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.
The Missouri General Assembly is the state legislature of the State of Missouri and is composed of two chambers: the House of Representatives and the Senate. The General Assembly is responsible for creating laws for governing the State of Missouri. The Revised Statutes of Missouri (RSMo) are electronically available on this site: http://revisor.mo.gov/.
You can find your Representative and Senator, and their contact information, by entering your 9-digit zip code here.
The 101st General Assembly Regular Session convened on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, and will end on Friday, May 14, 2021.
This time we’d like to discuss a bill about which we’d like you to contact your legislators. Please write, call or visit to express from your viewpoint as an individual or professional, and not as a representative of any organization. Let us know the details and any responses you get. The full text of each bill can be found on the House and Senate Joint Bill Tracking site. Just put the bill number into the search box (e.g. SB551).
Check out our handy discussion about How to write to a legislator.
If you are not a voting resident of Missouri, you can find out about legislation in your own state and write your own state legislators; also, we are looking for volunteers to monitor legislation in Missouri and the states surrounding Missouri — let us know if you’d like to help out.
Very Bad Bill
This is a bill that furthers psychiatric abuses of human rights, and is moving swiftly toward becoming law. Please express your opposition and opinions about this to your legislators and copy the sponsor.
SB551 – Senate Bill 551 – sponsored by Senator Karla May (Democrat, District 04 – Parts of St. Louis City & St. Louis County). Related to SB26.
“This act establishes the “Critical Incident Stress Management Program” within the Department of Public Safety. The program shall provide services for peace officers to assist in coping with stress and potential psychological trauma resulting from a response to a critical incident or emotionally difficult event.
“This act provides that all peace officers shall be required to meet with a program service provider once every three to five years for a mental health check-in. The program service provider shall send a notification to the peace officer’s commanding officer that he or she completed such check-in.
“This act creates the “988 Public Safety Fund” within the state treasury and shall be used by the Department of Public Safety for the purposes of providing services for peace officers to assist in coping with stress and potential psychological trauma resulting from a response to a critical incident or emotionally difficult event. Such services may include consultation, risk assessment, education, intervention, and other crisis intervention services.”
This act is substantially similar to provisions in SB 26.
Why is this bill bad?
This bill coerces police officers into the psychiatric mental health system, where they can be prescribed harmful and addictive psychotropic drugs which have known side effects of violence and suicide.
The estimated net financial effect is to cost the State of Missouri $7,243,500 over the next four years for servicing roughly 24,145 police officers. This does not include the costs for full-time personnel to implement the program, nor does it include the additional costs for the Missouri State Highway Patrol.
When we speak of “coercive psychiatry” we mean that psychiatry is used as a means of social control against which one has no recourse and cannot fight back. This bill is a prime example of enforced treatment.
Disguising social control as medical treatment is a deceit which conceals an abuse. This is a de facto abuse of power, as it seeks to limit and control the individual instead of helping the individual to get better and improve their conditions in life.
Coercive psychiatry is not intended to cure anything. On the contrary, psychiatry is the science of control and entrapment, and having power over distressed and vulnerable individuals. Wherever men have advocated and advanced totalitarianism, they have used psychiatric principles to control society, to put limits on individual freedom, to suppress and punish dissent, and to trap people into worsening conditions. It is actually a mis-use of power, since its intentions are to make less of a person’s self-determinism and give more power to others and the state.
Download and read the full CCHR report “Community Ruin — Psychiatry’s Coercive ‘Care’ — Report and recommendations on the failure of community mental health and other coercive psychiatric programs.“
