Citizens Commission on Human Rights of St. Louis

As a student at Trinity College, Cambridge (1810-1812), the English mathematician Charles Babbage (1791-1871) was a member of the Extractors Club, dedicated to liberating its members from the madhouse, should any be committed to one.

Of course, at the time the most famous psychiatric institution was the Bethlem Royal Hospital in London, variously known as St. Mary Bethlehem, Bethlem Hospital, Bethlehem Hospital and Bedlam.

Bedlam became notorious for the brutal ill-treatment meted out to the mentally ill. In the 18th century people used to go to Bedlam to stare at the lunatics. For a penny one could peer into their cells, view the freaks of the “show of Bethlehem” and laugh at their antics. Entry was free on the first Tuesday of the month. In 1814 alone, there were 96,000 such visits.

The word “bedlam” became synonymous with an insane asylum, or any place or situation of noisy uproar and confusion.

One might be confused and noisy indeed if one were involuntarily committed to such an institution and forcibly given psychiatric drugs, as happens frequently today. The fact is, every 1¼ minutes, someone in the U.S. becomes the next victim of involuntary incarceration in a psychiatric hospital.

While involuntary commitment laws enrich the psychiatric industry, they not only deprive individuals of their freedom of choice, but milk millions of health insurance dollars annually from private, state, national and military health plans.

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

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

Mental Health Counselor Gets 35 Years in Prison

By Jay Weaver The Miami Herald jweaver@MiamiHerald.com

The sentencing of Marianella Valera, 40, came only days after the same judge sent her 49-year-old boyfriend, Lawrence Duran, to prison for 50 years. The pair ran Miami-based American Therapeutic Corp, which prosecutors say defrauded the taxpayer-funded Medicare program of more than $200 million.

The couple’s company, with clinics stretching from Miami to Fort Lauderdale to Orlando, collected $87 million in Medicare payments after submitting $205 million in false claims. The couple paid kickbacks to recruiters to supply patients suffering from dementia, Alzheimer’s and addictions, but they could not have benefited from the company’s purported group therapy sessions.

Valera and Duran also threw “charting” parties, where they and other American Therapeutic employees altered patients’ records to make it look like they needed the purported group therapy sessions when they didn’t.

A total of 34 people, including American Therapeutic employees, doctors, therapists, nurses and recruiters, have been charged in the ongoing fraud case, which is being investigated by the FBI and Health and Human Services-Office of Inspector General.

Previously, federal agents busted 42 South Florida suspects on Medicare fraud charges as part of a Justice Department sweep, including the owners of Biscayne Milieu Health Center, a Fort Lauderdale psychiatrist, Dr. Gary Kushner, patient recruiters and assisted living facility landlords. Out-of-state patients, suffering from disabilities and addictions, were lured to South Florida with the promise of a roof over their head. But once they arrived, with their valuable Medicare cards in hand, they would be squeezed into rundown assisted-living facilities and steered to purported mental-health programs — at a multimillion-dollar cost to taxpayers, authorities say. If they dropped out of the group therapy sessions, the assisted living facility owners would toss the patients out into the street.

Crime in Mental Health Care

For decades psychiatrists and psychologists have claimed a monopoly over the field of mental health. Governments and private health insurance companies have provided them with billions of dollars every year to treat “mental illness,” only to face industry demands for even more funds to improve the supposed, ever-worsening state of mental health. No other industry can afford to fail consistently and expect to get more funding.

A significant portion of these appropriations and insurance reimbursements has been lost due to financial fraud within the mental health industry, an international problem estimated to cost more than a hundred billion dollars every year. The United States loses approximately $100 billion to health care fraud each year, with up to $40 billion of this due to fraudulent practices in the mental health industry.

For more information about psychiatric fraud, download and read the free CCHR booklet, Massive Fraud – Psychiatry’s Corrupt Industry – Report and recommendations on the criminal mental health monopoly.

The case of Maryanne Godboldo and the defense of her daughter against forced drugging by the state has quickly become legendary.

Earlier this year Godboldo, the mother of a 13-year old girl, was being accused of neglecting her child by refusing to administer the antipsychotic drug Risperdal, a drug so dangerous it is documented by international drug regulatory agencies to cause aggression, cardiac arrest, fatal blood clots, liver failure, mania, suicide and violence. Child Protective Services, accompanied by armed police officers, a SWAT team and a tank, arrived at her door with a court order to take her child away.

So what did Godboldo do? A 12-hour standoff ensued, and this mother, who was simply acting within her rights to protect her child from harm, was arrested.

Months later a web of lies and deceit involving Child Protective Services has been uncovered, and Maryanne Godboldo is not only still fighting, but winning the battle.

Click here to read more about the twisted web of lies in the Maryanne Godboldo case.

Click here to read how Johnson and Johnson, Risperdal’s drug makers, currently face $1 billion in federal and state lawsuits.

Watch the video from the Fox Business Channel below:

Dozens arrested in Medicare mental health fraud

Sep 7th, 2011
By Jay Weaver
Miami Herald

Federal agents busted 42 South Florida suspects on Medicare fraud charges as part of a Justice Department sweep targeting hotspots from Miami to Los Angeles.

Out-of-state patients, suffering from disabilities and addictions, were lured to South Florida with the promise of a roof over their head. But once they arrived, with their valuable Medicare cards in hand, they would be squeezed into rundown Assisted-Living Facilities and steered to purported mental-health programs — at a multimillion-dollar cost to taxpayers, authorities say. If they dropped out of the group therapy sessions, the ALF owners would toss the patients out into the street.

Collectively, they’re accused of submitting $160 million in false claims to Medicare for services that were either not needed or provided to patients.

The biggest case was the new indictment of Biscayne Milieu and 23 defendants, including the family owners, a psychiatrist, Dr. Gary Kushner, patient recruiters and ALF operators. The clinic owners are accused of paying recruiters and landlords to lure out-of-state patients into the scheme.

Crime in Mental Health Care

For decades psychiatrists and psychologists have claimed a monopoly over the field of mental health. Governments and private health insurance companies have provided them with billions of dollars every year to treat “mental illness,” only to face industry demands for even more funds to improve the supposed, ever-worsening state of mental health. No other industry can afford to fail consistently and expect to get more funding.

A significant portion of these appropriations and insurance reimbursements has been lost due to financial fraud within the mental health industry, an international problem estimated to cost more than a hundred billion dollars every year. The United States loses approximately $100 billion to health care fraud each year, with up to $40 billion of this due to fraudulent practices in the mental health industry.

For more information about psychiatric fraud, download and read the free CCHR booklet, Massive Fraud – Psychiatry’s Corrupt Industry – Report and recommendations on the criminal mental health monopoly.

According to an August 17, 2011 news article in the Edwardsville Intelligencer (Madison County, Illinois), “A teenager was insane and ‘involuntarily intoxicated’ by prescription depression medicine when he gunned down two sleeping neighbors in a tiny southern Illinois town before trying to kill himself with a staple gun in his garage, his lawyer told jurors at the boy’s murder trial.”

Sixteen-year-old Clifford Baker had been prescribed an antidepression drug two weeks prior to the shooting.

Psycho/pharma spends billions of dollars a year marketing mental “disorders” and drugs for kids—yet these drugs are documented by international drug regulatory agencies to cause mania, psychosis, hallucinations, suicide, violence, homicidal ideation, heart attack, stroke and death. What’s more, they are being prescribed for psychiatric disorders that are simply a checklist of behaviors.

Big Pharma—Define ‘Better’
Click here to watch video featuring Chill EB

Get the facts here http://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-disorders/.