The Child Protection Racket

Posted on June 28, 2013 by cchrstl

The Child Protection Racket

Child welfare in the state of Missouri comes under the state government’s Executive branch, Department of Social Services (DSS). The Missouri Constitution Article IV Section 37 states the guiding principle of the Department of Social Services quite simply as:

“The health and general welfare of the people are matters of primary public concern; and to secure them there shall be established a department of social services in charge of a director appointed by the governor, by and with the advice and consent of the senate, charged with promoting improved health and other social services to the citizens of the state as provided by law, and the general assembly may grant power with respect thereto to counties, cities or other political subdivisions of the state.”

One presumes that no one has any argument with the general statement of support for the health and welfare of Missouri citizens.

The Revised Statutes of Missouri (RSMo), the governing laws of the state, further define child welfare in Chapter 1 Section 1.092 as:

“The child welfare policy of this state is what is in the best interests of the child.”

The state’s child welfare services are concentrated in the Division of Family Services (DFS) in the Department of Social Services. Operating instructions for DFS are specified in RSMo Chapter 210 Section 210.109:

“The child protection system shall promote the safety of children and the integrity and preservation of their families by conducting investigations or family assessments and providing services in response to reports of child abuse or neglect. The system shall coordinate community resources and provide assistance or services to children and families identified to be at risk, and to prevent and remedy child abuse and neglect.”

One presumes that no one has any argument with the general statement of support for the health and welfare of Missouri children.

RSMo Chapter 630 Section 630.097 further authorizes the Department of Mental Health (DMH) to establish a “unified accountable comprehensive children’s mental health service system” providing “annual reports that include progress toward outcomes, monitoring, changes in populations and services, and emerging issues.” The strategic plan developed as a result of this legislation can be found here. The 2012 Annual Report for this effort can be found here.

There are no statistics about outcomes in this latest annual report. In fact, the report only discusses the establishment and activities of various committees, web sites, conferences, meetings, workshops, funding, training, newsletters — in short, nary a single word about accountable positive outcomes that improve the actual health and welfare of children.

An argument could be made that “improved health” and “best interests of the child” have not been genuine concerns of the state for its citizens and particularly for its children. The DSS, the DFS, and the DMH have all lost their way and abandoned their original purpose.

Instead we have these:

RSMo Chapter 208 Section 208.227 specifically allows for the availability of psychotropic drugs for seniors and children.

RSMo Chapter 208 Section 208.152 guarantees payments by MO HealthNet (the state Medicaid program) to provide mental health services.

RSMo Chapter 211 Section 211.161 allows juvenile courts to “cause any child or person seventeen years of age within its jurisdiction to be examined by a physician, psychiatrist or psychologist appointed by the court.”

To be fair, there is the occasional protection. For example, RSMo Chapter 632 Section 070 allows for the parents or legal custodians of any minors referred to DFS to consent to the mental health treatment of their children, and they must be advised that they have the right to consult their regular physicians before giving their consent to any treatment.

Are these protections enough? Judging from the number of cases brought to CCHR’s attention about children being taken away by DFS when the parents refuse to give psychiatric drugs to their children, we don’t think so.

Child Psychiatry is Child Abuse

The greatest threat of psychiatry is its targeting of the young, for in doing so, it threatens to destroy our future leaders. The drugging of children is a multbillion dollar business that grows larger every day. Psychiatrists expand their funding sources with an endless supply of fraudulent labels for normal childhood behavior.

No child should be compelled to receive brain-damaging “treatment” of any kind. No parent should be coerced into agreeing that, in order to retain custody of their child, they must consent to fraudulent, harmful and abusive psychiatric “care.”

If you become aware of the abusive treatment of children by the Missouri DSS, DFS, or DMH, notify the Office of Child Advocate: 866-457-2302, oca@oca.mo.gov, or fill out and send in a complaint form.

Missouri State Department of Mental Health

Posted on June 23, 2013 by cchrstl

Missouri State Department of Mental Health

The budget keeps getting bigger, but the cures stay at zero

Reports show that:

* 10% to 25% of mental health practitioners sexually abuse patients.
* Psychiatry has the worst fraud track record of all medical disciplines.
* An estimated $20-$40 billion is defrauded in the mental health industry in any given year.

Download and read the full report “Massive Fraud — Psychiatry’s Corrupt Industry.”

Missouri Department of Mental Health 2013 budget — over $1.6 billion; and this does not include mental health services provided by other state departments such as Health and Senior Services, Elementary and Secondary Education, Corrections, and Social Services.

Over 100 million people worldwide are taking psychiatric drugs right now.

Psychiatric drugs do not improve academic performance. The National Institutes of Health reports “there is little improvement in academic achievement or social skills” by children taking stimulant drugs.

Every 75 seconds another citizen is incarcerated by psychiatry.

The top five psychiatric drugs combined gross more money than the gross national product of each of over half the countries on Earth.

Every Missouri citizen gives the Department of Mental Health $267 per year to abuse their neighbors.

The largest and fastest growing source of funds for the Missouri Department of Mental Health is the U.S. federal government, amounting to nearly $900 million this year.

20 million children worldwide take psychiatric drugs daily, 9 million of those in the U.S. These drugs potentially cause violent behavior, psychosis, hallucinations, strokes, heart attacks, obesity, life-threatening diabetes and even suicide.

Giving more tax dollars to the Department of Mental Health merely perpetuates the cycle of state tax largesse. Curtailing and cutting the budget will force the Department of Mental Health to reduce their costs, thereby forcing useless and unnecessary state institutions either to improve their services or close shop.

Increasing the Department of Mental Health’s budget covers expensive and debatable psychiatric drugs as necessary medical costs. Many international warnings have been issued on the harmful side effects of various psychiatric drugs, which include suicide, violence, addiction, liver damage, and heart attacks.

The Department of Mental Health is also an easy place to cut spending in the long, difficult effort to save our health-care system, as the citizens of this state have long used the Department of Mental health as an emergency health care provider. The unprecedented use of Missouri’s Mental Health psychiatric facilities as emergency health care has hidden a long overlooked problem that the state’s poorer citizens are enduring.

The Department of Mental Health’s motto should be “We care for those who cannot care for themselves”; not “We want to care for all.”

Contact your local, state and federal officials and representatives and let them know what you think about the insane bloat of budgets for psychiatric mental health care that promote fraud and patient abuse.

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Veterans Treatment Courts

Posted on June 3, 2013 by cchrstl

Veterans Treatment Courts

One of the bills passed by the Missouri legislature this session, and awaiting signature by Governor Nixon, is Senate Bill 118, an act authorizing Missouri circuit courts to establish Veterans Treatment Courts, which would “provide an alternative for the judicial system to dispose of cases which stem from substance abuse or mental illness of military veterans or current military personnel.”

We have many serious concerns about this bill, which we would like to share with you. The bill is only three printed pages, and is mostly vague about how these courts would be implemented.

This has a similarity to existing Drug Treatment Courts, which currently cost $6,190 per case. The Fiscal Note accompanying this bill states that if a circuit court decides to create a veterans treatment court, they will be able to do so utilizing existing resources, and would make referrals for substance abuse or mental health treatment to existing Federal level programs or community-based treatment programs; therefore they assume the proposal would not create any additional funding concerns. As with other government bureaucracies, we have doubts about the veracity in practice of “no additional funding needed.”

Mental health courts are facilities established to deal with arrests for misdemeanors or non-violent felonies. Rather than allowing the guilty parties to take responsibility for their crimes, they are diverted to a psychiatric treatment center on the premise that they suffer from “mental illness” which will respond positively to antipsychotic drugs and that psychiatric treatment will stop the criminal behavior. There is no evidence that supports this false premise. It is another form of coercive “community mental health treatment.”

In a review of 20 mental health courts, the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law found that these courts “may function as a coercive agent – in many ways similar to the controversial intervention, outpatient commitment – compelling an individual to participate in treatment under threat of court sanctions. However, the services available to the individual may be only those offered by a system that has already failed to help. Too many public mental health systems offer little more than medication.”

“A veterans treatment court shall combine judicial supervision, drug testing, and substance abuse and mental health treatment to participants who have served or are currently serving the United States armed forces, including members of the reserves, national guard, or state guard.”

First of all, this is degrading to veterans, assuming they are mental cases needing psychiatric treatment, and labeling them for life.

“Any statement made by a participant as part of participation in the veterans treatment court program, or any report made by the staff of the program, shall not be admissible as evidence against the participant in any criminal, juvenile, or civil proceeding.”

This totally removes individual responsibility and accountability for their criminal actions from the participating veterans.

Any circuit court, or combination of circuit courts, can establish their own conditions and rules for these veterans treatment courts. This inconsistency could lead not only to redundant and costly efforts, but also to discrimination as a result of differing implementations between courts.

All records and reports relevant to a veteran’s treatment program must be treated as closed records, “not to be disclosed to any person outside of the veterans treatment court.” This would make it difficult if not impossible for a veteran harmed by such a treatment program to have any legal recourse for damages.

As we already have a criminal probation system in place, we can only assume that this bill is a shameless attempt by the psychiatric industry to troll for more patients from the ranks of troubled veterans.

If you share these feelings about Governor Nixon signing this bill into law, now is the time to contact him with your concerns and suggest that he veto it.

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