
or decades would be great, but I don't know where
to look.
---
I have stuff to do, and I must move on.
---
If there is only going to accusations, and no
solutions then I can't justify the banter.
-
Just read the article. Private insurance and Medicaid/Medicare usually pay for it.
From just a couple of paragraphs in "The federal government and the insurance industry are finally waking up to the problem and starting to fight back. In 1993, seven of the largest insurance companies sued one of the largest psychiatric hospital chains, National Medical Enterprises, for $750 million. In addition, every attorney general now has an assistant attorney general to oversee health care fraud prosecutions. As a result, some progress has been made. Wiseman states:
"Psychiatrists make up 8% of doctors, but 18% of those health care practitioners that have been kicked out of the Medicare system for fraud. Last year, $411 million was paid to the government in fines and penalties for health care fraud and 90% of that was paid by psychiatrists or psychiatric institutions.7 "
Paul, you accuse Deb and Me and anyone else who disagrees w/ you of slack research and irrational claims, but you don't even bother to read the content that we're talking about?
Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.
--Napoleon Bonaparte, French emperor
-
OK, I just stopped in a library, to
check my email before a meeting.
I will take your hit that I didn't
read Gary Null's article because
I thought it would be irrelevant,
based on the "kidnapping of psychiatric"
patients.
There is fraud, no doubt, especially
in psychiatric care because of the
confidentiality issues. I remember
the case in 1993 clearly. NME figured
out a way to bill and try to evade
detection because of confidentiality.
No doubt, where there is an opportunity,
there will be fraud.
OK, meeting time, I will go over this
thread tonight and see if I am right,
or admittedly wrong on any points.
-
Ginger,
OK, I just read a little bit,
now I have to run. I think
he has the NME story right on.
His article makes it sound like
psychiatry is the sole source
of medical fraud?
Is this true, no other fraud?
No fraud in the anti-psychiatry
movement either?
---
Ideally we would have honesty everywhere
and no hidden agenda's and transparent
record keeping. We don't have that ...
anywhere.
So, yes, I will read Gary's article. I
will note if he is overly biased, and
see if his statements match up with my
own personal experiences.
BTW - What are Deborah and your suggestions
for psychiatry and the teen help industry?
Close down all psychiatry, and only refer
teens to the schools that you are referring
them to now, and shut down all others?
If that is your recommendation, or some
variation, then play out the scenario and
write it up. What will the new US be like?
-
Why is it so difficult to post this link?
-
Re-actionary, based on what? I don?t think you know me. Just for the record, ?complaining? can be very pro-actionary, because in so doing, there is exposure of the issue. I realize you don't see any problem or need for complaint. Oh well. I?m sure you?d be raising the roof if your choice to take drugs was in jeopardy. We?re all passionate about our beliefs, you too, Paul.
My daughter is adult and makes her own choices, many, many times different than I would choose. I?m sure it was real similar to the reason you couldn?t influence your roommate to take drugs.
She ended up with a C-section because the dr was tired of waiting. Maybe he had a dinner date, who knows. Could have something to do with the fact that a C-section elevate a simple birth to a risky surgery procedure, and the price goes up exponentially. But, I'm sure that had nothing to do with it. :roll: She regretted letting him rush her.
?Jeeperz, you say natural unassisted childbirth, then use a mid-wife! ?
Did you misunderstand, or are you desperate, pulling at straws there?
Who?s reactionary here?
My solutions to what, Paul?
I would be shocked if the number of frivolous lawsuits was anywhere near what they?d have us to believe. Who?s tracking them? Where?s the list of those injured and what their injuries were? Who determines if they are frivolous or not? If you?re asking me to take someone?s (the industry's) word for it, no thanks. There are too many factors that have not been addressed, not enough disclosed.
-
Paul, did you read this 'pro-psych' woman's account of involuntary committment/forced psychiatry and what it took to get out?
http://psychrights.org/Stories/CrazyUntilProvenSane.pdf (http://psychrights.org/Stories/CrazyUntilProvenSane.pdf)
One little excerpt that I think is damned relavant:
She told me that I?d probably be released sooner if I just took the medications that were ordered
for me. I gave her the following reasons for choosing not to do so:
§ I was not convinced that I actually had the condition I was diagnosed with, and I didn?t want
to take unnecessary medication.
§ The medications have side effects that I wasn?t interested in experiencing needlessly.
§ If I took the medications, I suspected that hospital staff would be inclined to attribute all
normal behaviors to their effects. That I ?responded? to the medications would then become
de facto evidence that I actually had the condition for which they were prescribed.
There are more where that came from.
How can you be a proponent of this industry and know so little. Or are you just pretending to be ignorant?
-
Here's a good one...
http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?to ... t=50#65963 (http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?topic=5804&forum=9&start=50#65963)
Texas foster children were being drugged to the gills, multiple drugs, the whole gamut.
Excerpt:
Herschel Smith of the Harris County Leadership Council said blacks are "still being stereotyped" by state Child Protective Services. "For a psychiatrist to put forth a genetic theory like this is horribly irresponsible."
Dr. Burkett, a psychiatrist who has been the Tarrant County agency's top medical officer since 2000, said he did nothing wrong and has no plans to quit.
Dr. Burkett said he was "not alluding to race" or belittling foster children in remarks he made Oct. 4 to a House panel studying whether mental health drugs are prescribed too often for the state's 17,000 foster children.
"I should stretch and give you a little more medical perspective on mental illness," he said as he testified on behalf of the Texas Society of Psychiatric Physicians. "A lot of these kids come from BAD GENE POOLS. They don't have stable parents making good decisions or else many of them, most of them, would not be in foster care."
On Tuesday, Dr. Burkett said: "There are pretty strong genetic factors in mental illness. The comment ... was really a comment about the fact that these children are in the foster care system because they don't have normal parents making good decisions. ..."
"That's really the connection I'm making with genetics."
He said, "They may not have been the best choice of words. ... I regret that I offended anyone."
Dr. Burkett served on Child Protective Services' Advisory Committee on Psychotropic Medications, which in August urged the state to allow doctors to prescribe for mentally disturbed foster children all of the medications generally available to the Medicaid population.
Burkett's bigoted testimony can be heard at:
http://www.house.state.tx.us/fx/av/comm ... 004a51.ram (http://www.house.state.tx.us/fx/av/committee78/41004a51.ram)
Starts at hour 6:22
-
Megan,
The stats don?t support your comment that drs push for C-section due to risks. You?d be hard pressed to find a woman, at least I have been, who didn?t have a C-section these days. Most vaginal births are to women who don?t have insurance to cover C-section. The C ladies typically have a low threshold for pain and/or want to schedule their birth around their work schedule and/or pick the birth date.
The medical industry has redefined ?risk? and ?extended labor?.
I had 9+ pound babies, as did my daughter, and I?m a small woman. I labored for 12 ? 14 hours. I can?t say that it was fun, but I wouldn?t do it any other way.
Doctors don?t want to ?coach? a laboring mom, or listen to their discomfort. They have developed a nice, relatively pleasant procedure that serves ?them? (the dr) well.
Petosin (sp?), Spinal, Doc checks in every coupla hours, woops, it?s been 6 hours. Not progressing fast enough. Extended labor. Baby could be distressed. Time to call it an emergency. Break out the scalpel.
I just don?t think drs would be faced with so many lawsuits if they didn?t intervene as often. The overwhelming majority of women can birth a baby with no complications.
And the trendy ?birthing room? my daughter had was a joke. I guess some women are fooled, at least they can tell their friends they had one, and imagine that they had a 'natural' birth. It was a birthing room by name alone.
When my first grandson was born the doctor told my daughter, after a few hours of labor, that she needed to take petosin. I asked her if that was what she wanted, we had discussed this. He ignored me, leaned over her bed, looked her in the eye and asked, ?you want to get this baby out don?t you?? Torn, my daughter cried and agreed. I remained silent. It wasn?t the time to bust the guy?s balls. She needed to trust him, and he had sufficiently scared her. In his case, he?d been there all day and wanted this baby born on his watch. Had nothing to do with complications or risks. Purely ego and selfishness.
If that wasn?t bad enough, she requested Advil for a headache caused by the spinal. They gave her Demerol !!! And this was right before she needed to push. She could hardly keep her eyes open, much less push. Was angry and cried through the final moments of labor. She and the baby were groggy for hours. It was nothing short of a miracle that she didn?t end up with a C-section with that one.
-
What are Deborah and your suggestions
for psychiatry and the teen help industry?
Paul,
This is not something I could answer briefly. I'll try to get back to it as time allows, and inspiration flows.
-
Deborah- it's the doctors *job* to "intervene"!! If you don't want that, then birth your babies at home!!
If doctors allow for extended labor, as I said before, the chance increases that the baby will go into distress, thus needing an emergency c-section, and increasing the chances for a less-than-optimal outcome. If an ineffective labor continues, the baby's heart rate can drop, easily, and they can become low on oxygen, easily. This is very risky. Again, doctors do this to protect the baby as much as they do it to cover their own butts.
And if you had such a specific birthing plan (no pitocin, or whatever), WHY did you not discuss this first with the care provider??
-
What do you know about "complications and risks"? I do believe you should be an educated consumer, but you are really not qualified to judge the extent of any "complications and risks" that may have occured during the birth. You should allow the professionals to determine that (not saying you should have no input).
This is one of the reasons for all the frivilous lawsuits! Ignorant consumers, looking to blame someone because their bodies did not resond in the same manner a computer program would.
Next time, discuss the plan with the doctor or midwife, find a care provider who is willing to take on the risk of an extended labor (good luck), or else stay home!
-
I had very good insurance through my employer when I had my baby 9 years ago. He was almost 9 lbs. I was in labor for 15 hours even after the dose of petocin. His labor was induced a week early due to my high blood pressure and being ill with a severe sinus infection. I got an epidural during most of this 15 hours. 30 minutes before he came out, they told me he was in distress and they were going to have to do a C section if it didnt happen soon. I didnt end up having one, but he was born with a collapsed lung, and was in ICU for 5 days. They later told me they should have done a C section due to his size and stress with the long labor. In my case, it should have been done but wasnt. That wasnt the doctors trying to force me to have a C section to make things easier, it was doctors trying to AVOID doing one until it was absolutely necessary. And I had insurance. So your view of all doctors wanting to do c sections is narrow. Most of the time they try NOT to do them nowadays. 4 ladies have had babies in the past year where I work. And only 1 had a c section due to a heart condition with the baby and they took it a month early. Sometimes C sections save lives.
-
Megan,
Yes, it?s the doctor?s job to intervene when there is good reason to. My personal opinion is that they intervene too often without good cause. In case you missed it, I did have the last two of my three kids at home.
My daughter?s friends are in the child-bearing years. Am I to imagine that the twelve+ women I?ve known over the past four years, who all had planned Cs or ended up with one, are just isolated incidents.
What I noticed and thought very peculiar, is that the most common question posed to the mother at social gathering or the shower, ?you having a C-section or having it naturally?, which indicated to me that Cs are commonly accepted as a ?non-emergency? option for moms. That seems to be supported by the comments here:
http://www.babycenter.com/comments/preg ... dbirth/221 (http://www.babycenter.com/comments/pregnancy/childbirth/221)
How is ?extended? defined? ?Ineffective labor?? I?m wondering if this phenomenon is related to the general poor health of women, therefore fetus, these days. Problems associated with overweight for instance. Lack of effective coaching and quality pre-natal care.
My daughter did request ?no pitocin?. The doctor scared her into agreeing. She also requested that my grandson not be given a bottle in the nursery. They arrogantly ignored that simple request.
I found this relevant:
A labor induced with synthetic oxytocin, for instance, is chemically and functionally different from a natural labor. Until recently it required the on-site supervision of the attending physician. Why doesn't it still?
According to the obstetric literature, oxytocin is barely present in the mother's blood in a natural labor until she's fully dilated and even then only at a fraction of the levels commonly used in induction. Parke-Davis, the manufacturer of Pitocin, warns that the dose of this drug that individual women can tolerate varies in unpredictable ways. An overdose can produce unusually strong and frequent contractions that stress the fetus, which may cause it to dump meconium into the amniotic fluid. This kind of hyperlabor can also rip the margins of the placenta and other tissue, exposing veins, releasing clotting factors, and opening the fast route to the mother's bloodstream, resulting in AFE.
Given that pitocin is regularly used and causes unnaturally strong, but largely ineffective contractions, I have to wonder if this isn?t at least in part, the reason there are so many birth complications these days.
Anon, was your baby full term with mature lungs (adequate surfactant)? It is my understanding that a collapsed lung is usually due to a lack of surfactant, a hole in the lung, or some situation in which air manages to get into the chest cavity. I?m curious to know how the long labor contributed to this condition, if you know.
-
He was completely full term....less then a week early....almost 9 lbs....big head, big shoulders, long body, and completely healthy with the exception of the collapsed lung (pneumothorax) which was due to long labor and him taking a very strong large breath upon coming out. They performed a minor surgery, reinflated the lung and he was in neonatal icu for 5 days. He was in the birth canal for over 18 hours and heart rate was becoming more rapid as the day wore on. They later realized he was actually too big of a baby for me to have comfortably delivered vaginally without damage (15 stitches) and would have done the C section for the reasons that ended up happening, had they realized he was that big. I had only gained 25 lbs and they thought he was about 7 lbs. he is now completely healthy without any breathing problems whatsoever.
-
The number of "complications" during birth are nminimal compared to those generations and centuries back! That much I do know.
I'm not denying that there are an increased number of c-sections done. But you cannot possibly believe that c-sections are so rampant as a result of the physicians' desire to go home!
Like I said before, I am not expert on OBGYN. But before you come to such accusatory conclusions, I would suggest that you read some medical books on the subject, like those read by young OBGYNs during their training, and not just those websites designed for laypeople.
-
Hi
I'm sorry to interrupt the conversation here, but I just ran across this forum and I had a question regarding a friend that seems to be relevant.
If someone is involuntarily committed by a judge for two weeks because of a suicide attempt, is that considered to be a conviction of a crime? It is a civil matter, and is not labelled as a misdemeanor or felony. But if a job application asks, is it considered a conviction?
Thank you for any response you may have.
-
No, it is not a conviction.
Just a hospitalization.
It does not need to be reported,
unless the application asks for
psychiatric condition, or
hospitalizations.
Then it is up to the applicant to
reveal it or not. There are varying
opinions on what to do. I tell
everthing, others don't. Most
companies cannot find out, and at
worst it will give them grounds
to fire the applicant, if they
want to later on. This is not that
relevant either, since most states
are at-will employers
In California I believe the only
ramnification is that gun ownership
is prohibited for 10 years. That
is what I was told, so it is hearsay
until confirmed.
What state is he in?
I can give you a referral to find out any questions
-
Thanks Paul!
The state is Oregon and he decided not to put it on the application. It is a gray area though since how can someone be on probation for something that is not a crime?
-
Correct, it is a forced medical decision,
not a criminal conviction.
-
http://www.oradvocacy.org/ (http://www.oradvocacy.org/)
Oregon Advocacy Center
620 SW 5th Avenue, 5th Floor
Portland, Oregon, 97204-1428
503-243-2081 (Voice)
-
On 2005-05-17 17:18:00, Deborah wrote:
"
My daughter is adult and makes her own choices, many, many times different than I would choose. I?m sure it was real similar to the reason you couldn?t influence your roommate to take drugs.
She ended up with a C-section because the dr was tired of waiting. Maybe he had a dinner date, who knows. Could have something to do with the fact that a C-section elevate a simple birth to a risky surgery procedure, and the price goes up exponentially. But, I'm sure that had nothing to do with it. :roll: She regretted letting him rush her.
?Jeeperz, you say natural unassisted childbirth, then use a mid-wife! ?
Did you misunderstand, or are you desperate, pulling at straws there?
Who?s reactionary here?
My solutions to what, Paul?
I would be shocked if the number of frivolous lawsuits was anywhere near what they?d have us to believe. Who?s tracking them? Where?s the list of those injured and what their injuries were? Who determines if they are frivolous or not? If you?re asking me to take someone?s (the industry's) word for it, no thanks. There are too many factors that have not been addressed, not enough disclosed.
"
"conspiracy delusions"
-
On 2005-05-26 17:58:00, Paul wrote:
"No, it is not a conviction.
Just a hospitalization.
It does not need to be reported,
unless the application asks for
psychiatric condition, or
hospitalizations.
Then it is up to the applicant to
reveal it or not. There are varying
opinions on what to do. I tell
everthing, others don't. Most
companies cannot find out, and at
worst it will give them grounds
to fire the applicant, if they
want to later on. This is not that
relevant either, since most states
are at-will employers
In California I believe the only
ramnification is that gun ownership
is prohibited for 10 years. That
is what I was told, so it is hearsay
until confirmed.
What state is he in?
I can give you a referral to find out any questions "
may I have permission to make this into a gangsta rap song?
-
Help Us Free Sharon Naji
Date: Tuesday, March 21st 2006
Time: 10:00 AM
Bellevue Hospital, 462 First Ave., 19 Floor, Mental Hygiene Court
Manhattan, New York
Come to support Sharon Naji regain her freedom. She has been kept locked up against her will at St. Vincent Catholic Medical Center for 2 weeks at their Psychiatric Ward.
Mental Hygiene Courts are a bizarre place where mostly poor people are railroaded and with the blessings of those crooked Judges, people are kept as Slaves for life.
Sharon, an African American Freedom Fighter from Parents in Action is being targeted after appearing at the Gil Noble Show "Like It Is"
denouncing the Child Exploitation Industry (Foster Care).
She is not crazy and has Been Repeatedly Beaten for Refusing to take Their Drugs. She is Kept Drugged most of the time and can barely walk. They want to use 16 different Drugs plus electroshock on her in order to shrink and fry her brain.
On Tuesday, March 21, 2006 at 10:00AM she will be brought under guard to Bellevue's Mental Hygiene Court to determine her future. Come and support her. Let's Fill the Courtroom!
Demand Her Freedom from this Band of Criminal & Racist Psychiatrists who Make Money by Enslaving People. Her Children are Slaves in Foster Care & She is Now a Prisoner at Their Psychiatric Ward. This Beast insists in Destroying the Whole Family.
Call St. Vincent Hospital at 212-604-7000 & ask to speak to Leonard Walsh, its Executive Director and demand her freedom.
Please, Spread Far and Wide
Parents in Action, http://www.parentsinaction.net (http://www.parentsinaction.net), 347-624-4830
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On 2005-08-12 17:35:00, Anonymous wrote:
"
On 2005-05-26 17:58:00, Paul wrote:
"No, it is not a conviction.
Just a hospitalization.
It does not need to be reported,
unless the application asks for
psychiatric condition, or
hospitalizations.
Then it is up to the applicant to
reveal it or not. There are varying
opinions on what to do. I tell
everthing, others don't. Most
companies cannot find out, and at
worst it will give them grounds
to fire the applicant, if they
want to later on. This is not that
relevant either, since most states
are at-will employers
In California I believe the only
ramnification is that gun ownership
is prohibited for 10 years. That
is what I was told, so it is hearsay
until confirmed.
What state is he in?
I can give you a referral to find out any questions "
may I have permission to make this into a gangsta rap song?"
:nworthy:
-
Talk with policymakers and opinion leaders. Even if they see substantial barriers to immediate implementation, convince them to acknowledge the concept of an entitlement as valid. Take them to visit successful community-based programs supporting people with serious mental illnesses.
http://www.bazelon.org/issues/mentalhea ... vision.pdf (http://www.bazelon.org/issues/mentalhealth/publications/newvision/newvision.pdf)
[Religion is] the daughter of hope and fear, explaining to ignorance the nature of the unknowable.
--Ambrose Bierce
-
Can ANYONE really be made to receive electro shock therapy against their will?? Especially in New York, where the healthcare system is completely overwhelmed.
I mean, I know of an adult woman, a long-time sufferer of schizophrenia, and her family oversaw her care for many many years, they finally asked the State of New York to take custody of her, and they refused.
-
http://www.ect.org/news/newyork/breedingjulytest.html (http://www.ect.org/news/newyork/breedingjulytest.html)
-
On 2006-03-19 20:49:00, Deborah wrote:
"http://www.ect.org/news/newyork/breedingjulytest.html
"
Personally, I'd rather hear your personal experience than a broad generalization.
Post URL: http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?to ... rt=0#15260 (http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?topic=2539&forum=9&start=0#15260)
-
Holy shit, anon. I take it that you actually support and defend ETC? How very medieval!
Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die
-- Malachy McCourt
-
From personal experience it works.
I don't jump on anyone's bandwagon because
it is easy to print bullshit.
I had the treatments, it works, and when
it works, for some it is a tremendously
effective treatment.
Would you like me to deny my own personal
experience to be hip?
Would you deny me my next treatment if I
needed them?
Would you promote dis-information so others
may suffer and never have a chance at this
treatment, if they may ever need it?
Why do you give a shit anyway, do you have
personal experience here.
Or is this just let's be knowledgable in
areas where I have no experience theater?
-
Paul,
I think you should continue your barbaric treatments until your brain is totally fried, if you choose to do so.
In the meantime, could you notice that your emotional attachment to this issue clouds your ability to stay on topic and address the issue at hand.
INVOLUNTARY COMMITTMENT AND TREATMENT
I know you like to believe, and would have others believe, that this isn't happening. It is, and sometimes strictly for political reasons. Some well informed professionals are working to have laws enacted to protect those who would be incarcerated and shocked/ drugged so they appear incompetant when they go before a judge.
You're 'disease' is taking any 'negative' comment about the psych industry as a personal affront.
Hope they find you a cure soon.
You think the good doctors testimony is bullshit? Dis-information? Refute any points he makes and leave *me* out of it, if you can.
-
On 2006-03-20 11:26:00, Deborah wrote:
Personally, I'd rather hear your personal experience than a broad generalization.
Post URL: http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?to ... rt=0#15260 (http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?topic=2539&forum=9&start=0#15260)
-
Is this anon being criticized because he has had ECT?
-
On 2006-03-19 13:54:00, bandit1978 wrote:
"Can ANYONE really be made to receive electro shock therapy against their will?? Especially in New York, where the healthcare system is completely overwhelmed.
I mean, I know of an adult woman, a long-time sufferer of schizophrenia, and her family oversaw her care for many many years, they finally asked the State of New York to take custody of her, and they refused. "
I asked Sharon's advocates. The reply:
Sharon Naji's doctors were given an order to use ECT at the Doctor's discression! Sharon is not mentally ill! She is not depressed. It is social/political control. The answer is., Yes! ECT can and is used against a person's will. It is used as a threat to control "patients" in New York!
And a further elaboration:
It cannot be understood until one witnesses the abuse first hand as he (another advocate) now has. He now knows how hard it is to advocate when the victim is drugged up on substances that change the personality, making it difficult to know what to do when the victim is so unable to function, to think clearly, and when they are taken to court in this condition so the doctors can "PROVE" that the patient is not well enough to be discharged. Then while they are allowed to hang onto their insurance cash cow while her kids go to foster care and they plan her future within a system that doesn't treat her for a non-existent disease, but treats her like an animal until her insurance runs out and while she is evicted and loses her life!!!!!!
The lawyer, XXXXXX, never showed up. The lawyer, XXXXXX, who did a lousy job in court at Belleview showed up to "drop in" on her, but did not advise or consult with her about her case.
Sharon has been told she can't leave for at least a month. She was supposed to be there for "evaluation". When she tried to refuse the drugs they drugged her "stupid". They [know] how much it takes to Interfere with her strong spirit. I heard the "change" on the phone over a few data since I first made contace with her! She cannot stay focused!! It makes me sick. Now they will say it is the disease. She will question her mental state herself! TREATMENT! My ass!!
-
On 2006-03-20 11:31:00, Anonymous wrote:
"Is this anon being criticized because he has had ECT?
"
Since when do anons have genders?
Paul isn't being criticized... only in his mind.
He lives in fear that moonbat, fringe people will take away his right to the treatment of his choice. He confuses efforts to ensure informed consent and that people aren't forced into treatment, as efforts to remove his rights and access to drugs. I think those he serves refer to that as Paranoia.
-
On 2006-03-20 11:46:00, Deborah wrote:
"
So this is about Deborah and Paul?
-
Is this the same Paul as "the light guy"?
_________________
"Compassion is the basis of morality."
-Arnold Schopenhauer[ This Message was edited by: Dysfunction Junction on 2006-03-20 12:04 ]
-
Only Deborah knows, she appears to be posting
for both of them :lol:
-
On 2006-03-20 12:04:00, Dysfunction Junction wrote:
"
Is this the same Paul as "the light guy"?
_________________
"Compassion is the basis of morality."
-Arnold Schopenhauer[ This Message was edited by: Dysfunction Junction on 2006-03-20 12:04 ]"
Yes, Light Box Paul. I'm not certain it's Paul, but the message is a perfect match to his style and content. He has also admitted having ECT.
Perhaps Paul will confirm or dispell my guess.
-
It's so sunny in southern california, why is a light necessary, why not just go outside?
-
Well, I thought the same thing and asked him. He declined to respond.
-
On 2006-03-20 14:42:00, Anonymous wrote:
"It's so sunny in southern california, why is a light necessary, why not just go outside?"
I don't think Paul was around today.
Just because someone had an personal experience
with something that worked for them, is that
any reason to drag that fucker's name into these
threads?
Look, we aren't getting anywhere since being tortured at school. Now we post on the internet.
We just vent, pick, vent, pick and on and on it goes.
As for at the question of why not go outside, I see that stupid question every time Deborah re-introduces his name when she gets frustrated.
Shit Deborah, his name, his photo, his address.
WTF, is this your old boyfriend that you cannot get over or something. This is a tired old chase your are on.
Now, if someone has a personal experience please don't be a afraid. You may get flamed, because the 10 or so regulars are quite the click. Unorganized, but clicky nevertheless.
Same rhetoric, over and over, ad nauseum.
State some article, make a comment, get slammed, agree ... be called well researched. Shit, isn't anyone else sick of this crap.
Anyway, getting back to the dumb question everytime Deborah yearns for her lover, check out:
http://search.about.com/fullsearch.htm? ... %20therapy (http://search.about.com/fullsearch.htm?terms=light%20therapy)
Or next time, do the search yourself.
Deborah, get a life, or at least another ex-boyfriend to pick on.
-
Ha, exactly:
http://bazelon.org/ (http://bazelon.org/)
-
That is a weird statement, I assume it is true, or perhaps just written incorrectly.
How does the court give an order that is optional?
I didn't even know the courts could suggest treatment, perhaps they do in NY.
Courts are supposed to make rulings ...
I think the best thing for Sharon is to contact a civil rights group. Best would be one's experienced in mental health law.
But, the request would have to be made by either her, or whoever is in standing to act in her behalf.
If the state of New York has conserved her then I don't know what could be done.
The ACLU or one of those groups, perhaps that Bazelon.org that was just mentioned ???
-
On 2006-03-20 16:55:00, Anonymous wrote:
"
On 2006-03-20 14:42:00, Anonymous wrote:
"It's so sunny in southern california, why is a light necessary, why not just go outside?"
I don't think Paul was around today.
Just because someone had an personal experience
with something that worked for them, is that
any reason to drag that fucker's name into these
threads?
Look, we aren't getting anywhere since being tortured at school. Now we post on the internet.
We just vent, pick, vent, pick and on and on it goes.
As for at the question of why not go outside, I see that stupid question every time Deborah re-introduces his name when she gets frustrated.
Shit Deborah, his name, his photo, his address.
WTF, is this your old boyfriend that you cannot get over or something. This is a tired old chase your are on.
Now, if someone has a personal experience please don't be a afraid. You may get flamed, because the 10 or so regulars are quite the click. Unorganized, but clicky nevertheless.
Same rhetoric, over and over, ad nauseum.
State some article, make a comment, get slammed, agree ... be called well researched. Shit, isn't anyone else sick of this crap.
Anyway, getting back to the dumb question everytime Deborah yearns for her lover, check out:
http://search.about.com/fullsearch.htm? ... %20therapy (http://search.about.com/fullsearch.htm?terms=light%20therapy)
Or next time, do the search yourself.
Deborah, get a life, or at least another ex-boyfriend to pick on.
"
The person who posted this, you are paul, correct?
-
Look, we aren't getting anywhere since being tortured at school. Now we post on the internet.
What 'school' were you abused at?
-
On 2006-03-20 16:55:00, Anonymous wrote:
"
On 2006-03-20 14:42:00, Anonymous wrote:
"It's so sunny in southern california, why is a light necessary, why not just go outside?"
I don't think Paul was around today.
Just because someone had an personal experience
with something that worked for them, is that
any reason to drag that fucker's name into these
threads?
Look, we aren't getting anywhere since being tortured at school. Now we post on the internet.
We just vent, pick, vent, pick and on and on it goes.
As for at the question of why not go outside, I see that stupid question every time Deborah re-introduces his name when she gets frustrated.
Shit Deborah, his name, his photo, his address.
WTF, is this your old boyfriend that you cannot get over or something. This is a tired old chase your are on.
Now, if someone has a personal experience please don't be a afraid. You may get flamed, because the 10 or so regulars are quite the click. Unorganized, but clicky nevertheless.
Same rhetoric, over and over, ad nauseum.
State some article, make a comment, get slammed, agree ... be called well researched. Shit, isn't anyone else sick of this crap.
Anyway, getting back to the dumb question everytime Deborah yearns for her lover, check out:
http://search.about.com/fullsearch.htm? ... %20therapy (http://search.about.com/fullsearch.htm?terms=light%20therapy)
Or next time, do the search yourself.
Deborah, get a life, or at least another ex-boyfriend to pick on.
"
Paul, if you don't like this website, why do you continue to return?
-
Aren't there any light therapy forums? :lol:
-
(http://http://www.csonline.com.cn/publish/img/2002-08/19/081903rl.jpg)
Meet Paul.
-
http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?mo ... rt=0&Sort= (http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?mode=viewtopic&topic=10711&forum=9&start=0&Sort=)
-
The following quote is from the "optional" (for the doctors) court order that allowed me to be forcibly medicated with dangerous mind-numbing chemicals for 13 days. I don't doubt that New York State's courts allow the same degree of "judgement" to doctors they give permission to apply electric current to a person's brain.
"That after considering all of the evidence, including the Petition and the expert, competent medical or psychiatric testemony, it appears to the Court that the allegations of the Petition are true and correct and are supported by clear and convincing evidence. It is therefore determined that treatment with the proposed medication is in the best interest of the Patient and the Patient lacks the capacity to make a decision regarding administration of said medication and that the same shall be ordered.
"The Court relied on the following evidence: Testimony of Doctor; Testimony of Patient, and makes its determination for the following reasons: Good Prognosis with meds; Poor Prognosis w/o Meds; Lack of non-medicine treatment alternative.
"Accordingly it is ORDERED persuant to Texas Health and Safety Code, Sec. 574.106, that Doctor [PG] and the [Hospital Name] is authorized to administer to the Patient the following class(es) of psychoactive medication: antidepressants, antipsychotics, anxiolytics/sedatives/hypnotics, and mood stabilizers.
"It is also ORDERED that during the period this Order is valid, the dosage of the herein authorized psychoactive medication can be increased or decreased, and restitution of of medication authorized but discontinued and the substitution of a medication within the same class(es) are permitted."
This judgement was given 28 days after a doctor wrote a "Petition for an Order to Administer Psychoactive Medication,? and 18 days after that same doctor had discharged me from the hospital. In her "Discharge Summary" she stated that, at that time (UN-medicated), I demonstrated ?an adequate sleep pattern and appetite, improved thought processing, less irritability, no threatening behaviors, no psychosis, and no suicidal or homicidal ideation.?
As to the previous writer's recommendation that Sharon find a Civil Rights attorney -- Good Luck! I've been trying for over two years. The stigma for persons labeled by others as "crazy" apparently extends even to the legal profession. [ This Message was edited by: PsyFie on 2006-03-22 03:29 ]
-
Back to Sharon:
Thank you all for the overwhelming support for a just caouse. I do apologize for not having kept you updated faster... thsi last days have been overwhelming fighting at many fronts at the same time. But we are learning and getting stronger by the day.
Here goes a brief update:
1. Sharon Naji is still inside St. Vincet's Catholic Medical Center Psychiatric Ward , being held against her will, so please keep the
pressure by calling the Hospital Executive Director and complain about her illegal detention. Call St. Vincent Hospital at 212-604-7000 & ask to speak to Leonard Walsh, its Executive Director and demand her freedom.
2. She has been repeatelly beaten and has been forcelly medicated on a daily basis. She was very afraid even for her very survival. When I
visited her, she coulld barely walk and was sleeppy most of the time due to the drugs. Her mental processes and concentration were not the
same due to the heavy medications.
3. I was disappointed when I found out that at the last minute before the court date, they had offered her a deal and she accepted it. The
deal is not in writing, so everything is in the air. They have promise her to release her this week. The idea is that have to wean her off
the drugs before her release. I hope that these coackroaches are not just trying to trick her.
4. Yesterday Tuesday 3-21-06 about 10 of us showed up at the Mental Hygiene Court at Bellevue Hospital for Sharon's scheduled case. Since
Sharon had withdrawn her petition there was not case that day. Nevertheless we decided to stay and wanted to monitor any other coming court case. The court officer would not let us in because accorcing to him the court was closed to the public. We insisted that according to Judy Kay, the Chief Judge of New York State, all courts are open to the public. I asked to speak to the Court Clerk. Eventually he came out and explained that I had heard Judge Kay saying that all courts were open to the public. He said that as far as he knew I was mistaken, that Mental Hygiene Courts were the exception. We decided to stay for a while to wait for other activists that were coming little by little. In 5 minutes the Court Clerk came back and apologized, explaining that he had been wrong for many years, that he had just asked the Judge and that we were welcome to come into the court, since they were open to the public. So from now on, all Mental Hygiene Courts in New York City are open to the
public. We are palnnuing to form a Mental Health Patrol made out of volunteers to monitor the process and help the patients about their rights. I see a lot of potential here.
5. While we were waiting to enter the courtroom, Jillian Becker, the court appointed attorney of Sharon Naji, found out about our victory and came to us and said that she and the other attorneys will challenge our presence in the courtroom every single case, that they will invoke patient's privacy rights. This woman is Sharon worst enemy and she pretents to defend her. We are in the process of putting a formal complaint against this person who is supposed to protect the patients but in reality is their adversary. when we filled the courtroom, the attorney for the Hospital asked the judge to clear the
courtroom and Sharon's attorney seconded the motion. The judge allowed me to opposed and I explained that the only purpose of their request
was to keep the whole assembly line a secret. The judge said he was taking a 5 minutes recess to think, but came back 30 minutes later. He
amde a Solomonic decision: since both attorneys had requested to clear the room based on the confidentiality of the patuient, he had no
choice to accept their petition, but since the courts are open to the public, we are welcome to come back any tiem for any case and the
attoeney will need to file a petition every time if they wanted us excluded. We paln to come back with more troops and just do that. By the way, just before entering the courtroom I asked the patient whose case we tried to observe about ourt intentions and if would mind our presence. His answer was that he would not mind. Obviusly his attorney (same attorney that Sharon has) did not consult him for excluding us. Big travesty of justice.
6. We held 2 succesful Rallies outside the main entrance of the Hospital. A lot of doctors, nurses, administrators and even psychiatrist and the public came to speak with us. We know that a lot of people inside the hospital were upset. We had the chief of security threatening us with arrest. We hewld our ground and when the police
came they side with us, since we were not doing anything illegal.
7. Last week while incarcerated, Sharon lost her apartment. The marshal came and changed the locks. All this thanks to these criminals.
Thanks for your support.
Keep strong.
Rolando Bini
Parents in Action
-
Rolando Bini and Parents in Action in New York are my new cultural heros. "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, its the only thing that ever has." -- Margaret Mead
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I suggest they get Sharon Naji to sign them Power of Attorney for each of the people that want to attend the hearings. Then they will have standing to be in the court, because by having Power of Attorney, the patient has obviously waived her HIPPA confidentiality rights.
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Thank You to All the Freedom Fighters who supported our efforts to Liberate Sharon Naji.
She was freed from St. Vincent Catholic Medical Center yesterday 3-29-06 after a month of involuntary confinment at their psychiatric
ward.
She is not crazy, nor ever was, but was kept under lock so these bunch of criminal and racist psychiatrists could make money out of her detention. While under captivity she was repeatedly beaten and drugged.
We held 2 demostrations outside St Vincent Hospital. That put pressure on them. We also put formal complaints every place we could and made many complaint calls to the Hospital Administration.
Another factor is the fact that she put a "refusal of services" to her insurance covering her forced stay at the hospital. With no more
money to suck, the leeches had no incentive to keep her there.
As a side effect of our advocacy we had a Great Victory related to system change: since 1966 Bellevue Mental Hygiene Court has no allowed the Public in to its Hearings. We got lucky and in few minutes we reversed 40 years of legal abuse. On Tuesday 3-21-2006 in the morning calendar several of us showed up at Bellevue Mental
Hygiene Court (19 floor). After being denied access and upon insisting on our right to be there, finally the Court Clerk (after
consulting with the Judge) came back and apologized and said that he had been wrong for many years and that yes we were welcome to come
into the court. We did that but both the Lawyer for the hospital and the court appointed attorney for the patients asked Judge Lucindo Suarez to kick us out.
Only in a brave New World this happens. Jillian Becker (works for the Mental Hygiene Legal Services), the court appointed attorney for
Sharon Naji oppossing our presence and seconding the Hospital petition. This super-racists so-called people's defenders are part of the problem. They want to keep the procedings secret to hide their abuse and racism. An all buddies club scam.
For the time being Sharon is staying in a friend's home since she lost her apartment while kept prisoner at St. Vincent. She also has to fight to get her children back from Foster Care, the modern form of Children's Slavery.
In the Struggle
Rolando Bini
Parents in Action
http://www.parentsinaction.net (http://www.parentsinaction.net)
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since she lost her apartment while kept prisoner at St. Vincent
She also has to fight to get her children back from Foster Care
Damn, without an apartment she will never get
her kids back.
Too bad the protesters didn't raise some money
for her to pay the rent. If she was in the hospital for 30 days, her landlords must have
booted her the day the rent was due.
No compassion in real estate.