In Memoriam: Dr. Thomas Szasz

Professor Thomas Szasz, iconic champion for liberty, pioneer in the fight against coercive psychiatry and co-founder of Citizens Commission on Human Rights, has passed away at the age of 92.

Considered by many scholars and academics to be psychiatry’s most authoritative critic, Dr. Szasz authored hundreds of articles and more than 35 books on the subject, the first being The Myth of Mental Illness, a book which rocked the very foundations of psychiatry when published more than 50 years ago. Szasz was Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at the State University of New York, Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute, Lifetime Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, Fellow of the International Academy of Forensic Psychology, whose life long list of educational accomplishments, credentials, honors, biographical listings and awards speak for themselves.

Szasz had long criticized the use of psychiatry as a means of social and political control stating, “Although we may not know it, we have, in our day, witnessed the birth of the Therapeutic State. This is perhaps the major implication of psychiatry as an institution of social control. When I use the term therapeutic state, I use it ironically, it’s therapeutic for the people who are doing the locking up, who are doing the therapy, it’s not therapeutic for the victims, for the patients.”

Dr. Szasz’s alliance with CCHR was formed out of this fundamental philosophy. He didn’t just write and speak about the use of coercive psychiatry, he personally represented the victims of it. In 1969 as a forming member of CCHR, he spoke on behalf of a Hungarian refugee, Victor Gyory, who had been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric institution, stripped naked, held in isolation against his will, and forced to undergo electroshock. Szasz established that it was solely due to Gyory’s inability to speak English that had resulted in psychiatrists labeling him schizophrenic. Szasz’s testimony led to the hospital director discharging Gyory, a precedent-setting victory against involuntary commitment and coercive psychiatry.

Read the full article by clicking here.

“I am probably the only psychiatrist in the world whose hands are clean,” Szasz told the Syracuse Post-Standard newspaper in a 1992 interview. “I have never committed anyone. I have never given electric shock. I have never, ever, given drugs to a mental patient.”

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Federal Government Hiring More Fraudiatric Help For Veterans

President Obama signed an executive order on Friday, August 31, directing the Veterans Administration to hire 1,600 new mental health professionals, as reported by NPR.

Salient quotes from the executive order:

“Since September 11, 2001, more than two million service members have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. Long deployments and intense combat conditions require optimal support for the emotional and mental health needs of our service members and their families. The need for mental health services will only increase in the coming years as the Nation deals with the effects of more than a decade of conflict.”

“Department of Veterans Affairs shall ensure that any veteran identifying him or herself as being in crisis connects with a mental health professional or trained mental health worker within 24 hours.”

“The Departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense shall jointly develop and implement a national suicide prevention campaign focused on connecting veterans and service members to mental health services.”

“The lack of full understanding of the underlying mechanisms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), other mental health conditions, and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) has hampered progress in prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. In order to improve the coordination of agency research into these conditions and reduce the number of affected men and women through better prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, the Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, and Education, in coordination with the Office of Science and Technology Policy, shall establish a National Research Action Plan within 8 months of the date of this order.”

“Within 180 days of the date of this order, in those service areas where the Department of Veterans Affairs has faced challenges in hiring and placing mental health service providers and continues to have unfilled vacancies or long wait times, the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Health and Human Services shall establish pilot projects whereby the Department of Veterans Affairs contracts or develops formal arrangements with community based providers, such as community mental health clinics, community health centers, substance abuse treatment facilities, and rural health clinics.”

“The Departments of Defense and Health and Human Services shall engage in a comprehensive longitudinal mental health study with an emphasis on PTSD, TBI, and related injuries to develop better prevention, diagnosis, and treatment options.”

What does this mean?

There is a lot more; read the full executive order here.

On the surface, it is most politically correct to provide support for veterans with mental trauma. But what treatments are actually provided by the mental health industry? More psychiatric drugs! The very drugs that are already known to cause violence and suicide.

The fact missed by most is that psychiatric, mind-altering drugs have been found to be the common factor in an overwhelming number of acts of random senseless violence.

These drugs, on an ever increasing rise in society and in the military, are actually creating acts of violence. The scientific research documenting the connection between violence, suicide and psychiatric drugs is overwhelming.

The use of psychiatric drugs escalates when the government, the mental health industry, and the psychopharmaceutical industry target new markets to increase profits. Antidepressants are a hoax — a hoax that is killing members and veterans of our armed services.

So-called post-traumatic stress disorder emerged in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, when veterans were having difficulties overcoming the brutal events they had witnessed. Three American psychiatrists coined the term PTSD and lobbied for its inclusion in the 1980 edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. While the effects of war are devastating, psychiatrists use people’s logical reactions to it to make money at the expense of their vulnerability.

Some experts say that most of the soldiers suffering the effects of participating in particularly dangerous missions were experiencing battle fatigue, or in other words, exhaustion, not “mental illness.”

Today, PTSD has become blurred as a catch-all diagnosis for some 175 combinations of symptoms, becoming the label for identifying the impact of adverse events on ordinary people. This means that normal responses to catastrophic events have often been interpreted as mental disorders.

Psychiatric trauma treatment at best is useless, and at worst highly destructive to victims seeking help. By medicalizing what is a non-medical condition and introducing harmful drugs as a therapy, victims have been denied effective treatment options.

In 2010, at least one in six service members was taking a psychiatric drug. What do you suppose the number is now? What do you suppose the consequences will be with 1,600 more mental health workers in the Veterans Administration?

Contact the White House here and provide your opinion, or call the White House Comment Line at 202-456-1111 and express your point of view. Contact your local, state and federal officials and tell them what you think. Write General Lloyd James Austin III, Army Vice Chief of Staff, at 1400 Defense Pentagon, Washington DC 20301-1400. Write the Honorable Eric K. Shinseki, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, at 810 Vermont Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20420.

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They’re Taking Me Away

They’re Taking Me Away

Nuisance Abatement Vehicle

Guess where this could take you for a 96-hour
drugged-silly vacation?

Missouri Revised Statutes Chapter 632 Section 305:
An application for detention of any person for 96 hours for evaluation and treatment may be executed by any adult person who alleges under oath that the applicant has reason to believe that the respondent is suffering from a mental disorder and presents a likelihood of serious harm to himself or to others.

In other words, all you have to do in Missouri to get someone a one-way ride in this police limo is to claim the person is trying to kill you. Oops, you didn’t hear me say that; we don’t want to encourage the frivolous use of this lawful involuntary commitment mechanism. Oops, they call it “civil” commitment, or “detention,” because “involuntary” sounds so intimidating.

We suggest you download and execute the psychiatric Living Will, and carry a copy with you all the time. A Living Will lets you specify decisions about your health care treatment in advance. Should you be in a position where you are to be subject to unwanted psychiatric hospitalization and/or mental or medical treatment, this Letter of Protection from Psychiatric Incarceration and/or Treatment directs that such incarceration, hospitalization, treatment or procedures not be imposed, committed or used on you. Download the document and follow the instructions now.

For more information about involuntary commitment, download and read the CCHR booklet “Involuntary Psychiatric Commitment – A Crack in the Door of Constitutional Freedoms.”

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The Beginning of Wisdom

The Beginning of Wisdom

is to call things by their right name.

[Chinese Proverb attributed
to Confucius
]

That is, identify the true quality of a thing by its name.

The Kabbalah further refines this by saying that one should be called according to one’s deeds.

So, in this newsletter we will be calling psychiatry by its real name, fraudiatry.

dept of mental health doorwayEnter Fraudiatry at your own risk.

News from the St. Louis Business Journal (August 30, 2012):

Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster, along with 37 other attorneys general, have reached a $181 million settlement with Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc., a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson.

The state of Missouri will receive more than $4.3 million from the settlement, while Illinois will receive $8.3 million under the agreement. In Missouri, 75 percent will go into the state’s general revenue and 25 percent will go into the Merchandising Practices Revolving Fund, which is used for consumer protection actions in the attorney general’s office.

The settlement resolves allegations that Janssen engaged in unfair and deceptive practices when it marketed Risperdal, a drug used to treat symptoms of schizophrenia, for unapproved or off-label uses. Koster said Janssen marketed Risperdal for uses for which the FDA had denied approval.

The fraudiatric drug Risperdal is a major tranquilizer, or neuroleptic, known to cause involuntary muscular movement, confusion, nerve damage, diabetes, and premature death, among other horrific side effects. In June, 2008, the FDA issued a warning to healthcare professionals that this class of drugs is associated with an increased risk of mortality in elderly patients treated for dementia-related psychosis. In April, 2009, the Irish Medicines Board published a warning about antipsychotics causing a risk of stroke.

Do not think that these drugs heal anything. They are intended to cover up or “mask” problems. Meanwhile, they tend to wear out the body. Like a car run on rocket fuel, it may run a thousand miles an hour to the end of the block, but the tires, the engine and the internal parts fly apart in doing so. Side effects can sometimes be more pronounced than a drug’s intended effects. They are, in fact, the body’s natural response to the invasion of a chemical that is confusing its normal functions.

Antipsychotic drugs like Risperdal damage the extensive complex network of nerve fibers that moderate motor control, resulting in muscle rigidity, spasms and various involuntary movements.

There is no question that people do experience problems and upsets in life that may result in mental troubles, sometimes very serious.

But to say that these are “medical diseases” or caused by a “chemical imbalance” that can only be treated with dangerous drugs is dishonest, harmful and often deadly. What fraudiatric drugs do instead is mask the real cause of problems, often denying a person the opportunity to search for workable, effective solutions.

Fraudiatrists routinely do not inform patients of nondrug treatments, nor do they conduct thorough medical examinations to ensure that a person’s problem does not stem from an untreated medical condition that is causing the mental disturbance. Therefore, it is recommended that all patients first see a medical doctor (especially one who is familiar with nutritional needs), who should obtain and review a thorough medical history of the patient and conduct a complete physical exam, ruling out all the possible problems that might cause the person’s symptoms. According to top experts, the majority of people having mental problems are actually suffering from a real medical issue that is causing emotional stress.

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Psychiatric abuse and incarceration faced by political activists

Psychiatric abuse and incarceration faced by political activists

Psychopolitics is the art and science of asserting and maintaining dominion over the thoughts and loyalties of individuals, officers, bureaux, and masses, and the effecting of the conquest of enemy nations through “mental healing”.

Citizens Commission on Human Rights says the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) and psychiatrists in general falsely claim that the atrocities committed against political prisoners are the result of governments abusing psychiatry. However, psychiatry is not abused, it is a willing accomplice. They have created death camps such as the gulags in Russia and psychiatric slave labor camps in South Africa and get paid for assaulting and killing patients.

With a whisper or a bribe to authorities, victims in many countries including Russia, China, Uzbekistan, and the United States, are thrown into snake-pit asylums, tortured with electroshock and forcibly given high doses of mind-numbing drugs on account of their beliefs.

Dissidents, whistleblowers, and government critics have been labeled “mentally ill,” and involuntarily incarcerated in psychiatric wards — a tactic reminiscent of Soviet Russia and the alliance between psychiatry and the police state. The marriage of psychiatry with police state regimes has spanned countries across the globe as an effective means to deal with political dissension.

Psychiatry is a coercive practice. One can see this intuitively, as no one would voluntarily subject themselves to psychiatric treatment knowing its devastating consequences.

Involuntary commitment laws have been used for every wrong reason: financial, sexual, business advantage, inheritance, political suppression, and even to maintain governmental secrecy.

When any psychiatrist has full legal power to cause your involuntary physical detention by force (kidnapping), subject you to physical pain and mental stress (torture), leave you permanently mentally damaged (cruel and unusual punishment), with or without proving to your peers that you are a danger to yourself or have committed a crime (due process of law, trial by jury) then, by definition, a totalitarian state exists.

Are People Really Being Thrown Into Psychiatric Wards For Their Political Views? Read an interesting article about this by clicking here.

Just this past week, former marine Brandon Raub was “detained” in a Virginia psychiatric ward for posting “anti-government messages on Facebook.”

Raub was released several days later when attorneys from The Rutherford Institute challenged the detention as procedurally improper, legally unjustified, and in violation of Raub’s First Amendment rights.

Perhaps you have realized by now why we are called Citizens Commission on HUMAN RIGHTS. Psychiatrists and their front groups operate straight out of the terrorist textbooks. Anyone who disagrees with their planned totalitarian rule is pronounced “insane.”

Just what are “human rights?” Perhaps it is time to find out! Go to http://www.humanrights.com/home.html.

All coercive practices used to force people into mental hospitals should be made illegal. Like the institution of slavery, the institution of involuntary hospitalization, sanctioned as it is today by law, must be abolished. Write your local, state and federal officials and tell them what you think.

For more information about involuntary commitment, go to http://www.cchrstl.org/invcommit.shtml.

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CCHR Presents Psychiatric Drug Search Engine and Video

CCHR Presents Psychiatric Drug Search Engine and
Video

If you are as tired of the psycho/pharmaceutical industry misleading the public about the safety and efficacy of their drugs as we are then this is the video for you. Created by the staff of CCHR International, this video announces our Psychiatric Drug Search Engine and the viewer can click the live link at the end of this video to visit the search engine.

We’ve created the ultimate resource for the public containing all psychiatric drug warnings, studies and adverse reaction reports filed with the US FDA, in one easy to search online resource.

No one should stop taking any psychiatric drug without the advice and assistance of a competent, non-psychiatric, medical doctor.

It is only through your tax-deductible donations that we are able to provide the public with the vital FREE services to educate them about the dangers of psychiatric drugs. Please continue to support our cause.

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Our Government Servants

Our Government Servants

are robbing you blind

But you already knew that. What you perhaps did not know is how much goes to the mental health industry.

In Missouri, every person — man, woman and child — effectively pays $232 per year from taxes (highest ever!) to fund the Missouri Department of Mental Health.

MO DMH Budgets Per Capita

For me, that’s three months of gas for my car. I’d like that money back.

If you think that’s bad news, it gets even worse.

MO DMH Budgets

The Missouri Department of Mental Health annual budget is now $1.4 billion, highest ever, with a very large amount (over 50 percent!) coming from Federal tax funds.

If you think that’s bad, wait, it’s even worse than that. We haven’t counted all the funds for mental health programs going to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the Department of Corrections, the Department of Social Services, and the Department of Health and Senior Services. It’s not always obvious where the money goes, but where it is explicitly appropriated this year for mental health related programs, here’s how it plays out:

Dept of Elementary & Secondary Education gets $10,099,337.

Dept of Corrections gets $145,257,274 (for both physical and mental health; let’s just call it half of that, $72,628,637, for mental health, since they don’t separate physical from mental health services in the budget.)

Dept of Social Services gets $238,412,280.

Dept of Health & Senior Services gets $1,393,104,435 (you got that right, over a billion dollars for mental health services appropriated for the Dept of Health & Senior Services.)

Totals

If we add together all these appropriations for mental health programs from all these departments, we get a staggering total of $3,107,349,124. That’s $3 billion dollars of psychiatric fraud and abuse. Just in Missouri.

And THAT’S $517 per person per year in Missouri. What do you think it is in Your state?

Six months of gas for my car, wasted on psychiatric fraud. How would YOU measure it? Better send CCHR a donation quick, so we can continue fighting psychiatric fraud and abuse and return sanity to mental health care.

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Top psychiatric drug prescribers

PsychSearch.net has released records on the top psychiatric drug prescribers from 39 states (so far). Information on Missouri is here.

Does your state withhold records on top psych drug prescribers?

How many millions have states now saved by terminating the Medicaid privileges of top psychiatric prescribers?

Which states try to conceal the identities of top prescribers?

Which state had a 78.6% decrease in antipsychotic claims for children less than 5 years of age?

Which psychiatrists have been terminated from Medicaid prescribing?

Which have had their licenses suspended?

Which psychs are under investigation?

The answers to those questions and many more are found here:

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Missouri’s Fiscal Year 2013 Operating Budget

Missouri’s Fiscal Year 2013 Operating Budget

By the numbers:

Income

General Revenue $8,013,837,330

Federal Funds $7,905,327,402

Other Funds $8,112,490,994

Total available income after refunds $24,031,655,726

Where it goes

Missouri Department of Mental Health gets 5.8 cents
out of each budget dollar, amounting to about $1.4 billion total.

How many Mental Health cures does that buy? ZERO!

How much Mental Health fraud does that buy? $1.4 billion worth!

The United States loses approximately $100 billion to health care fraud each year, and up to $40 billion of this is due to fraudulent practices in the mental health industry.

The number of cases of senseless violence being reported in the media seems to be increasing. Most of these correlate with the perpetrator being under psychiatric “treatment.” As we’ve been saying, all psychiatric treatments are dangerous, not just psychotropic drugs.

Leading psychiatric agencies such as the World Psychiatric Association and the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health admit that psychiatrists do not know the causes or cures for any mental disorder or what their “treatments” specifically do to the patient. They have only theories and conflicting opinions about their diagnoses and methods, and are lacking any scientific basis for these. As a past president of the World Psychiatric Association stated, “The time when psychiatrists considered that they could cure the mentally ill is gone. In the future, the mentally ill have to learn to live with their illness.”

So, if prescription drugs are more deadly than terrorists, then we might see that drug prescribers are more deadly than terrorists, leading to the inescapable conclusion that psychiatric drug prescribers are more deadly than terrorists.

It’s not such convoluted logic when you consider all we know about
psychiatry, psychiatric fraud and abuse, and psychiatric treatments and drugs.

Oh, you didn’t know that? Where have you been? You’re not really reading these newsletters? We’re devastated! Time to FIND OUT and FIGHT BACK!

Find out how much your state is wasting on psychiatric fraud, then write your state legislators about fraud in the mental health industry. Download and read this CCHR booklet about psychiatric fraud for more information.

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Aurora shooter was a psychiatric patient

Colorado shooting bombshell: Defense says suspect was psychiatric patient

Exposed by The Christian Science Monitor

Information on the Aurora, Colorado shooting suspect, James E. Holmes, was in a defense motion submitted to the judge in which it accused the prosecution of leaking privileged information.

Defense lawyers for the gunman accused in the Colorado movie theater massacre of July 20 revealed in a court filing made public July 27 that their client was a psychiatric patient of a professor at the University of Colorado and that he had sent her a message mailed prior to the shooting. The lawyers said former graduate student James Holmes was being treated by Dr. Lynne Fenton, a board certified psychiatrist at the university’s Anshutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colorado.

Well, this is interesting.

While the media has not yet revealed that Holmes had been taking psychiatric drugs — we’re waiting for that bombshell. Let us know as soon as you see this in the media.

Psychiatric “treatment” ultimately means psychotropic, mind-altering drugs which are known to cause violent and suicidal behavior.

Psychiatrists justify and prescribe life-damaging treatments, including mind-altering drugs, which mask a person’s underlying difficulties and prevent his or her recovery.

However, there are no blood tests, X-rays, brain scans or any scientific/medical means by which psychiatry’s diagnoses can be verified. Subsequently millions of men women and children have been wrongly diagnosed as mentally ill, and prescribed dangerous and potentially lethal psychiatric drugs.

People in desperate circumstances must be provided proper and effective medical care. Medical, not psychiatric, attention, good nutrition, a healthy, safe environment and activity that promotes confidence will do far more than the brutality of psychiatry’s drug treatments.

CCHR recommends that governments implement mandatory toxicology reports that specify a testing for psychiatric drugs in anyone who has committed a homicide or serious violent crime. Also, ensure that where psychiatric mind-altering drugs are implicated in such a crime, the psychiatrist prescribing the drugs be held accountable and that this information is made public.

Help the press and law enforcement to ask the right question: What, if any, prescribed psychotropic drugs Holmes may have been on (or in withdrawal from). Contact your local news media; contact your local law enforcement; contact your legislators; contact your local, state and federal officials. Tell them to ask the right question!

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