Tag: Involuntary Commitment

The Bogeyman is Coming to Get You

Posted on by cchrstl

There is a tradition, especially in film, of a person with mental illness representing the boogeyman — or the reverse case of a boogeyman frightening a person into a traumatic mental state. A boogeyman (also spelled bogeyman) is a folk creature in most cultures used by adults to frighten children into good behavior.

Have you noticed how the media consistently represents someone who goes on a killing spree as having some mental illness? It’s often the first question asked in the case of a mass murderer, i.e. “was he/she ever in a mental hospital?”

In point of fact, there is a relationship between crime and insanity, but that’s not exactly what we are going to discuss right now. We’re more interested in the rush to mental judgment by the media, and by the rush to involuntary commitment instead of a rush to justice and rehabilitation.

The Fresno shooter of Tuesday, April 18 gunned down 3 white men. During his arrest, Kori Ali Muhammad shouted “Allahu Akbar,” but the Fresno Police Chief said the shootings had nothing to do with terrorism.

The media quickly pointed out that in 2005, on the heels of another incident, the court determined that Muhammad suffered from a mental disease, and he was committed to a psychiatric facility for some months.

So there were at least two previous failures — the psychiatric treatment failed, and justice failed.

And they also got it wrong about the terrorism; but that’s not even the point, and just muddies up the real issue, which is that the person committed a crime, but instead he is labeled mentally ill. He’s become the boogeyman.

Criminal acts, terrorism or otherwise, are being reported as mental illness instead of what they really are — criminal acts or terrorism. Oh, don’t call it terrorism, it will upset the sensitive ears of those who prefer to call it mental illness.

No one even asked if he was taking, or withdrawing from, psychotropic drugs — which as we know carry a side effect of violence and suicide.

There will be a rush to involuntarily commit him and give him painful and addictive psychotropic drugs — instead of dealing with the actual criminal act and attempting to rehabilitate him.

By the way, insanity is not an illness, it is an injury. When drug treatments are piled on top of it, drugs known to cause violence and suicide, it becomes even harder to treat because the person is even more desperately injured and pain crazed.

Add on the various prescription drug monitoring programs in society, and we now have a rush to “pre-crime” — where a person is restrained, with involuntary commitment and more drugs, before any crime is committed. We’re moving toward that as a society, where so-called “treatment” occurs to prevent the possibility of a crime, instead of imposing justice after the fact of a crime. And guess who will be deciding when and whom to treat? The psychiatrists.

What are you going to do about it? Find Out! Fight Back!

1 in 5 Mentally Ill? Don’t Believe It!

Posted on by cchrstl

False information published by the Federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration claims that “19.9 percent of American adults in the United States (45.1 million) have experienced mental illness over the past year.”

In fact, statistics provided on the number of people suffering mental illness are completely false or, at best, questionable.

Psychiatry has literally covered every base with invented criteria. The child who fidgets is “hyperactive;” the person who drinks coffee has “caffeine intoxication;” if you smoke or chew you could have “tobacco use disorder;” a low math score is an “academic or educational problem;” arguing with parents is “oppositional defiant disorder;” and of course the catchall “unspecified mental disorder” for the rest of us. Many of these so-called “disorders” are really medical conditions, such as “restless legs syndrome” — there is sufficient evidence that restless leg syndrome can be caused by a magnesium deficiency. And if you’ve been held up at gunpoint, you are a “victim of crime,” and consequently in desperate need of an anti-anxiety drug.

Counting these normal human problems, emotions and reactions as “mental illness” is a fraud, designed to solicit funds for the mental health industry and sell more drugs.

The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) is the book that contains names and descriptions of 955 so-called mental disorders (including everything from “alcohol intoxication” and “religious or spiritual problem” to “wandering.”)

Doctors, psychiatrists and other medical and mental health practitioners use the DSM to diagnose patients. Each DSM mental disorder description carries a code that clinicians can use to substantiate claims for health insurance reimbursement.

Though it has become very influential since it first appeared in 1952 (when it contained only 112 disorders), there is one crucial test the DSM has never passed: scientific validity. In fact, after more than 50 years of deception, broad exposure is now being given to the unscientific and ludicrous nature of this “947-page doorstop.”

Psychiatric diagnosis has come to be accepted as legitimate, reliable and scientific, though it is based on a system whose own authors admit that it is not. Within the covers of the various editions of DSM, its editors freely admit to the book’s intended use and its limitations.

For example, the DSM-IV states, “…although this manual provides a classification of mental disorders, it must be admitted that no definition adequately specifies precise boundaries for the concept of ‘mental disorder.'”

The fifth edition of DSM, released in 2013, has been garnering continuous criticism for the inclusion of ridiculous so-called behavioral disorders — “lack of adequate food or safe drinking water;” “alcohol-induced sexual dysfunction;” “cannabis intoxication;” “discord with neighbor, lodger, or landlord;” “extreme poverty;” “low income;” “inadequate housing.” Being diagnosed with a “conviction in civil or criminal proceedings without imprisonment” can lead to involuntary commitment. And to tie in with the current frenzy over opioid addiction, you can have a mental disorder called “opioid use disorder” for which you can be prescribed, guess what, another addictive psychotropic drug.

The contention of many is that the DSM’s developers are seeking to label all manner of normal emotional reactions or human behavioral quirks as mental disorders — thereby falsely increasing the numbers of “mentally ill” people who would then be prescribed one or more drugs that carry all manner of serious side effect warnings.

Based on the DSM then, statistics are touted about near “epidemic” rates of mental illness in order to demand more government funds and sell more harmful drugs, making people “patients for life” as the drug adverse events then require more drugs to handle these side effects.

The apparent epidemic of “mental illness” is because the psychiatric industry, working with the pharmaceutical industry and the Food and Drug Administration, invents new disorders almost every year. Take, for example, “intermittent explosive disorder,” often referred to as “road rage” and which psychiatrists report afflicts one in 20, about 16 million Americans. How, exactly, did psychiatrists come up with this? They conducted a survey. The survey asked American adults if they had ever experienced three anger outbursts in their entire life. Not surprisingly, a whole lot of people said they had. From this flimsy evidence the Archives of General Psychiatry printed the survey results that hype this fictitious disease.

In September 2001, a U.S. Senate hearing on “Psychological Trauma and Terrorism” was told that, “Seventy?one percent of Americans said that they have felt depressed by the [9/11] attacks.” It’s a worrying statistic, until one realizes that the survey was conducted during the six days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks when Americans were, naturally, in a state of shock. The survey sampled 1,200 people only, which, by some quantum leap, led to the conclusion that nearly three-quarters of Americans were mentally damaged, requiring “professional” help.

What did have an impact were psychotropic drug sales. Immediately following the 9/11 attacks, new prescriptions for antidepressants in New York jumped 17% and prescriptions for anti-anxiety drugs rose 25%.

Behind the alarming reports of mental illness gripping our nation are psychiatrists and drug companies inventing diseases and placing healthy people at risk.

People can have serious problems in life; these are not, however, some mental illness caused by a deficiency of psychotropic drugs in their brains. Click here to find out the alternatives to psychiatric drugs.

With $76 billion spent every year on psychiatric drugs internationally, and billions more in psychiatric research, one would and should expect an improving condition. However, after decades of psychiatric monopoly over the world’s mental health, their approach leads only to massive increases in people taking addictive and harmful mind-altering drugs, escalating funding demands, and up to $40 billion a year in mental health care fraud in the U.S.

What are you going to do about it? Get the Facts. Fight Back.

Take Action – Missouri Legislature – Involuntary Commitment

Posted on by cchrstl

Periodically we let you know the progress of various proposed legislation making its way through the Missouri General Assembly and suggest ways for you to contribute your viewpoint to your state Representative and state Senator.

You can find your Representative and Senator, and their contact information, by entering your 9-digit zip code here.

This time, we’d like to discuss Senate Bill SB221, “Authorizes legal counsel for the Department of Mental Health to have standing in certain hearings involving a person unable to stand trial due to lack of mental fitness”, sponsored by Senator Jeanie Riddle (R, District 10).

“This act provides that after a person accused of committing a crime has been committed to the Department of Mental Health due to lack of mental fitness to stand trial, the legal counsel for the Department shall have standing to participate in hearings regarding involuntary medications for the accused.”

First off, we’d like to say that Involuntary Commitment (also called civil commitment) is a crack in the door of constitutional freedoms, and should be abolished.

This bill would modify Section 552.020, RSMo (Missouri Revised Statutes) which establishes this type of involuntary commitment in the state. The main topic of this statute states, “No person who as a result of mental disease or defect lacks capacity to understand the proceedings against him or her or to assist in his or her own defense shall be tried, convicted or sentenced for the commission of an offense so long as the incapacity endures.” Instead, the person is incarcerated against their will in a psychiatric facility. In effect, they are put in jail without a trial. This is often called NGRI, “Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity.”

Here (in italics) is the main requested change in the law: “If the court determines that the accused lacks mental fitness to proceed, the criminal proceedings shall be suspended and the court shall commit him or her to the director of the department of mental health. After the person has been committed, legal counsel for the department of mental health shall have standing to file motions and participate in hearings on the issue of involuntary medications.

In other words, once the person becomes an involuntary ward of the state in a psychiatric facility, then the Department of Mental Health can force the person to be placed on psychiatric drugs by petitioning the court.

When any psychiatric facility has full legal power to cause your involuntary physical detention by force (kidnapping), drug you senseless, 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.

Because of their ubiquity and far–reaching powers, involuntary commitment laws lay a truly concrete foundation for totalitarianism. And they are not, it must be stressed, a threat of what might be, but a present danger — representing America’s gaping breach in the otherwise admirable wall of individual Constitutional rights.

Involuntary commitment laws hike federal, state, county, city and private health care costs under the strange circumstance of a patient–recipient who cannot say no.

And we have not even mentioned yet that the involuntary psychiatric drugs that this proposed change in the law sanctions are harmful and addictive, and are known to cause violence and suicide.

The person who pleads NGRI to a crime needs effective justice and rehabilitation, not psychiatric drugs.

Contact your Missouri state Representative and Senator, and let them know what you think about this.

For more information click here.

The Greater Good

Posted on by cchrstl

What are the limits that the State can do claiming “The Greater Good?”

Strict scrutiny is a form of judicial review that courts use to determine the constitutionality of certain laws. To pass a strict scrutiny review, the legislature must have passed the law to further a “compelling governmental interest,” and must have narrowly tailored the law to achieve that interest.

The concept of “strict scrutiny” arises from the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which states, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The situations we are considering here are any attempts by the legislature to require that a child or adult be forced to take psychotropic drugs, or indeed to be forced to accept any kind of psychiatric treatment, including involuntary commitment.

There are not many issues in the field of mental hygiene law which raise more controversy than that of involuntary commitment and treatment. The courts have unequivocally recognized that involuntary treatment, meaning involuntary or “civil” commitment and enforced drugging, by the government is a substantial deprivation of liberty, and therefore falls under the aegis of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. However, there has continued to be a legal erosion of this principle by passing laws stipulating the rules of due process in such cases, all intended to give the State more power to enforce their own considerations of what is the greater good.

Missouri Revised Statutes Chapter 632 Section 300 is an example. To paraphrase,  if a mental health coordinator has reasonable cause to believe, as the result of personal observation or investigation, that the likelihood of serious harm by a person to himself or others as a result of a mental disorder is imminent unless the person is immediately taken into custody, the mental health coordinator must request a peace officer to take the person into custody and transport them to a mental health facility.

We no longer have any compelling governmental interest, since it is one person’s judgment or opinion, not the government’s; and the due process of law in this case is just one person’s judgment or opinion, sanctioned by a law that clearly was tailored to bypass strict scrutiny.

The fact that these actions are couched in such doublespeak as “to prevent him from committing harm” is unfortunate, for it hides the evil intention to incapacitate the individual.

For more information, click here.

Political Psychiatry: How China Uses ‘Ankang’ Hospitals to Silence Dissent

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Political Psychiatry: How China Uses ‘Ankang’ Hospitals to Silence Dissent

The Wall Street Journal (19 April 2016) recently reported on how China’s Ministry of Public Security is using psychiatric involuntary commitment to remove dissidents from society and silence their protests.

“… human rights groups have long charged that one of the crudest examples of illegality in Chinese criminal procedure is the political use of psychiatry to detain, imprison, and forcibly medicate dissidents and activists. The use of this tactic, borrowed from the Soviet Union early in the Maoist era, was reduced after the Cultural Revolution, but revived in 1987 with the creation of psychiatric hospitals, administered by the police, called Ankang (‘peace and health’) institutions.”

CCHR also reported on this in 2014, when it said, “The Chinese government routinely uses psychiatric confinements as a tool to control dissidents.”

Even earlier in 2010 this was being reported.

Psychiatry and psychology have a long and troubling history of being used to suppress political dissidents — most recently with the CIA-sanctioned torture program. Despite consistent denials, the American Psychological Association had numerous contacts with CIA contract psychologists Drs. James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, including contacts related to illegal interrogation techniques. For example, the APA secretly coordinated with officials from the CIA, White House and the Department of Defense to create an APA ethics policy on national security interrogations which comported with then-classified legal guidance authorizing the CIA torture program.

Too often the “mental health” industry has shown its willingness to accommodate and collude to legitimatize government policy, including the torture and murder by the People’s Republic of China’s Falun Gong, the CIA’s 1950’s MKULTRA mind-control programs, and the Soviet Union’s incarceration of political dissidents in psychiatric hospitals and sentenced to labor camps, to name a few.

In 1955, a Soviet manual entitled Brainwashing: A Synthesis of the Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics was translated and distributed as a public warning by a New York professor. The manual was based on the methods of Ivan Pavlov, a Russian psychiatrist who developed “conditioned response” theories through experiments on dogs in the early 1900s. Pavlov’s work laid the groundwork for a fundamental psychiatric misconception that remains to this day: that, like dogs, men are basically programmable animals, influenced only by fear and reward. Pavlov’s experiments established the foundation for much of the inhuman brainwashing techniques used by the Soviet Union and China in the mid-twentieth century; and now used by the United States Central Intelligence Agency in their Detention and Interrogation Program.

PSYCHOPOLITICS—the art and science of asserting and maintaining dominion over the thoughts and loyalties of individuals, officers, bureaus, and masses, and the effecting of the conquest of enemy nations through “mental healing”. Download the Brainwashing manual here.

Who is the Predator Here?

Posted on by cchrstl

Who is the Predator Here?

We approach this topic with some trepidation, as there can be considerable fixed opinions regarding the topic of sex.

We feel, however, that the news is relevant — and we’d like your permission to continue reading. We aren’t concerned so much with offending anyone; we’re sure we do that anyway by exposing the fraud and abuse inherent in the mental health care system. So if you have an emotional reaction to this information, we dare you to read on.

If you may be feeling upset, angry, or otherwise overwhelmed by any of the material we present in our newsletters, know this: The intention in presenting these materials is not at all to make anyone feel overwhelmed or upset. Our intention is to expose what has been hidden from the general public by various forces, to shine the light of truth on the psychiatric industry, and to restore human rights and dignity to the field of mental health.

Our intention is for you to be enraged by the pervasive abuse of human rights by the psychiatric mental health care industry and incite you to action. If you know of people who have been harmed by a psychiatrist or by a psychiatric facility, encourage them to file a complaint.

Sex offenders who have completed their prison sentences are often detained (usually for life) in prison-like psychiatric facilities based on the completely mistaken assumption that their having committed sexual crimes somehow means they are also mentally ill. These however, are criminal actions and are covered by criminal justice, not psychiatric diagnoses.

A recent article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch discusses this topic. [“Judge calls sex predator law misapplied“, 9/12/2015]

A U.S. District Judge ruled that Missouri’s sexually violent predator law, although constitutional, is seriously misapplied.

“The judge wrote that there is a ‘pervasive sense of hopelessness’ at the Department of Mental Health’s Sex Offender Rehabilitation and Treatment Services, or SORTS program, because patients aren’t being properly released.”

“SORTS is indefinitely committing about 200 people to treatment in the belief that they might re-offend.”

“The overwhelming evidence at trial — much of which came from Defendants’ own experts — did establish that the SORTS civil commitment program suffers from systemic failures regarding risk assessment and release that have resulted in the continued confinement of individuals who no longer meet the criteria for commitment, in violation of the Due Process Clause. … The Constitution does not allow (Missouri officials) to impose lifetime detention on individuals who have completed their prison sentences and who no longer pose a danger to the public, no matter how heinous their past conduct.”

They call this process “civil commitment” – an attempt to make it sound less harsh than “involuntary commitment.”

Displaying a surprising ignorance of (and careless indifference to) proper diagnostic practice, psychologists and psychiatrists routinely and rotely misdiagnose mental disorder in sexual offenders who are in fact clearly no more than simple criminals.

Statutory checks on the abuse of civil commitment laws are scarce, readily sidestepped and widely ignored. Yet the minds and memories of those subjected to this capriciousness have frequently been destroyed after involuntary imprisonment in psychiatric facilities across the nation.

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 others, then, by definition, a totalitarian state exists.

Because of their ubiquity and far–reaching powers, involuntary commitment laws lay a truly concrete foundation for totalitarianism. And they are not, it must be stressed, a threat of what might be, but a present danger — representing America’s gaping breach in the otherwise admirable wall of individual Constitutional rights.

With health care eating up vast amounts of our national budget, the first spending cut to make is the cost of “treating” people who prefer not to be mentally treated. Involuntary commitment laws hike federal, state, county, city and private health care costs under the strange circumstance of a patient–recipient who cannot say no, and in this case of a person who has already paid their time in prison.

CCHR recommends that citizens execute a Living Will, or Letter of Protection from Psychiatric Incarceration and/or Treatment, which directs that psychiatric incarceration, hospitalization, treatment or procedures not be imposed on you.

Click here for more information about involuntary commitment.

Sneaky Ways to Enforce Mental Health Care on Citizens

Posted on by cchrstl

Sneaky Ways to Enforce Mental Health Care on Citizens

We would like to discuss Missouri Senate Bills 331 & 21 [SS/SCS/SBs 331 & 21 – This act modifies and enacts provisions relating to law enforcement officers.] This act is mostly about police officers wearing cameras.

While it did not progress through this year’s legislative session into law, we might assume it will be re-introduced in December for next year’s session. It has a particularly odious section on mental health care.

Here is the offending section:

“If a state of emergency is proclaimed in response to civil unrest, the governor shall, at the request of the county health department, assign a sufficient number of state social workers, counselors, or psychologists to provide counseling and mental health services in the region affected by the unrest.”

This language was originally introduced in SB 21 by Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal (Democrat, District 14).

We predicted last year, after the Ferguson riots, that the mental health care industry would be moving into the community in force. (See our newsletters Behavioral Health in St. Louis and Ferguson Missouri Mental Health Tips and Ferguson and Human Rights.)

Specifically —

“A primary strategy of behavioral health is the extension of services into the community — at home, school, workplace and other community settings.”

“Be aware that every mental health group in the area, and indeed in the country, is going to be offering ‘support and counseling’ to Ferguson residents for their ‘anger and grief.’ Since we already know that the psychiatric and psychological mental health care industry is an affront to human rights, special care is needed to avoid getting sucked into the mental health treatment mill.”

“State Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal … is pushing psychiatric mental health care on the community.” She was quoted as saying, “What should have happened since day one is we should have had counselors out in the streets and psychologists because this community is experiencing PTSD right now and frankly, I think some officers are, too.”

Now the mental health care industry would like to make their interference in social unrest a law. Next they will be involuntarily committing protestors as a solution. We’ve been down that “final solution” path before, and it isn’t pretty.

For sure, incidents like Ferguson need to be addressed. Whether it is called “civil unrest” or “riot”, it is really, at bottom, caused by injustice.

You can not cure injustice with psychological counseling. You cure it by restoring justice.

Go here for more information about psychiatric and psychological corruption of justice.

Involuntary Commitment Records in Missouri are No Longer Confidential

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Involuntary Commitment  Records in Missouri are No Longer Confidential

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon signed into law Senate Bill 426 on July 13 which expands the conditions under which confidential mental health care records can be released.

Mental health care facilities that hold patients who have been civilly committed, either voluntarily or involuntarily, can now disclose information about patient medications and other medical records “to individuals designated by the department of mental health as community mental health liaisons for the purpose of coordination of care and services.”

We expect that this means the government wants to follow these patients back into the community when they are released so that they can be monitored as continuing to take their prescribed psychiatric drugs.

As if commitment is not an abusive human rights violation in itself! Now the government wants to make sure the abuse continues for the rest of the person’s life.

“The fact that psychiatric imprisonment is called ‘civil commitment’ is, of course, simply part of the linguistic deception characteristic of the mental–health system. Since civil commitment results in the loss of liberty, and subjects the victim to health hazards at the hands of medical criminals whose ostensible healing function is legitimized by the state, it entails far greater deprivation of rights than does incarceration in prison, a penalty carefully circumscribed by constitutional guarantees and judicial safeguards.”
(Dr. Thomas Szasz, M.D., late Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus)

With health care eating up vast amounts of our national budget, the first spending cut to make is the cost of “treating” people who prefer not to be mentally treated. Involuntary commitment laws hike federal, state, county, city and private health care costs under the strange circumstance of a patient–recipient who cannot say no.

CCHR recommends that citizens execute a Living Will, or Letter of Protection from Psychiatric Incarceration and/or Treatment, which directs that psychiatric incarceration, hospitalization, treatment or procedures not be imposed on you.

Human Rights Concerns with the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2015

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Human Rights Concerns with the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2015

Congressional Rep. Tim Murphy (R., PA) originally introduced the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act (H.R.3717) in 2013. Not to be outdone by H.R.6 the 21st Century Cures Act, he has reintroduced it to this year’s Congress as H.R.2646 the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2015.

Rep. Murphy is a psychologist, and a staunch supporter of “mental health care” as defined by the psychiatric and psychological industries; not to mention the pharmaceutical and insurance industries.

Official Title of the Act: “To make available needed psychiatric, psychological, and supportive services for individuals with mental illness and families in mental health crisis, and for other purposes.”

The Act creates a new position in the Department of Health and Human Services – an official to be known as the Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders. (As if we need another bureaucracy in the psych industry.)

The Act creates more funding for psych-based “treatments.”

The Act expands the bureaucracy surrounding “parity in mental health and substance use disorder benefits” under Medicare and Medicaid.

The Act provides for grants in early childhood intervention and treatment programs, and specialized preschool and elementary school programs.

The Act provides for grants in “Assisted Outpatient Treatment” programs.

The Act requires states to have a law that enforces court-ordered involuntary mental health treatment for the “mentally disabled” if the state want to receive certain federal funding.

The Act expands mental health training for primary care physicians.

This isn’t even half of the proposed legislation.

The Act spends lots more money on “suicide prevention” all up and down the entire educational chain, from elementary school through college.

The Act establishes an entirely new bureaucracy called the “Interagency Serious Mental Illness Coordinating Committee.”

Of course, the Act also expands the availability of and insurance coverage for psychiatric prescription drugs, as well as lifting limits on Medicare payments for inpatient psychiatric hospital services.

The Act expands the Community Mental Health Care programs.

The Act increases funding for the National Institute of Mental Health.

And even that’s not all the Act does to strengthen the already fraudulent and abusive psychiatric mental health industry.

CCHR Supporters should really consider contacting their Congressmen to express their opinions about this affront to rationality.

Let us know when you contact your Congressmen about this, and any response you may receive.

Crisis Intervention Teams and your mental health

Posted on by cchrstl

Crisis Intervention Teams and your mental health

You may or may not be aware of a police function called a “Crisis Intervention Team” (CIT). There is a heavy ongoing push country-wide to train police officers to “handle” difficult situations involving “suspected mental illness.”

For example, someone calls 911 to report a domestic squabble. The police arrive. Tempers flair. Someone is going to be taken to a mental health facility for a “96-hour evaluation,” also called Involuntary Commitment or Civil Commitment.

Let us use the Saint Louis County Police CIT as an example, whose mission is “to deliver positive law enforcement crisis intervention service to people with mental illness in the St. Louis area.”

The CIT-trained officers are used primarily as a referral mechanism to local mental health hospitals and agencies. If they cannot defuse a potentially dangerous situation, they will forcibly transport the offending person to a local hospital emergency room and transfer the person into the mental health system, authorized by Missouri Statute 632.305 (“Detention for evaluation and treatment”.)

The CIT engages local hospitals, agencies and organizations in a cooperative effort (“community partnership”) to streamline this process. One of the primary goals of a CIT is to divert offenders from jail to the mental health system, reducing the burden on the criminal justice system.

In the St. Louis area, there are 20 cooperating mental health agencies, 9 cooperating hospital systems, and 58 local law enforcement agencies with CIT-trained personnel. There are 10 counties throughout Missouri with CIT programs.

In 1988, the Memphis Police Department joined in partnership with the Memphis Chapter of the Alliance for the Mentally Ill, mental health providers, and two local universities (the University of Memphis and the University of Tennessee) in organizing, training, and implementing a specialized unit for handling mental crisis events. This became the model Crisis Intervention Team subsequently exported to police departments across the country.

To be sure, no one disputes the need for police training, the safe and effective handling of potentially dangerous situations, and the temporary care for persons in crisis mode. One does, however, question the efficacy of mental health “treatment” in the current model of the psychiatric mental health system, where “treatment” generally means one or more abusive practices such as involuntary commitment, harmful and addictive psychotropic drugs, patient restraints, electroshock, and psycho-surgery.

Your mental health, and the mental health of your family, friends and associates, can be questioned by CIT-trained police. If this makes you uncomfortable, execute a Living Will (Letter of Protection from Psychiatric Incarceration and/or Treatment) and then express your opinion to your local, state and federal officials, and email the St. Louis Area Crisis Intervention Team Coordinating Council.