U.S. Military Mental Health Costs Skyrocket

Posted on October 1, 2013 by cchrstl

U.S. Military Mental Health Costs Skyrocket

[The following report is from NextGov.com, an information resource for federal technology decision makers, and the CRS report cited.]

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) just put a price tag on the mental health costs of the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: about $4.5 billion between 2007 and 2012. The Defense Department spent $958 million on mental health treatment in 2012, roughly double the $468 million it spent in 2007.

Eighty-nine percent of spending on mental disorder treatment between 2007 and 2012 — approximately $4 billion — went for active duty service members. Over the same time frame, the military health system spent about $461 million on mental health care treatment for activated Guard and Reserve members.

Of the nearly $1 billion the military medical system spent in fiscal 2012 on mental disorder treatments for active duty and activated National Guard and reserve members, CRS said more than half of the costs, about $567 million, were for outpatient active duty mental health care.

Between 2001 and 2011, the rate of mental health diagnoses among active duty service members increased approximately 65 percent, CRS reported. A total of 936,283 service members, or former service members during their period of service, have been diagnosed with at least one mental disorder over this time, CRS said.

The CRS report [R43175 “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Other Mental Health Problems in the Military: Oversight Issues for Congress” August 8, 2013], written by Katherine Blakeley, a foreign affairs analyst, and Don J. Jansen, a Defense health care policy analyst, said the reported incidence of post traumatic stress disorder soared 650 percent, from about 170 diagnoses per 100,000 person years in 2000 to approximately 1,110 diagnoses per 100,000 person years in 2011.

Though Defense spent $4 billion on mental health treatment for active duty service members from 2007 through 2012, the CRS report questioned exactly what the Pentagon got for its money. “There are scant data documenting which treatments patients receive or whether those treatments were appropriate and timely,” the report said. Additionally, “Reliable evidence is lacking as to the quality of mental health care and counseling offered in DOD facilities.”

Beginning in 2010, suicide has been the second-leading cause of death for active duty servicemembers, behind only war injuries. Between 1998 and 2011, 2,990 servicemembers on active duty have died by suicide, with an incidence rate of approximately 14 per 100,000 person years. However, the suicide rate among active duty servicemembers has sharply increased since 2005, reaching a peak of 18.5 per 100,000 in 2009 and declining slightly to 17.5 per 100,000 in 2010 and 18 per 100,000 in 2011.

Of the 301 servicemembers who died by suicide in 2011, 40% received outpatient behavioral health care, while 17% had received outpatient behavioral health services within the month prior to suicide; 15% had received inpatient behavioral health treatment; 26% had a known history of psychotropic medication use, most frequently antidepressants.

Of the 915 active duty servicemembers who attempted suicide in 2011, 43% had a known history of psychotropic medication use, most frequently antidepressants, and 61% had received outpatient behavioral health services within the month prior to suicide.

This and other reports persist in declaring that the reasons for high rates of military suicides are not clear. However, the scientific research documenting the connection between violence, suicide and psychiatric drugs is overwhelming. When you contact your federal officials, Senators, and Representatives, tell them to investigate the relationship between psychiatric drugs, violence and suicide. For more information about this relationship, download and read the CCHR booklet “Psychiatric Drugs Create Violence and Suicide.”

Forward this newsletter to everyone you know and recommend they subscribe.

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Nosology

Posted on September 29, 2013 by cchrstl

Nosology

While not directly related to Schnozology, Nosology is still an interesting term.

Nosology: The branch of medicine concerned with the classification of diseases. [from Greek nosos disease + Greek logos word]

We caught the term being used in the July 2013 issue of Reason magazine, in an article by Gary Greenberg, a practicing psychotherapist, titled “Overselling Psychiatry;” here is the quote: “Doubts like Frances’, on the part of both respected professionals and confused laypersons, are inevitable given the way the APA conducts nosology, the science of disease classification.”

Here are some additional quotes from this article to give the context:

“Allen Frances, former head of the Duke University School of Medicine’s psychiatry department … was chair of the APA task force for DSM-IV … [and] has been warning everyone who will listen that the newest DSM revision [DSM-5] will turn even more of human suffering into mental illness and thus into grist for the pharmaceutical mill.”

The DSM, of course, is the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the fifth edition (DSM-5) having been released this past May. Despite a growing consensus of people who see the DSM for what it is — a purely subjective work of no scientific substance or authority — it is still accepted in the legal system as being a scientific work that catalogs descriptions of mental symptoms as if they were real medical diseases.

“…many critics have pointed out that these disease categories do not exist in nature…”

In 1984 the results of a survey of 20,000 Americans indicated that, “In any given year, more than 20 percent of Americans qualified for a DSM-III diagnosis.”

Extrapolating this result to say that 20 percent of the population is mentally ill, as is the current marketing cry of the mental health industry, is the height of fraudulent statistical hubris, as the DSM itself has no basis in fact.

“… doctors using DSM checklists were all too likely to find disease everywhere they looked. There was no governor in the mechanism, no way to say this person was sick and that one was simply unhappy…”

“‘The tendency [is] always strong,’ John Stuart Mill wrote in 1869, ‘to believe that whatever receives a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own.’ … this tendency had led all the stakeholders in nosology — scientists, regulators, editors, doctors, drug companies, and, of course, patients — to take the labels not as arbitrary descriptions but as the names of actual diseases.”

The moral of this tale, to spell it out, is that psychiatric labels are junk science; psychiatry is junk science; psycho-pharmaceuticals are junk science.

See a competent, non-psychiatric health professional for your troubles. Insist on full disclosure of lab tests, diagnoses, drug actions and drug side effects, and exercise your fully informed consent before accepting treatment.

While we do not provide medical advice, we do provide educational materials so that you can Find Out yourself about these things. Select a downloadable booklet from www.CCHRSTL.org that catches your interest and let us know what you think about it. Forward this newsletter to everyone you know and recommend they subscribe.

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Psychiatric Medicaid Fraud

Posted on September 23, 2013 by cchrstl

Psychiatric Medicaid Fraud

In an August 28, 2013 decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, the appeals judge held that psychiatrists commit Medicaid fraud when they submit Medicaid claims for off-label prescriptions for psychiatric drugs to children for uses that are not approved by the FDA or supported by certain specific pharmaceutical references.

In the words of the court, “…the federal government generally will not pay for medications prescribed for purposes not approved by the FDA or ‘supported’ by any of several pharmaceutical reference books (called ‘compendia’). …Medicaid can only provide reimbursement for ‘covered outpatient drugs.’ …Covered drugs do not include any drugs ‘used for a medical indication which is not a medically accepted indication.’ …’medically accepted indication’ is a statutorily defined term that refers to a prescription purpose approved by the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act…or ‘supported by’…the American Hospital Formulary Service Drug Information, the United States Pharmacopeia Drug Information…and the DRUGDEX Information System.”

Basically, the appeals court reinforced the common-sense position that Medicaid fraud occurs when a doctor submits a Medicaid claim for a prescription written for off-label use, as many psychiatric drugs are prescribed.

The original lawsuit, ex rel Watson v. King-Vassel, was brought under PsychRights’ Medicaid Fraud Initiative Against Psychiatric Drugging of Children & Youth by Dr. Toby Watson, a Wisconsin psychologist, to support the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights‘ effort to try and stop the tremendous harm caused by off-label psychiatric drug prescriptions to poor children on Medicaid for uses that have no recognized scientific support.

Starting on January 1, 2014, all low-income, non-elderly and non-disabled individuals will be eligible for Medicaid, courtesy of the Affordable Care Act. The Federal Government will provide 100% of the cost of newly eligible people between 2014 and 2016, 95% of the costs in 2017, 94% of the costs in 2018, 93% of the costs in 2019, and 90 percent matching for subsequent years. The bottom line — expanding Medicaid in this manner will also expand Medicaid fraud. Ensuring that psychiatric drugs are available for all citizens, access to Community Mental Health Centers is being emphasized.

Need we say that all psychiatric drugs are harmful? Find out why!

Report Medicaid fraud in Missouri to Missouri Medicaid Fraud & Compliance.

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Navy Yard Shooter on Psych Drugs

Posted on September 18, 2013 by cchrstl

Navy Yard Shooter on Psych Drugs

We now know that Aaron Alexis, the 34-year-old man accused of killing 12 people in a gun rampage at the Washington Navy Yard September 16, was taking psychiatric drugs known to cause violence and suicide.

The New York Times reported that Alexis had been prescribed Trazodone (brand name Desyrel), an antidepressant that carries an FDA black box warning for suicide, and is documented to cause mania and violent behavior.

Lawmakers and other government and military officials refuse to give credence to evidence showing that psychiatric drugs cause violence, ensuring that mass shootings will continue.

You can help by contacting your local, state and federal officials and asking them to investigate the connection between violence and psychiatric drugs. You might also consider contacting the Naval Criminal Investigative Service to express your opinion.

The FDA’s MedWatch system reveals that between 2004-2011, there were 14,656 reports of psychiatric drugs causing violent side effects. You can read FDA information about Trazodone here. The FDA admits that less than 1 percent of all serious events are ever reported, so the actual number of harmful side effects is most certainly higher.

Psychiatrists, in both their research for drug manufacturers and in their public statements, cover up the very serious risks of psychotropic drugs. This is misleading to the FDA and it is lying to patients. It places millions of people at risk when psychiatrists prescribe dangerous, suicide-inducing drugs for subjective disorders that cannot be medically proven. The FDA should not be approving drugs for any condition in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders until these “disorders” can be substantiated by some form of blood test, x-ray or other physical test — which they can’t.

Please forward this newsletter to everyone you know and recommend they subscribe.

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Shift Work Disorder

Posted on September 8, 2013 by cchrstl

Shift Work Disorder

Circadian Rhythm Sleep-Wake Disorder, also called Shift Work Disorder, classified in the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition) under “sleep-wake disorders”, is a way for the psycho-pharmaceutical industry to sell drugs to people who work nights or rotating shifts and who may experience difficulty adjusting to this sleep-wake rhythm. The implication that this is some kind of mental illness or disorder is most invalidating and simply untrue.

I myself worked a rotating night shift once upon a time, and it was pretty obvious that any sleep-wake discomfort I experienced was simply that and not any kind of mental illness. I found my own way of getting enough sleep without drugs.

“If you work non-traditional hours and struggle to stay awake at work, you may be experiencing excessive sleepiness.” However, for those who buy in to the psychiatric pill-pushers, they can get NUVIGIL® (armodafinil), an addictive, stimulant-like psychiatric drug for adults who cannot stay awake due to “shift work disorder.” Of course, like many psychiatric drugs, possible side effects are headache, nausea, dizziness, insomnia, depression, anxiety, hallucinations, suicide, and aggression. Note that this drug is not a cure for any condition, and is only used to make a person stay awake while working. Of course, the manufacturer warns the user not to drive or operate machinery while taking the drug, so one is not really sure what benefit it could possibly have in any case.

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries tried to get the FDA to approve Nuvigil for bipolar depression symptoms, but the results from the “Final Phase III Study of Patients with Major Depression Associated with Bipolar I Disorder” failed to show that it was more effective than a placebo.

The precise mechanism through which armodafinil is thought to promote wakefulness is unknown, but they think it has a similarity in action to amphetamine and methylphenidate, with some kind of effect in the brain involving dopamine and other chemicals. But they want you to try it out and let them know if it works. What do you think?

Please forward this newsletter to your family, friends and associates, and recommend that they subscribe.

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U.S. Probes Psych Drugs on Kids

Posted on September 8, 2013 by cchrstl

U.S. Probes Psych Drugs on Kids

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) carried this report August 11, “U.S. Probes Use of Antipsychotic Drugs on Children,” sub-titled “Federal health officials are reviewing antipsychotic drug use on children in the Medicaid system.”

Concerned that psych drugs are being over-prescribed to very young children, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is reviewing antipsychotic use in the Medicaid system for children under 18 years old. These drugs include Abilify, which is widely prescribed to children for a range of behavioral symptoms. Other drugs in this category include Risperdal, Seroquel, and Zyprexa.

The DHHS has this to say specifically about this review: “We will determine the extent to which children ages 18 and younger had Medicaid claims for atypical antipsychotic drugs during the selected timeframe. On the basis of medical record reviews, we will also determine the extent to which the atypical antipsychotic drug claims were for off-label uses and for indications not listed in one or more of the approved drug compendia.”

Quotes from the WSJ article: “Medicaid spends more on antipsychotics than on any other class of drugs. Abilify, made by Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., appears on lists of the top 10 drugs paid for by Medicaid in various states.”

“The number of people under age 20 receiving Medicaid-funded prescriptions for antipsychotic drugs tripled between 1999 and 2008.”

“Children on Medicaid are prescribed antipsychotics at four times the rate of privately insured children.”

“Of particular concern is use of the drugs on foster children in the Medicaid system.”

Contact Daniel R. Levinson, Inspector General, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, at dan.levinson@oig.hhs.gov, and let him know what you think about the psychiatric drugging of children with harmful and addictive antipsychotics.

Abilify and other antipsychotic drugs have caused a potentially fatal condition called neuroleptic malignant syndrome. Patients who develop this may have high fevers, muscle rigidity, altered mental status, irregular pulse or blood pressure, rapid heart rate, excessive sweating, and heart arrhythmias (irregularities). Body temperature regulation—disruption of the body’s ability to reduce core body temperature—has been attributed to antipsychotic agents such as Abilify.

According to the U.S. consumer advocacy group Public Citizen after reviewing information about clinical trials of Abilify, “…nothing in these five trials can lead one to believe that aripiprazole (Abilify) is a meaningful advancement in the treatment of schizophrenia.”

Of course, we recognize that the real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, and stigmatize unwanted behavior 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.

It is vital that you, your family, your friends and associates, watch the video documentary “Making A Killing — The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging”. Containing more than 175 interviews with lawyers, mental health experts, the families of psychiatric abuse victims and the survivors themselves. This riveting documentary rips the mask off psychotropic drugging and exposes a brutal but well-entrenched money-making machine. The facts are hard to believe, but fatal to ignore. Watch the video online here. Forward this newsletter to everyone you know and recommend that they watch this video.

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Bradley Manning under psychiatric treatment

Posted on September 8, 2013 by cchrstl

Bradley Manning under psychiatric treatment

Various news reports have been discussing 25-year-old former intelligence analyst Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, who was convicted of disclosing reams of classified information through WikiLeaks.

Apparently Manning was receiving psychiatric treatment while he was deployed in Iraq during 2009-2010.

Then when Manning was detained for nine months in the Quantico, Virginia maximum security brig he continued to receive psychiatric treatment. Reports say that Manning licked his cell bars while sleepwalking as a side effect of the drugs he was being given. A few months before Manning arrived at Quantico, another inmate of the brig had killed himself while under the same psychiatrist’s care.

After being sentenced to 35 years in prison, Manning was transferred to the prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. One expects that psychiatric treatment for Manning will be continued there. One news report we saw said that Manning had received both anti-depression and anti-anxiety drugs.

While we express no official position regarding his actions, we certainly have an official position on his psychiatric “treatment.”

According to psychiatric thinking, the “solution” for everything from the most minor to most severe personal problem is strictly limited to: 1) Diagnosing symptoms using the scientifically discredited Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; 2) Assigning a mental illness label; 3) Designating a restrictive, generally coercive and costly range of harmful treatments.

As decades of psychiatric monopoly over the world’s mental health reflects, this unilateral approach leads only to upwardly spiraling mental illness statistics, continuously escalating funding demands — and away from any cures.

What do we mean by “cure?” For the individual a cure means nothing less than complete and permanent absence of any overwhelming physical or mental trauma. For the society it means the rehabilitation of the individual as a consistently honest, ethical, productive and successful member.

Psychiatry cannot and never has produced a cure. Trusted with the care for our mentally disturbed, psychiatry has failed utterly to provide any humane solutions to their plight. Psychiatrists are failed medical practitioners who have betrayed their pledge to help patients in order to legally push their own dangerous psychotropic drugs.

In a significant departure from medical diagnosis, psychiatric diagnoses are devoted to categorization of symptoms only, not the observation of actual physical disease. None of the diagnoses are supported by scientific evidence of biological disease or a mental illness of any kind.

Psychiatry would prefer to say or imply that only brain-based, mental “illnesses” can affect irrational behavior or thinking, that they need long-term, if not life-long care, and that they are incurable. These falsehoods have been so successfully disseminated throughout the mental health system and amongst the public, that countless numbers have become trapped as lifelong patients of psychiatric and psychological services. These falsehoods must be exposed.

The psychiatric profession has been gradually but steadily undermining the foundations of our culture — individual responsibility, standards of achievement, education and justice. The bottom line, stated by Dr. Thomas Szasz, is that “psychiatrists have been largely responsible for creating the problems they have ostensibly tried to solve.”

The rehabilitation of criminals is a long-forgotten dream. We build more prisons and pass even tougher laws in the belief that these will act as a deterrent. In the 1940’s, psychiatry’s leaders proclaimed their intention to infiltrate the field of the law and bring about the “re-interpretation and eventually eradication of the concept of right and wrong;” with the consequence that today, because of psychiatric influence, the justice system is failing.

For more information about how this occurred, and how psychiatry’s ideologies and actions have contributed to today’s failing criminal rehabilitation and increasing crime rate, download and read the CCHR booklet “Eroding Justice — Psychiatry’s Corruption of Law — Report and recommendations on psychiatry subverting the courts and corrective services.”

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Army psychiatrist convicted of murder

Posted on August 26, 2013 by cchrstl

Army psychiatrist convicted of murder

A military jury on August 23 convicted Maj. Nidal Hasan in the deadly 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, returning a unanimous verdict of premeditated murder that makes the Army psychiatrist eligible for the death penalty in the shocking assault against American troops at home by one of their own.

Hasan, a Virginia-born Muslim, said he acted to protect Muslim insurgents abroad from American aggression; and that his attack was a jihad against U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Prosecutors never charged Hasan as a terrorist, in spite of the obvious and intentional terrorism of the attack. Hasan leaked documents during the trial to journalists that revealed him telling military mental health workers that he could “still be a martyr” if executed.

Now, let’s notice the really significant part of this drama — Hasan is a PSYCHIATRIST!

Would anyone reading this be surprised to discover that there is a solid link between psychiatry and terrorism?

Terrorism is created; it is not human nature. Terrorists are made, not born. Ultimately, terrorism is the result of madmen bent on destruction, and these madmen are typically the result of psychiatric behavioral control, and psychiatrists are often found to be consumers of their own treatments.

The huge missing “elephant in the room” is the high likelihood that Hasan was medicated with potent brain-altering, violence-causing, psychiatric drugs. These would be drugs that Hasan had easy access to and which he was probably prescribing widely to his traumatized soldier-patients. Psychiatrists are notorious for treating themselves with their own psychiatric drugs.

Some might express surprise that a man whose profession is about caring would turn to violence. “Caring” actually has nothing to do with it. Modern psychiatry is not about caring for, counseling and empowering people; it’s about medicating, controlling and suppressing them.

Dr. Peter Breggin says that, “The most recent data show that soldiers are being snowed under not only with antidepressants and tranquilizers, but increasingly with antipsychotic drugs like Risperdal, Zyprexa, Geodon and Seroquel. To cover up their own therapeutic impotence, psychiatrists chemically suppress our troops and push them back onto the front lines. That’s the kind of poisonous psychiatry that Hasan was practicing in combination with his poisonous ideology.”

Over the last decade an explosion of gratuitous violence has terrorized the world scene. Examination of these destructive phenomena reveals the influence of psychiatric treatment behind virtually all acts of terrorism. From glorifying the blatantly criminal acts of suicide bombers to reducing the hideous acts of a maniacal murderer to psychological or biological bad luck, psychiatrists on both sides of the terrorist conflict share the same twisted perspective on the criminal mind. This perspective protects and denies the dangerousness of the criminal at the expense of honest citizens.

Most terrorist groups today embrace extremist political views and hold racist positions that range from “white supremacism” and anti-Semitism to radical religious fundamentalism and anti-Westernism. Research shows that psychiatry or psychology has influenced and even created such characteristics, spawning racial and political hatred that has resulted in the murder of millions.

Hasan is a domestic terrorist, a traitor, and a madman — much like the rest of the psychiatric profession which is bent on promoting violence in society with harmful, violence-causing drugs.

Citizens groups and government officials should work together to ensure governments first expose, and then work to abolish, psychiatry’s hidden manipulation of society. Please support your local CCHR in this effort.

For more information, click here to download and read the full CCHR report “Chaos and Terror Manufactured by Psychiatry”.

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Your Federal Government at Work

Posted on August 24, 2013 by cchrstl

Your Federal Government at Work

Last June the President hosted the National Conference on Mental Health to talk about how to raise awareness of mental health issues and make it easier for everyone to get the mental health care “they need.”

The President’s Fiscal Year 2014 Budget proposal includes large amounts of taxpayer money helping teachers recognize signs of “mental illness” in their students and referring them to “mental health care;” supporting state-based mental health programs aimed young people ages 16-to-25; and training 5,000 additional mental health professionals with an emphasis on treating these students and young adults.

The goal is to have more Americans seek mental health treatment, and make sure that their insurance pays for it.

The Affordable Care Act is a major player in this big brother view of mental heath care, expanding mental health benefits and federal insurance parity protections for more than 60 million Americans. There are 314 million Americans, so this expansion is aimed at roughly 20% of the entire U.S. population. The Affordable Care Act requires new health plans to cover depression screenings for adults and behavioral assessments for children, and soon insurance companies will no longer be able to deny health care coverage to anyone because of a pre-existing mental health condition.

Are you looking forward to this? Are you not excited about the government guaranteeing “treatment” for all the fraudulent mental disorders in the new DSM-5? Get ready to sign up, because the Whitehouse knows what’s good for you!

The only thing is, they are not talking about the rampant fraud and abuse in the mental health care industry, and the very real damage that psychiatric drugs and treatments cause. They are not funding any efforts to curb the fraud and abuse. They are certainly not suggesting that psychiatry itself is a fraudulent and abusive practice.

What can you do about it? As a non-political organization, we are not suggesting political action. But we are suggesting that you Find Out and Fight Back in a manner consistent with your own views in the matter. Occasionally we might make some particular suggestions about what you can do.

Speaking of which, here are some suggestions.

FIND OUT

Review the material on the various CCHR websites and in the various CCHR publications and documentaries. You can start here: www.CCHRSTL.org.

If you have not seen any of the CCHR documentaries, watch them now. You can request a free information kit here.

Satisfy yourself that psychiatry and the current mental health care industry in America does not have your best interests at heart.

Sure, people can have mental trauma, and they need effective care. However, psychiatry is harmful junk science; your family and friends deserve better. Find out about the alternatives to harmful psychiatric treatments.

Ask yourself how many people you know who are taking psychiatric drugs, and if you really think this is OK.

FIGHT BACK

Support CCHR by becoming a member of CCHR St. Louis and request a DVD documentary. Show the documentary to your family, friends and associates; to your school groups and church groups; to your legislators; to your attorney and your insurance provider. You get the idea. Tell us what you did.

Give a CCHR documentary or booklet to someone.

Contact your local, state and federal officials, and let them know what you think about the fraud and abuse in the mental health industry. Write Letters to the Editor of your local news media.

Forward this newsletter to everyone you know and recommend they subscribe.

Volunteer some time to help CCHR fight back. Donate some funds to help CCHR fight back.

Execute a Living Will — a Letter of Protection Against Unwanted Psychiatric Incarceration and/or Treatment.

Report all instances of complaints and adverse psychotropic drug reactions to your national drug regulatory agency. In the U.S. this is at www.fda.gov/medwatch.

There are many other ways to help. The alternative may be a United States where everyone is taking psychiatric drugs on government orders.

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Amanda Bynes case and its relevance to Missouri

Posted on August 18, 2013 by cchrstl

Amanda Bynes case and its relevance to Missouri

Former child star Amanda Bynes was committed to a psychiatric facility and reportedly is being treated for mental symptoms labeled as schizophrenia. According to California law, doctors can extend her commitment if she is “gravely disabled as a result of a mental disorder.”

This case is relevant for Missouri because of the legal standard used to commit her, that she was “gravely disabled.” That is not currently allowed in Missouri, but there was legislation introduced in the last session that would have allowed that, and it will likely be introduced again in the next legislative session.

Missouri House Bill 929 purportedly would help parents deal with their adult children who go off the rails before it gets to the point of physical harm — just like Amanda Bynes’ parents are trying to do. She is literally the “poster child” for this type of legislation and will help fertilize the ground for passage next year unless we write our Missouri legislators and let them know what we think about involuntary, or civil, commitment.

The bill changes the standards for determining when a person is in need of mental health detention and evaluation. The person must be held in a psychiatric facility if mentally ill and “gravely disabled” which is defined as “a condition in which a person, as a result of mental illness or mental disorder, lacks judgment in the management of his or her resources and in the conduct of his or her social relations to the extent that his or her health or safety is significantly endangered and he or she lacks the capacity to understand that this is so.”

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 — be it a small clinic, private hospital or a government–run institution. And commitment laws have been used for every wrong reason: financial, sexual, business advantage, inheritance, political suppression, and even to maintain governmental secrecy.

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

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.

Involuntary commitment creates an astonishing debt load on our health care system. Given a very conservative daily cost of $940 for hospitalization and treatment, each involuntary commitment costs around $16,700. With up to 1.5 million people committed yearly, and using the conservative individual figure of $16,700, the annual health care drain is almost $25 billion! And this is paying for a service that most would refuse if given the chance.

The Missouri Revised Statutes (RSMo) Chapter 632 Section 300, Chapter 660 Section 290, and Chapter 632 Section 305 specify the conditions under which, and by whom, someone can be forcibly incarcerated in a mental health facility.

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.

Download and read the full CCHR report “Involuntary Psychiatric Commitment – A Crack In The Door Of Constitutional Freedoms“. Forward this newsletter to your family, friends and associates, and recommend that they subscribe.

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