Mental Illness Manual Revision Is Criticized Over Racism Entry

Posted on March 14, 2022 by cchrstl

A revised mental disorders diagnostic manual being released this month already faces controversy over attempts to explain the impact of and “under-diagnosing” of racism and discrimination as mental illness.

“Oppression and racism are real, and anyone subjected to this is going to feel denigrated, upset, angry or any of a wide array of justified emotional responses to injustice. However, this is not a mental ‘disease.’ History warns us about defining the effects of racism as an illness, with claims that ‘victims’ are discriminated against by inequitable treatment.”

Rev. Frederick Shaw

By Jan Eastgate
President CCHR International
March 7, 2022

Controversy is surrounding the soon to be released revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) over its inclusion of “an analysis of the effects racism and discrimination on the manifestation and diagnosis of mental disorders.”[1] The mental health industry watchdog, Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) International said there is a risk that the impact of oppression on minorities will be pathologized and increase the numbers of them prescribed mind-altering psychotropics.

Rev. Frederick Shaw, a spokesperson for CCHR, founder of its Task Force Against Racism and Modern-Day Eugenics and president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Inglewood South Bay branch, said that it was predictable during the massive racism protests in 2020 that efforts would be made to define racial anguish and anger as mental disorder. Rev. Shaw says: “Oppression and racism are real, and anyone subjected to this is going to feel denigrated, upset, angry or any of a wide array of justified emotional responses to injustice. However, this is not a mental ‘disease.’ History warns us about defining the effects of racism as an illness, with claims that ‘victims’ are discriminated against by inequitable treatment.”

During slavery African Americans were diagnosed with Drapetomania (drapetes, runaway slave, and mania, meaning crazy) and Dyasethesia Aethiopis (laziness and impaired sensation). Drapetomania described Blacks having an “uncontrollable urge” to run away from their “masters.” The “treatment” was “whipping the devil out of them.”[2]

In January 2021, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) publicly apologized for psychiatry’s “role in perpetrating structural racism” that “hurt Black, Indigenous, and People of Color” (BIPOC).[3] This included these two disorders and that in 1792 the “father” of American psychiatry, Benjamin Rush, declared that African Americans’ skin color was a “disease” called negritude, derived from leprosy. The “cure” was when their skin turned “white.”[4]

APA’s apology said that since its inception, practitioners had subjected persons of African descent and Indigenous people to “abusive treatment, experimentation, victimization in the name of ‘scientific evidence,’ along with racialized theories that attempted to confirm their deficit status.”[5]

The DSM has been criticized in the past for perpetuating racism.

Professors Stuart A. Kirk and Herb Kutchins, co-authors of Making Us Crazy, said: “Defenders of slavery, proponents of racial segregation…have consistently attempted to justify oppression by inventing new mental illnesses and by reporting higher rates of abnormality among African Americans or other minorities.”[6]

DSM-II was published in 1968 when civil rights protests against racism had escalated. Psychiatrists claimed such protests caused violent “schizophrenic” symptoms in African Americans, inventing the diagnosis “protest psychosis.” Ads for antipsychotics used African symbols to reflect so-called “violent traits” in minorities to increase antipsychotic prescriptions and sales.[7]

DSM-III-R was published in 1987, during the 1980s and 1990s racial riots. Researchers under the aegis of the federally-funded Violence Initiative Project theorized that violence was the hereditary characteristic of Black and Latino people. One study bogusly hypothesized that a racially inherited genetic predisposition to aggressive behavior and violence existed, which could be countered by increasing serotonin levels in the brain.[8] This meant prescribing an antidepressant to “prevent” violent behavior, yet the drug was known to cause violent and suicidal behavior.[9]

In 1992, the psychiatric head of the National Institute for Mental Health, who helped develop the “Violence Initiative,” compared Black youth to “hyperaggressive” and “hypersexual” monkeys in a jungle who only want to kill one another, have sex and reproduce.  He was forced to resign.[10]

DSM-5 was released in 2013 by psychiatrist Jeffrey Lieberman, then president of the APA, who was recently suspended from his position at Columbia University over his racist tweet about a dark-skinned model.[11]

Shaw said that in response to the racism protests in 2020, suddenly statistics were espoused about the increasing rates of African Americans showing signs of anxiety or depressive disorders.[12] In June 2020, the APA established a Task Force to Address Structural Racism Throughout Psychiatry.[13]

In October 2021, the American Psychological Association also issued an apology for hurting many through “racism, racial discrimination, and denigration of people of color.”[14]

However, some Black psychologists responded, stating: “While the apology details many of the past racist practices in psychology, it largely omits a key portion of this history: how the fields of psychology and psychiatry colluded with the state to suppress rights, liberties and, in many cases, political freedom.”[15]

Shaw predicts the DSM-5 revision addressing racism could victimize minorities, swelling the number of his community that will be considered to be disordered and in need of “equitable” treatment, meaning potentially debilitating psychotropic drugs and electroshock. He recommends individuals sign a Psychiatric Living Will to avoid treatment being forced on them.

References:

[1] “Revisions to DSM-5 Coming in March 2022,” National Association of Social Workers, http://www.socialworkblog.org/practice-and-professional-development/2022/03/revisions-to-dsm-5-coming-in-march-2022-2/

[2] https://www.cchrint.org/2019/07/17/minority-mental-health-month-may-spell-mental-health-slavery/; Thomas Szasz, Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences, (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1987), pp. 305, 306, 307; “Dysaesthesia aethiopis,” Oxford Reference, https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095737938

[3] https://www.cchrint.org/2021/01/26/american-psychiatric-associations-apology-for-harming-african-americans-rejected/, citing: Megan Brooks, “APA Apologizes for Past Support of Racism in Psychiatry,” Medscape, 19 Jan. 2019, https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/944352?src=wnl_edit_tpal&uac=345404PY&impID=3143084&faf=1

[4] https://www.cchrint.org/2021/01/26/american-psychiatric-associations-apology-for-harming-african-americans-rejected/, citing: Prof. Thomas Szasz, M.D., The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement, Jan. 1970, p. 154

[5] https://www.psychiatry.org/newsroom/apa-apology-for-its-support-of-structural-racism-in-psychiatry

[6] Herb Kutchins & Stuart A. Kirk, Making Us Crazy – DSM: The Psychiatric Bible and the Creation of Mental Disorders, (The Free Press, New York, 1997), p. 200.

[7] https://www.cchrint.org/2019/07/17/minority-mental-health-month-may-spell-mental-health-slavery/, citing: Jonathan M. Metzl, The Protest Psychosis, How Schizophrenia became a Black Disease, (Beacon Press, Boston, 2009), pp. 101, 102

[8] Mitchel Cohen, Beware the Violence Initiative Project — Coming Soon to an Inner City Near You, Spring 1999, http://greens.org/s-r/19/19-07.html

[9] https://antidepressantadversereactions.com/antidepressants-and-suicide/; https://antidepressantadversereactions.com/hostility-and-aggression/

[10] https://www.cchrint.org/2020/06/16/naacp-inglewood-executive-educates-about-psychiatric-racism/ citing “U.S. Hasn’t Given Up Linking Genes to Crime,” The New York Times, 18 Sept. 1992, https://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/18/opinion/l-us-hasn-t-given-up-linking-genes-to-crime-153192.html; https://www.breggin.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/abiomedical.pbreggin.1993.pdf

[11] “Psychiatrist’s Racist Tweet About Model Nyakim Gatwech Draws International Condemnation & Resignation,” https://www.cchrint.org/2022/02/25/psychiatrists-racist-tweet-about-model-nyakim-gatwech/

[12] “Depression and anxiety spiked among black Americans after George Floyd’s death,” The Washington Post, 12 June 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/06/12/mental-health-george-floyd-census/

[13] https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/structural-racism-task-force

[14] “Apology to People of Color for APA’s Role in Promoting, Perpetuating, and Failing to Challenge Racism, Racial Discrimination, and Human Hierarchy in U.S.,” American Psychological Association, 29 Oct. 2021, https://www.apa.org/about/policy/racism-apology

[15] “Why the APA’s apology for promoting white supremacy falls short,” NBC News, 21 Nov. 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/why-apa-s-apology-promoting-white-supremacy-falls-short-ncna1284229

DSM BS
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Is Overthinking a Mental Illness?

Posted on March 7, 2022 by cchrstl

Overthinking is the habit of thinking too much or too long about something, or making something more complicated than it actually is. Overthinking is also known as “analysis paralysis” because by thinking too much one is getting stuck and stopped from taking action.

Overthinking is a favorite topic for psychiatric and psychological review, as a symptom of a possible mental health issue like so-called depression or anxiety, with recommended treatments of psychotropic anti-anxiety or antidepressant drugs, or other harmful psychiatric interventions.

Sometimes the word “rumination” is used as a scholarly euphemism for overthinking. It means “obsessive or abnormal reflection upon an idea or deliberation over a choice.”

Overthinking may also be a symptom of justified thought, which is one’s futile attempt to analytically explain an irrational reaction to something.

Another word for this is a “via,” as in “They took a via instead of a direct approach.” That’s a Latin word meaning “way.” In this sense it means a roundabout way, instead of just a straight A to B. A via is a relay point in a communication line, and represents some interference between a cause and an effect. A totally rational activity strings a straight line between cause and effect; the reasons one cannot are vias. Enough vias between cause and effect make a stop. Almost all anxieties in human relations come about through an imbalance of cause and effect.

Well, how does one determine if one’s route is A to B, or if it is A to C to X to B? In other words, to B or not to B?

That is indeed the question!

We’d like to emphasize that overthinking is not a mental illness. However, psychiatrists have many ways to call this phenomenon a mental disorder, so that they can make a buck, and a patient for life, off of an unsuspecting and vulnerable person.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) is used to diagnose a number of related symptoms that could be presented by one’s overthinking:

  • Intellectual disability (intellectual developmental disorder)
  • Unspecified intellectual disability (intellectual developmental disorder)
  • Unspecified mental disorder
  • Unspecified neurocognitive disorder
  • Unspecified communication disorder
  • Generalized anxiety disorder
  • Other specified anxiety disorder
  • Unspecified anxiety disorder

Basically, if you think at all, you can be diagnosed with a mental disorder and prescribed harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs.

Back to the question. How does one effectively deal with this?

It can’t hurt to address it as a manifestation of anxiety. Anxiety is an emotion, and is really a conflict, or the restimulation of a conflict, or something containing indecision or uncertainty — in other words as above, obsessive deliberation over a choice. It is exemplified by a conflict between something supporting survival and something opposing survival. It is rooted in an inability to assign the correct cause to something, which itself is rooted in an inability to observe. The cure is not a drug, but in observing the correct cause.

Opposing ideologies, violent revolutions and a frail social economic structure have subjected more than one-third of the world’s population to oppression, poverty and brutal human rights violations. Terrorism and a global economic crisis rips at the very fabric of society, propagating a mindset governed by hysteria, fear and anxiety. It’s no small wonder why some are gripped by anxiety and its attendant overthinking.

The Bottom Line

Anything one can do to improve one’s condition in life, enhance one’s ability to get along well in life, to make good judgments and decisions, to reduce anxiety, and to relieve stress in the environment and in society, can likely help. But however one addresses the condition, the wrong way to deal with it is with psychiatry.

Overthinking is not a mental illness.
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The Suicide Risk Assessment Fraud

Posted on February 28, 2022 by cchrstl

“A disappointing, and perhaps the most telling, finding was that there has been no improvement in the accuracy of suicide risk assessment over the last 40 years.”

Suicide Risk Assessment doesn’t work. In fact, research suggests it not only doesn’t help, but also it may hurt.

One study looked at the last 40 years of suicide risk assessment research. They found no statistical method to identify patients at a high-risk of suicide in a way that would improve treatment.

Another study of people who had already harmed themselves found that there was no evidence to support the use of risk assessment scales.

Combined with ineffective suicide risk assessment, patients labeled with depression or suicidal ideation often receive prescriptions for dangerous psychotropic drugs laden, and even labeled, with side effects that encourage the exact symptoms they are marketed to treat.

Suicide prevention is a social issue, rather than a medical one. A psychiatrist prescribing an antidepressant is thus not really providing a valid treatment, and the widespread use of suicide risk assessment diverts social and health care practitioners from engaging with patients to find out and handle whatever is really the problem.

Risk assessments, screenings, school mental health programs and more funding are often presented as solutions to suicide, and since the onset of the Covid pandemic calls for more screenings and funding are louder than ever. Yet these so-called solutions are actually contributing to the problem by masking truly effective solutions and proliferating the use of psychotropic drugs whose side effects include suicide and violence.

No one denies that people can have difficult problems in their lives, that at times they can be mentally unstable. Mental health care is therefore both valid and necessary. However, the emphasis must be on workable mental healing methods that improve and strengthen individuals and thereby society by restoring people to personal strength, ability, competence, confidence, stability, responsibility and spiritual well-being. Psychiatry is not workable.

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New Study Tells Consumers the Truth of Potential Lethal Electroshock and Antidepressant Risks

Posted on February 21, 2022 by cchrstl

Over 14,800 ECT patients were 16 times more likely to try to commit suicide than a control group of 58,369; antidepressants can also induce suicidal feelings and frightening long-term withdrawal effects.

By CCHR International
The Mental Health Industry Watchdog
February 7, 2022

A new study published in Psychological Medicine questions the two principle physical treatments recommended for depression: antidepressants and electroshock therapy (ECT) and raises the alarm about their adverse effects on the brain.[1] Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a 53-year mental health industry watchdog, says the study contains vital information for consumers recommended for ECT, including the risk of suicide, all of which adds weight to the argument that the potentially brain-damaging practice should be prohibited as a mental health treatment.

The study by two UK experts, John Read, Ph.D., a psychologist and Joanna Moncrieff, M.D., a psychiatrist, discusses the need for non-harmful alternatives that are safe and effective. They cite the fact that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) mandates that ECT machines have signs stating: “The long-term safety and effectiveness of ECT treatment has not been demonstrated.” Yet, the practice is given to an estimated 100,000 Americans every year, including, in some states, children aged up to five years old.

Antidepressants can also cause long-term sexual dysfunction and severe withdrawal effects, the study shows.

The authors wrote: “With the World Health Association and the United Nations calling for a paradigm shift away from the medicalization of human distress, new evidence about millions of people struggling to get off antidepressants, and ongoing debate about the value and safety of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT),” and questions “biological psychiatry’s ‘medical model’ when we become sad or depressed.”

The authors debunk the theory that chemical imbalances cause depression and that treatments work by correcting underlying biological dysfunctions, triggered, for example, by a supposed genetic predisposition. They point that “there is no evidence that there are any neurochemical abnormalities in people with depression, let alone abnormalities that might cause depression.”

Many medical experts confirm there are no medical tests (X-rays, blood or urine tests, MRIs, etc.) that can prove a physical source for people’s emotional issues.[2]

Yet, the authors add, until January 2021, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) website advised: “Psychiatric medications can help correct imbalances in brain chemistry that are thought to be involved in some mental disorders.” This is not true.

The authors went on to say, “At present, most drugs are assumed to work according to a ‘disease-centered’ model of drug action, which proposes that they act on the biological processes assumed to underpin symptoms, in the same way as drugs do in most medical conditions.” However, “Like other psychiatric drugs, [antidepressants] are psychoactive substances that cross the blood-brain barrier and alter normal mental processes and behavior by changing the normal functioning of the brain.” [emphasis added]

“That long-term antidepressant use may lead to persistent brain modifications is also evidenced by the prolonged and severe withdrawal state they can induce…around 56% of people experience withdrawal effects after discontinuing antidepressants, and for 46% of those the effects are severe. In general, the longer someone takes an antidepressant, the more likely they are to experience a withdrawal reaction, and the more severe it will be.”

The study also discloses:

  • Hundreds of placebo-controlled trials suggest that antidepressants are marginally better than placebo at reducing depressive symptoms as measured by depression rating scales.
  • The majority of placebo-controlled trials have been conducted by the pharmaceutical industry, which has an investment in inflating results, but government-funded research also fails to confirm that antidepressants have beneficial effects.
  • SSRI antidepressants cause “sexual dysfunction in a large proportion of users, and more worryingly, some people report that this persists after stopping the drug.”
  • “The adverse effects of withdrawal can be so intolerable that some people trying to discontinue treatment have to reduce by tiny amounts over many years, and accumulating evidence suggests that the effects may even persist for months or years after the drugs are finally stopped.” 

Electroshocking Harms Mental Health

As is the case for antidepressants, the various biological deficits that are supposedly corrected by ECT have never been demonstrated, the authors continue. “[T]he story of ECT appears to be one of a biological intervention being claimed to correct biological deficits, but in reality having negative effects on healthy brains, some of which are misconstrued as signs of improvement.” 

A neutral observer would assume that the effects on the brain of repeatedly passing sufficient electricity through it to cause seizures are likely to be negative. ECT advocates, however, “tend to interpret abnormal brain changes caused by multiple electrocutions as beneficial, sometimes even linking them to reduced depression. They don’t consider that the changes might be negative or might be characterized as brain damage.”

The authors further discuss inequities in ECT studies:

  • In the 84 years since the first ECT there have only been 11 randomized placebo-controlled studies (RCTs) for its target diagnosis, depression, all before 1986. A recent review, involving Dr. Irving Kirsch, Associate Director of Placebo Studies at Harvard Medical School, highlighted the poor quality of the 11 studies.
  • Only four studies describe their processes of randomization and testing the blinding (procedure in which one or more parties in a trial are unaware of which participants are subjects of the treatment and those who are not, and helps to reduce bias). None convincingly demonstrate that they are double-blind. Five selectively report their findings. Only four report any ratings by patients. None assess Quality of Life. The studies are small, involving an average of 37 people.
  • No studies showed that ECT outperforms placebo beyond the end of the treatment period.
  • Nevertheless, all five meta-analyses of these flawed studies somehow conclude that ECT is effective.
  • The meta-analyses failed to identify any evidence that ECT prevents suicide, as often claimed. Numerous studies have found ECT recipients are more likely than other patients to kill themselves.
  • In a 2020 study, 14,810 ECT patients were 16 times more likely to try to kill themselves than a matched control group of 58,369. Other studies cited so-called reduce suicides were so small as to be negligible and were not even for depression.
  • A 2021 U.S. study found that 1,524 homeless US veterans who received ECT had made significantly more suicide attempts, at 30 days follow up, than 3,025 matched homeless veterans who hadn’t had ECT. The difference remained significant at 90 days and 1 year.
  • A review of 82 studies found that one in 39 ECT patients (25.8 per 1000) experience ‘major adverse cardiac events,’ the leading cause of ECT-related deaths.
  • As well as the short-term memory loss, which is widely acknowledged, between 12% and 55% of ECT recipients suffer persistent or permanent memory loss (typically defined as six months or longer).
  • Even the APA acknowledges that “ECT can result in persistent or permanent memory loss.”

The fact that discrepancies and bias in ECT studies are exposed draws strong opposition from advocates of the procedure, as doctors Read and Moncrieff point out. The advocates’ “defense” is to “shoot the messenger.”

“Researchers and ECT recipients who question the efficacy and highlight the adverse effects of ECT, are often publicly denigrated, by ECT advocates, as ‘anti-psychiatry ideologues’, ‘extremists’ ‘Scientologists’ and ‘non-medical zealots,’” or “part of a ‘guild war’ between professions.” [See CCHR’s report, Why Psychiatry Sees Itself as a Dying Industry.]

Read and Moncrieff continue: “The President and Chair of the International Society for ECT and Neurostimulation recently accused authors (including two ECT recipients) who had published some inconvenient findings of being ‘ideologically driven,’ of ‘spreading misinformation’ and of having ‘questionable motives.’”

Of note, the Church of Scientology established CCHR in 1969 as an independent organization, along with eminent professor of psychiatry, the late Dr. Thomas Szasz. CCHR comprises members of the church and people of various faiths or none at all. It has been outspoken against electroshock since its inception and has been pivotal in obtaining laws that either introduced safeguards such as informed consent to treatment (and the right to refuse it), as well as banning use of ECT on minors. In Australia, CCHR obtained a ban on deep sleep treatment (DST) that involved ECT and drugs, with criminal penalties, including jail, should anyone administer it. Indeed, in 2002, U.S. psychiatrist Richard Abrams, co-owner of Somatics LLC, which manufacturers an ECT device, wrote: “Absent Scientology there would hardly be an organized anti-ECT movement in the United States or anywhere else.”[3] This, from a “doctor,” who egregiously and misleadingly claims that ECT is about ten times safer than childbirth![4]

A Call for Alternatives

Read and Moncrief call for non-harmful alternatives: “We propose an alternative understanding that recognizes depression as an emotional and meaningful response to unwanted life events and circumstances.” This alternative view, they say, “is increasingly endorsed around the world, including by the United Nations, the World Health Organization and service users who have suffered negative consequences of physical treatments that modify brain functions in ways that are not well-understood.”

Furthermore, “believing you have a brain disease requiring medical intervention can be profoundly disempowering. It encourages people to view themselves as the victims of their biology, to adopt pessimistic views about recovery, increases self-stigma and discourages people from taking active steps to improve their situation.”

“Common sense,” they add, “suggests that the conditions needed to lead an emotionally balanced and fulfilling life, relatively free of major ongoing worry and distress, include a dependable income, housing, secure and rewarding employment, engaging social activities, and opportunities to form close relationships. Some people may need relationship counselling or family therapy, others support with employment or finances. People who feel severely depressed for a long time may simply need to be cared for, reassured with kindness and hope, reminded of times when they have felt good, and kept safe until they feel better, which they often do with time. There is no scientific evidence for some of these suggestions. We learn how to support our fellow humans through our life experience, through being cared for ourselves, and sometimes through art and literature.”

As the United Nations Special Rapporteur, Dr. Dainius P?ras, a Lithuanian psychiatrist, wrote: “Current mental health policies have been affected to a large extent by the asymmetry of power and biases because of the dominance of the biomedical model and biomedical interventions. This model has led…to the medicalization of normal reactions to life’s many pressures, including moderate forms of social anxiety, sadness, shyness, truancy and antisocial behavior.”

In 2021, the World Health Organization echoed these sentiments in its “Guidance on Community Mental Health Services” which says the biological model has resulted in “an over-diagnosis of human distress and over-reliance on psychotropic drugs to the detriment of psychosocial interventions.”[5] The document offers 22 examples of alternatives to drugs and electricity, Read and Moncrieff stress.

CCHR’s has a strong position against ECT; it wants it prohibited. Over 125,000 people have supported its online petition calling for the ban. Sign here.

References:

[1] John Read, Ph.D., Joanna Moncrief, M.D., “Depression: why drugs and electricity are not the answer,” Psychological Medicine, Cambridge University Press, 1 Feb. 2022, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/depression-why-drugs-and-electricity-are-not-the-answer/3197739131D795E326AE6913720E6E37

[2] “No Medical Tests Exist,” CCHR International, https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-disorders/no-medical-tests-exist/

[3] Richard Abrams, M.D., Electroconvulsive Therapy, Fourth Edition, (Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 10

[4] Richard Abrams, M.D., “The Mortality Rate with ECT,” Convulsive Therapy, 1997

[5] Jan Eastgate, “World Health Organization New Guidelines Are Vital To End Coercive Psychiatric Practices & Abuse,” CCHR International, 11 June 2021, https://www.cchrint.org/2021/06/11/world-health-organization-new-guidelines-are-vital-to-end-coercive-psychiatric-practices-abuse/

Ban ECT
http://www.banect.org/
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U.S. States Still Electroshocking 0–5-Year-Olds

Posted on February 14, 2022 by cchrstl

Forced to obtain electroshock statistics through FOIA (Freedom of Information Act), CCHR finds states electroshocking those 0–5 and up to age 12. UN defines any ECT without consent as an act of torture—yet this increasingly occurs throughout the U.S.

Statistics on electroshock treatment (ElectroConvulsive Therapy – ECT) usage in the U.S. for 2019 reveals at least four of 27 states reporting ECT use under Medicaid, to children five years of age or younger. The Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a mental health industry watchdog, condemns the practice of electroconvulsive therapy, which sends up to 460 volts of electricity through the brain to treat mental issues, saying that its use, especially in youngsters, is simply cruel and brutal. As children are too young to consent, non-consensual ECT constitutes torture, according to United Nations bodies such as its Committee Against Torture. In 2013, it recommended “an absolute ban on all forced and non-consensual” use of electroshock. The World Health Organization made similar recommendations in June 2021.

Electroshock remains a contentious issue because there are no clinical trials that have proven the safety and efficacy of its devices. This is because the FDA grandfathered the device in 1976 as it had been in use since 1938, when an Italian psychiatrist discovered it calmed pigs before they were slaughtered.

Psychiatrists opine that forcing electroshock on an individual to damage the brain is therapeutic and as such harm is redefined as benefit.

Psychiatry, following in the steps of a Russian science, has a basic and brutal assumption which is that a shock cures aberration. It springs from the same impulse that assumes punishment cures wrongdoing. The limited workability of this is apparent around us on every hand. The basic psychiatric assumption that enough punishment will restore sanity is easily disproven.

After 84 years, psychiatrists still admit they don’t know how ECT “works,” yet they still administer it, well aware that it cannot cure—but it can cause serious damage.

MECTA Corp, the manufacturer of two ECT devices could not provide evidence of how ECT works other than its machines are designed to cause a grand mal seizure. Any legitimate medical doctor will tell you that seizures are harmful. In fact, the psychiatric billing bible Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) lists seizures as a mental disorder, yet psychiatrists continue to promote ECT as a “treatment” for mental disorders.

Electroshock is like administering medical blunt force trauma. It should be banned. Sign the petition here to support a total ban on all ECT.

Psychiatrists redefine electroshock harm as a benefit.
http://www.banect.org/
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URGENT Take Action – Missouri Legislature

Posted on February 3, 2022 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.

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 2022 Regular Session (101st General Assembly, 2nd Regular Session) convened on Wednesday, January 5, 2022, and will end on Friday, May 13, 2022.

This time we’d like to further discuss two bills 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. SB123 or HB123).

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 Very Bad Bill

HB2342 (Sponsor: Representative Tricia Derges, Republican, District 140 – Christian county)

This bill provides for children to seek mental health counseling and treatment without parental consent, and all records and referrals are confidential from parents and guardians. The provider must immediately determine if the child is a danger to self or others.

By their own admission psychiatrists cannot predict a person’s dangerousness or violence. The popular refrain that psychiatry can determine if a person is a danger to self or others is a complete fraud.

This bill would expand harmful psychiatric services to vulnerable children. This is the gateway to sending a child to a psychiatric hospital without any parental knowledge or consent. Psychiatrists, school counselors and other mental health practitioners have a terrible track record of accurately determining if a child is a danger to self or others, and this is the criteria for determining such things as involuntary commitment.

First, this bill violates US Constitutional Rights. Amendment IX to the U.S. Constitution grant parents a constitutional right to be parents for their children. The courts have repeatedly affirmed those rights[i].

Second, it could also be argued that this bill violates the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which requires that parents be given notice and an opportunity to be heard prior to any deprivation of parental rights, even if they are temporary deprivations[ii]. 

[i] “[T]he interest of parents in the care, custody, and control of their children… is perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by [the United States Supreme] Court.” Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57, 65, 120 S.Ct. 2054, 147 L.Ed.2d 49 (2000) (plurality opinion) (citing Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 166, 64 S.Ct. 438, 88 L.Ed. 645 (1944); Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 534-35, 45 S.Ct. 571, 69 L.Ed. 1070 (1925); Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 399, 401, 43 S.Ct. 625, 67 L.Ed. 1042 (1923)). Parents have a fundamental right “to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children.” Troxel, 530 U.S. at 66, 120 S.Ct. 2054 (citing Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 720, 117 S.Ct. 2258, 138 L.Ed.2d 772 (1997); Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745, 753, 102 S.Ct. 1388, 71 L.Ed.2d 599 (1982); Parham v. J.R., 442 U.S. 584, 602, 99 S.Ct. 2493, 61 L.Ed.2d 101 (1979); Quilloin v. Walcott, 434 U.S. 246, 255, 98 S.Ct. 549, 54 L.Ed.2d 511 (1978); Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205, 232, 92 S.Ct. 1526, 32 L.Ed.2d 15 (1972); Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U.S. 645, 651, 92 S.Ct. 1208, 31 L.Ed.2d 551 (1972)).

[ii] [T]he Supreme Court made clear that termination of parental rights impinges upon a liberty interest of which a citizen may not be deprived without due process of law. This circuit has applied Santosky’s holding … to the temporary seizures of children and has held that notice and a hearing are required before a child is removed “`except for extraordinary situations where some valid governmental interest is at stake that justifies postponing the hearing until after the event.'” “Valid governmental interests” include “emergency circumstances which pose an immediate threat to the safety of a child.” As the Second Circuit has noted, the “mere possibility” of danger is not enough to justify a removal without appropriate process. (emphasis added)

Roska ex rel. Roska v. Peterson, 328 F. 3d 1230, 1245 (10th Cir. 2003) (emphasis added).  Since this proposed statute allows for removal based solely on the “belief” of “substantial danger”, it is authorizing removal based on the “mere possibility” of danger and “is not enough to justify a removal without appropriate process.” Id. In other words, a parent needs the ability to appear in court prior to any deprivation of parental rights or custody.

Very Good Bill

HB1755 – Establishes Parents’ Bill of Rights (Sponsor: Representative Chuck Basye, Republican, District 47 – Boone, Randolph, Howard, Cooper counties) 

This bill prohibits the state, any of its political subdivisions, any other governmental entity, or any other institution from infringing on fundamental rights of a parent to direct the upbringing, education, health care, and mental health of their children.

This bill also requires school boards to implement policies that will allow parents to have more involvement in the public school system including having a voice as to what materials the children will be instructed on as well as the ability to withdraw their child from any portion of the school district’s comprehensive health education that relates to instruction in sexually transmitted diseases or any instruction regarding human sexuality if they do not want their child to participate. The school board must also implement procedures that allow parents to learn their parental responsibilities and rights.

No one but their parents should be determining the mental health care for a child.

CCHR suggests the inclusion of this simple statement in any Parents’ Bill of Rights:

“Infringement of parental rights. — The state, any of its political subdivisions, any other governmental entity, or any other institution may not infringe on the fundamental rights of a parent to direct the upbringing, education, health care, and mental health of his or her minor child without demonstrating that such action is reasonable and necessary to achieve a compelling state interest and that such action is narrowly tailored and is not otherwise served by a less restrictive means.”

This one paragraph does two things 1) mental health is specifically included and 2) it requires that any potential infringement on parental rights is reviewed using strict scrutiny. Strict scrutiny is a form of judicial review that courts use to determine the constitutionality of certain laws. This is basically the highest form of review that exists and the greatest protection.

Forced Psychiatry is Legislated Violence
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Mental Health Rights Policy To Prevent Patient Torture

Posted on January 31, 2022 by cchrstl

The word “compulsory” and the practice of coercion must be removed from any mental health policy. Effective mental healing should improve and strengthen individuals and thereby society, by restoring individuals to personal strength, ability, competence, responsibility, and spiritual wellbeing.

Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a mental health industry watchdog, launched a policy for governments to adopt to prevent abuse and coercive psychiatric practices that constitute torture. This is based on reports and guidelines issued by the World Health Organization (WHO—guidance on community mental health services) and United Nations representatives for health and against torture. In 2020, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture presented a report on “psychological torture” to the UN Human Rights Council, with the strongest condemnation to date of involuntary psychiatric interventions.

Currently, New Zealand is in the process of transforming its mental health law away from coercive and compulsory incarceration and treatment and towards a human rights approach—something CCHR says is urgently needed throughout the United States and worldwide. Recently in the U.S., the mental health system has been rocked with allegations of staff physical, sexual and chemical assaults of patients, especially children and teens in for-profit behavioral facilities, including restraint use leading to death. In 2021, fourteen staff from behavioral hospitals faced criminal proceedings over patient abuse and deaths.

Yet, U.S. psychiatrists have called for the power to increase their rights to involuntarily detain and treat patients, based on the arbitrary argument that persons are a danger to themselves or others. Such arguments fly in the face of the March 2020 UN Special Rapporteur on Torture report on “psychological torture” presented to the UN Human Rights Council, berating involuntary psychiatric interventions based on the supposed “best interests” of a person or on “medical necessity.” Such interventions, the report says, “generally involve highly discriminatory and coercive attempts at controlling or ‘correcting’ the victim’s personality, behavior or choices and almost always inflict severe pain or suffering…such practices may well amount to torture.”

WHO states that forced treatment is not proven to prevent violent practices yet are relied upon “despite the lack of evidence that they offer any benefits, and the significant evidence that they lead to physical and psychological harm and even death.”

Psychiatrists and psychologists are unable to predict whether a person is a danger to oneself or others as this relies upon subjective opinion, not science. “Violence is not a diagnosis nor is it a disease. Potential to do harm is not a symptom or a sign of mental illness,” and cannot be scientifically assessed.

Recommendations

  • Prohibition of all ElectroConvulsive Therapy (ECT) and psychosurgery, with criminal penalties to those administering these in violation of the law.
  • Informed Consent must be obtained with all major treatment risks documented in writing; the person informed that there are diverse opinions and disagreements about the medical legitimacy of psychiatric diagnoses which cannot be determined with physical-medical tests; the patient has the right to refuse treatment and revoke consent at any time, as well has the right to all available alternatives.
  • Abolish mechanical and chemical restraints, with criminal penalties if used and resulting in harm or death of the patient.
  • Proper medical testing to be conducted as part of the patient assessment, ruling out underlying and undiagnosed physical conditions that may manifest in “psychiatric” symptoms.
  • Facilities established to safely withdraw patients from psychotropic drugs.
Forced Psychiatry is Legislated Violence
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Take Action – Missouri Legislature

Posted on January 24, 2022 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.

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 2022 Regular Session (101st General Assembly, 2nd Regular Session) convened on Wednesday, January 5, 2022, and will end on Friday, May 13, 2022.

This time we’d like to discuss new bills 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. SB123 or HB123).

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 Bills

These are bills that further psychiatric abuses of human rights, and are moving swiftly toward becoming law. Please express your opposition and opinions about this to your legislators and copy the bill sponsor.

HB2342 (Sponsor: Representative Tricia Derges, Republican, District 140 – Christian county)

This bill provides for children to seek mental health counseling and treatment without parental consent, and all records and referrals are confidential from parents and guardians. The provider must immediately determine if the child is a danger to self or others.

By their own admission psychiatrists cannot predict a person’s dangerousness or violence. The popular refrain that psychiatry can determine if a person is a danger to self or others is a complete fraud.

This bill would expand harmful psychiatric services to vulnerable children. This is the gateway to sending a child to a psychiatric hospital without any parental knowledge or consent. Psychiatrists, school counselors and other mental health practitioners have a terrible track record of accurately determining if a child is a danger to self or others, and this is the criteria for determining such things as involuntary commitment.

HB1978 (Sponsor: Representative Ann Kelley, Republican, District 127 – Lamar, Dade, Barton, Jasper, Cedar counties)

Under current federal law, a person who is in an institution for mental disease cannot receive Medicaid coverage. This bill requires the Department of Social Services (DSS) to apply for a waiver from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in order to give MO HealthNet coverage for mental health services provided in residential programs in psychiatric facilities.

This bill would expand harmful psychiatric services (and consequent budget) to a new and vulnerable patient population.


HB2019 (Sponsor: Representative Yolanda Young, Democrat, District 22 – Jackson county)

This bill provides financial supplements, subject to appropriation, for public schools to employ school nurses and mental health professionals. A school district must apply to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) and specify the schools that will hire these positions. The amount of the supplement is capped at $40,000 per school per position. The bill creates the “School Nurse Financial Supplement Fund” and the “School Mental Health Professional Financial Supplement Fund” in the State Treasury, and requires DESE to create rules ensuring that positions funded with supplement money only perform duties associated with the job title, and preference be given to schools that demonstrate the greatest need.

This bill would expand harmful psychiatric services (and consequent budget) to vulnerable school children.


HB2253 (Sponsor: Representative Crystal Quade, Democrat, District 132 – Greene county)

This bill provides for the Department of Mental Health to help non profits set up behavioral crisis centers for those who are danger to self and others. It’s a psychiatric hospital under another name.

By their own admission psychiatrists cannot predict a person’s dangerousness or violence. The popular refrain that psychiatry can determine if a person is a danger to self or others is a complete fraud.

This bill would expand harmful psychiatric services (and consequent budget) to a new and vulnerable patient population.

Relatively Good Bills

These are bills that inhibit psychiatric abuses of human rights, and are moving swiftly toward becoming law. Please express your support and opinions about this to your legislators and copy the bill sponsor.

SB810 (Sponsor: Senator Andrew Koenig, Republican, District 15 – Part of St. Louis County) and Related Bills (SB776, SB653, HB1474, HB1755, HB1858, HB1995, HB2008, HB2068, HB2132, HB2189, HB2195, HB2294, HJR110)

SB810 establishes “The Parents’ Bill of Rights for Student Well-Being” and modifies other provisions of elementary and secondary education.

Similar to others about parental ability to object to curriculum and withdraw student from sex education and “certain classroom materials”. While this bill is Anti-Psych in part, it is somewhat concerning in other parts. It is the most measured and complex of this series of bills. They will probably be combined as the session progresses.

Good part:
Under this act, no governmental entity, school district, or other public institution shall infringe on the fundamental rights, as provided in the act, of a natural parent, adoptive parent, or legal guardian of such parent’s minor child without demonstrating that the infringement is reasonable, narrowly tailored to a compelling state interest, and that such interest could not be served by less restrictive means.

Potentially problematic:
We are entirely in favor of parental rights. But most of these bills contain excessive and arbitrary burdens on the schools regarding curriculum and children’s mental health care. We would recommend completely separating parental rights from matters of curriculum and mental health.

HJR101 (Sponsor: Representative Yolanda Young, Democrat, District 22 – Jackson county)

Upon voter approval, this proposed Constitutional amendment (House Joint Resolution) removes a Constitutional voting prohibition on all persons who are subject to a guardianship of their estate or person, or all persons who are confined in a mental institution.

We think this is a fine human rights proposal.

SJR47 (Sponsor: Senator Mike Moon, Republican, District 29 – Barry, Lawrence, McDonald, Stone, and Taney counties)

Prohibits laws or public policies infringing on the right of individuals to refuse medical procedures or treatments

This constitutional amendment, if adopted by the voters, prohibits the passage or implementation of any law, order, ordinance, regulation or public policy of the state or any political subdivision of the state, including schools and institutions of higher education that receive public funds, that infringes upon the unquestionable right of individuals to refuse any medical procedure or treatment, including, but not limited to, injections, vaccines, or prophylactics. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged to any person in this state because of the exercise of this right. Nothing in this amendment shall be interpreted to infringe upon a parent’s right to exercise control over their minor, unemancipated child’s physical and mental care.

CCHR also recommends that concerned individuals execute a Living Will which 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.

Forced Psychiatry is Legislated Violence
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Titration Titillation

Posted on January 10, 2022 by cchrstl

Titration is the process of adjusting the dose of a drug for the maximum benefit that can be obtained without any adverse effects. When a drug’s recommended dosage has a narrow therapeutic range, titration is especially important, because the range between the dose at which a drug is effective and the dose at which side effects occur is small. The starting dose is very low, and then increased regularly until the symptoms subside, or the recommended maximum dose is achieved, or side effects occur.

[Titrate ultimately derived from Latin titulus, “inscription, label, title”.]

When changing to a different medication, sometimes one can be stopped and the other then started without overlap. However, with some there needs to be overlap, called cross-titration.

Since some psychiatric drugs may take weeks or months to demonstrate an effect (or an adverse reaction), titration is pretty much just guesswork. There is a general lack of evidence regarding the impact of titration rate on clinical outcomes. There are no specific recommendations on what titration rate is optimal for achieving rapid response while minimizing adverse effects.

The half-life of a drug is the time it takes for the amount of a drug’s active substance in the body to reduce by half. Psychiatric drugs are metabolized in the liver by Cytochrome P450 enzymes in order to be eliminated from the body. A person genetically deficient in these enzymes, or who has an ultrarapid drug metabolism, or who is taking other (legal or illegal) drugs that diminish CYP450 enzyme activity, is at risk of a toxic accumulation of the drug leading to more severe side effects.

Most antipsychotics have an average half-life of 1 day or longer; it can take up to 5 days or more for patients to reach steady-state concentrations with the same daily dose. One would not generally want to titrate the dose until a relatively steady-state concentration was reached.

One recent retrospective study of 149 hospitalized patients on antipsychotics was relatively inconclusive; it was unclear to what extent titration rate either improved symptoms or reduced length of hospital stay. Patients who continued to have their dose increased were less likely to adhere to treatment, due to increasing adverse reactions. Also, delayed adverse effects may occur if dose increases occur sooner than necessary.

Since the 1960s, there has been a large push for patients in psychiatric hospitals to be discharged as quickly as possible. In such an inpatient setting, pressure may be put on prescribers to titrate antipsychotics quickly with the hopes of reducing length of stay and hospitalization costs.

All this goes to show the general lack of predictability in the administration of psychiatric drugs, although it doesn’t even begin to address the fact that these drugs are generally addictive and harmful, and that they are prescribed for fraudulent diagnoses.

One must also keep in mind that the psychiatric industry generally pushes psychotropic drugs without regard to these considerations. This is the direct result of the unscientific psychiatric diagnoses perpetrated by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) which fraudulently justifies prescribing these harmful drugs for profit in the first place.

The real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, and stigmatize unwanted behavior or study problems as “diseases.” Psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, programs and treatments are harmful junk science; their diagnoses of “mental disorders” are a hoax – unscientific, fraudulent and harmful. All psychiatric treatments, not just psychiatric drugs, are dangerous because they preclude finding out the real causes of mental trauma and treating those.

At best one might consider psychotropic drugs as “first aid”; they never have and never will cure any mental trauma. While the patient may be lulled into a temporary sense of wellness, whatever condition has caused the symptom is still present and often growing worse. Psychiatrists have deceived millions into thinking that the best answer to life’s many routine problems and challenges lies with the “latest and greatest” psychiatric drug.

Find Out! Fight Back!

Marketing of Madness
Marketing of Madness
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Is Sneezing Related to Mental Health?

Posted on January 3, 2022 by cchrstl

Do you sneeze when you emerge into bright sunlight?

Sneezing is a natural response that removes irritants from the nose. But is sunlight a nasal irritant?

Officially known as “photic sneeze reflex” or “photic sneeze syndrome”, sun sneezing is a condition that triggers a sneeze when people are exposed to bright lights. It affects an estimated 18 to 35 percent of the population. Some think it is a genetic condition, as it often occurs within families.

Apparently the reflex isn’t triggered by light itself, but by a change in light intensity.

Sun sneezing has been documented for many centuries. While the exact mechanism of the photic sneeze reflex is not understood, the most common explanation can be traced to psychiatrist Henry Everett whose 1964 theory proposed that the effect resulted from mixed up nerve signals in the brain.

Some psychiatrists and psychologists have jumped on this bandwagon, possibly because the phenomenon can’t yet be explained, so it may be a ripe area for getting government funds for brain research.

One study suggested that individuals who sun sneeze are more likely to suffer from psychological distress.

Another theory says that intractable sneezing is a manifestation of a psychiatric condition called “conversion disorder” [a condition in which the brain and body’s nerves are unable to send and receive signals properly, sometimes thought to occur because of a psychological conflict].

In the psychiatric billing bible the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), there are nine entries with some type of “Conversion disorder,” or “functional neurological symptom disorder.”

So if you sneeze when you walk outside, you can be labeled with a mental disorder and prescribed an antidepressant.

The fifth cranial nerve, called the trigeminal nerve, is thought by some to be related to sneezing. Some psychiatrists speculate that a malformation in this nerve causes it to be overstimulated in bright light. Some psychiatrists have also targeted the trigeminal nerve for harmful therapies.

For example, a prescription-only device, called the Monarch external Trigeminal Nerve Stimulation (eTNS) System from NeuroSigma, sends an electric current into the brains of children diagnosed with so-called ADHD.

Find Out! Fight Back against psychiatric fraud and abuse.

Why does sudden exposure to the sun cause sneezing?
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