Posts Tagged ‘Coercive psychiatry’

Britney Spears’ Conservatorship Challenge

Monday, August 9th, 2021

[Condensed from Jan Eastgate, President, CCHR International]

The pop icon’s traumatic story of being held captive by a punitive guardianship law, with abusive psychiatric evaluations and forced mood-altering drugs, has prompted legislators to act. But proposed laws, while applaudable, fall short on needed protections.

Conservatorships, which place guardians over the control of a person’s life when deemed incompetent, are often based on a subjective psychiatric evaluation. As such, while it is very easy for someone to be placed under a conservatorship order because of a psychiatric diagnosis, it’s very hard to get out of one. The diagnosis is stigmatizing and is hard to disprove because of its subjectivity. It can also expand over the years, especially where there may be deterioration in the individual from powerful psychotropic drugs prescribed to them.

The late professor of psychiatry and co-founder of Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) Dr. Thomas Szasz, warned against state intervention that allows psychiatry to circumvent individual and constitutional rights. He called it “The Therapeutic State,” where the state gives psychiatry the power to be an institution of social control. “When I use the term therapeutic state, I use it ironically, it’s therapeutic for the people who are doing the locking up, who are doing the therapy, it’s not therapeutic for the victims, for the patients,” Szasz said. “The therapeutic state seeks to remedy personal and social problems defined as diseases; its beneficiaries are often ‘helped’ against their will; it is a totalitarian state, governed by the rule of therapeutic discretion.”

CCHR asks legislators to review the World Health Organization’s recent guideline for protections of people with mental health disabilities. WHO recommends countries “repeal guardianship and other substitute decision-making legislation and replace it with laws that recognize legal capacity and promote supported decision-making, including the use of advance plans [living wills] and best interpretation of will and preference.”

In Britney’s case, the conservatorship was put into place in 2008, while she struggled with her mental health, and gave her father broad control over her life and finances. Britney obtained a court order recently to reinforce her inherent right to obtain the legal counsel of her choice. Her new attorney must petition the court to have the current conservatorship removed.

Britney pleaded that the conservatorship over her affairs has made her feel “demoralized and enslaved.” She has been subjected to numerous psychiatric evaluations and medications, stating: “I want to end the conservatorship without being evaluated,” she said. The system in place is “abusive,” Britney said in court, accusing her conservators of forcing her to take mood-stabilizing drugs and perform against her will.

Britney also told the court that her previous psychiatrist (who died in 2019) was abusive in his treatment of her. She alleged that she was subjected to lengthy psychological evaluations, forced into a $60,000-a-month inpatient facility and told that she wouldn’t be able to see her children if she failed to comply. “To be totally honest with you, when [the doctor] passed away, I got on my knees and thanked God,” she said. She was then forced to see a therapist three days a week. Paparazzi humiliated her by taking photos of her crying after the emotional sessions. She asked the judge last month to be allowed to be part of her own care plan.

NBC News reported that allegations of abusive psychiatrists in conservatorships are not uncommon. Doctors are asked to file capacity declarations with the court which form about 75 percent of how judges base their decisions to keep someone under court-ordered guardianship.

The WHO’s “Guidance on community mental health services: Promoting person-centered and rights-based approaches” released in June 2021, is very clear about abuse in the mental health system: “Many people with mental health conditions and psychosocial disabilities are denied the right to exercise their legal capacity; that is, the right to make decisions for oneself and to have those decisions respected by others. Based on stigmatizing assumptions about their status – that their decisions are unreasonable or bring negative consequences, or that their decision-making skills are deficient, or that they cannot understand and make decisions for themselves or communicate their will and preferences – it has become acceptable in services in countries throughout the world, for others to step in and make decisions for people with mental health conditions and psychosocial disabilities. In many countries, this is implemented through schemes like guardianship, supervision and surrogacy, and is legitimized by laws and practices.”

As an organization that has exposed abuses in the mental health industry for more than fifty years, CCHR has definitely come across unscrupulous guardians that have been able to secure the help of psychiatrists to maintain control over an individual, especially their finances. The diagnostic aspect of conservatorship needs closer scrutiny.

State laws need to ensure that someone who is subject to a psychiatric evaluation also has freedom of choice and the right to obtain a second medical—as opposed to a psychiatric—opinion. Contact your state legislators and express your viewpoint about this.

The WHO guidelines are clear about protecting individual rights to choose. It also recommends people sign a Living Will to express their treatment and guardianship preferences should their liberty be threatened by competency issues.

Something is Rotten in Canton

Monday, July 19th, 2021

Let’s Electroshock Children Who Misbehave

In March of 2020 the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) banned the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, Massachusetts from using electric shock devices on their autistic and other mentally troubled children. In July of 2021 a federal appeals court removed the ban. The school is once again electro shocking about 60 students a day.

The school administers electric skin shocks in a form of “aversion therapy” for aggressive or self-injurious behavior. School staff trigger a shock to a child by using a remote control that zaps children with electric current when they misbehave. The school calls this a “medical device.” Since 1987 a state court must determine that such forced treatment is appropriate.

This electrical stimulation device delivers a powerful and painful electric shock to the wearer’s skin in an effort to punish. This school is the only facility in the country that uses coercive electric shock therapy to “treat” individuals who severely self-injure or are aggressive.

The FDA finally recognized in March 2020 (after 20 years) that these devices “present substantial psychological and physical risks and, in fact, can worsen underlying symptoms—while leading to heightened anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.”

Unfortunately, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturned the FDA ban on July 6, 2021, stating that the ban was a regulation of the practice of medicine, which is outside the FDA’s area of authority.

The History of Abuse

In April 2016, the FDA first proposed banning electrical stimulation devices for self-injurious or aggressive behavior.

In 2018, the media reported that the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center would be allowed to continue administering electric shocks to its special needs students after a judge ruled the procedure conformed to the “accepted standard of care,” in spite of the practice being condemned by disability rights groups and the ACLU.

On December 3, 2018, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of The Organization of American States published a Precautionary Measure calling for the school to immediately cease electroshocking special needs children as a disciplinary measure.

In March 2020 the FDA finally determined that the devices presented a substantial and unreasonable risk to self-injurious and aggressive patients, justifying banning the devices for that purpose.

The Appeals Court

The appeals court examined the question, “Does the FDA have legal authority to ban an otherwise legal device from a particular use?”

The court concluded that current law prohibits the FDA from regulating the practice of medicine, and therefore it vacated the FDA’s rule banning electrical stimulation devices for self-injurious and aggressive behavior. There was one dissenting opinion; the Chief Judge found in favor of the FDA. [Read the full court opinion here.]

Of course, the lie in the argument is that electro shocking children is “practicing medicine.” In fact it is torture, not medicine.

The Case Against Torture

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment has remarked that Electro Convulsive Treatment (ECT) amounts to torture. The World Health Organization (WHO) has also stated that there are no indications for the use of ECT on minors. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) calls for a ban on “forced treatment.”

Granted that ECT is more severe than electric skin shocks, just have someone force you to stick your finger into an electric wall socket and tell us that this is not torture.

Disguising social control as medical treatment is a deceit which conceals an abuse.” This is a de facto abuse of power, as it seeks to limit and control the individual instead of helping the individual to get better and improve their conditions in life.

In the United Nations July 24, 2018 Annual Report of the High Commissioner “Mental health and human rights,” it states, “States should ensure that all health care and services, including all mental health care and services, are based on the free and informed consent of the individual concerned, and that legal provisions and policies permitting the use of coercion and forced interventions, including involuntary hospitalization and institutionalization, the use of restraints, psychosurgery, forced medication, and other forced measures aimed at correcting or fixing an actual or perceived impairment, including those allowing for consent or authorization by a third party, are repealed. States should reframe and recognize these practices as constituting torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and as amounting to discrimination against users of mental health services, persons with mental health conditions and persons with psychosocial disabilities.”

The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, formally adopted on December 10, 1948 states, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

CCHR’s own Mental Health Declaration of Human Rights, written in 1969, states these rights, among others:
“The right to refuse any treatment the patient considers harmful.”
“No person shall be given psychiatric or psychological treatment against his or her will.”

Sign the petition to ban electroshock here.

Take Action – Missouri Legislature – Very Bad Bill SB551

Friday, March 26th, 2021

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

The Missouri General Assembly is the state legislature of the State of Missouri and is composed of two chambers: the House of Representatives and the Senate. The General Assembly is responsible for creating laws for governing the State of Missouri. The Revised Statutes of Missouri (RSMo) are electronically available on this site:  http://revisor.mo.gov/.

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

The 101st General Assembly Regular Session convened on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, and will end on Friday, May 14,  2021.

This time we’d like to discuss a bill about which we’d like you to contact your legislators. Please write, call or visit to express from your viewpoint as an individual or professional, and not as a representative of any organization. Let us know the details and any responses you get. The full text of each bill can be found on the House and Senate Joint Bill Tracking site. Just put the bill number into the search box (e.g. SB551).

Check out our handy discussion about How to write to a legislator.

If you are not a voting resident of Missouri, you can find out about legislation in your own state and write your own state legislators; also, we are looking for volunteers to monitor legislation in Missouri and the states surrounding Missouri — let us know if you’d like to help out.

Very Bad Bill

This is a bill that furthers psychiatric abuses of human rights, and is moving swiftly toward becoming law. Please express your opposition and opinions about this to your legislators and copy the sponsor.

SB551 – Senate Bill 551 – sponsored by Senator Karla May (Democrat, District 04 – Parts of St. Louis City & St. Louis County). Related to SB26.

“This act establishes the “Critical Incident Stress Management Program” within the Department of Public Safety. The program shall provide services for peace officers to assist in coping with stress and potential psychological trauma resulting from a response to a critical incident or emotionally difficult event.

“This act provides that all peace officers shall be required to meet with a program service provider once every three to five years for a mental health check-in. The program service provider shall send a notification to the peace officer’s commanding officer that he or she completed such check-in.

“This act creates the “988 Public Safety Fund” within the state treasury and shall be used by the Department of Public Safety for the purposes of providing services for peace officers to assist in coping with stress and potential psychological trauma resulting from a response to a critical incident or emotionally difficult event. Such services may include consultation, risk assessment, education, intervention, and other crisis intervention services.”

This act is substantially similar to provisions in SB 26.

Why is this bill bad?

This bill coerces police officers into the psychiatric mental health system, where they can be prescribed harmful and addictive psychotropic drugs which have known side effects of violence and suicide.

The estimated net financial effect is to cost the State of Missouri $7,243,500 over the next four years for servicing roughly 24,145 police officers. This does not include the costs for full-time personnel to implement the program, nor does it include the additional costs for the Missouri State Highway Patrol. 

When we speak of “coercive psychiatry” we mean that psychiatry is used as a means of social control against which one has no recourse and cannot fight back. This bill is a prime example of enforced treatment.

Disguising social control as medical treatment is a deceit which conceals an abuse. This is a de facto abuse of power, as it seeks to limit and control the individual instead of helping the individual to get better and improve their conditions in life.

Coercive psychiatry is not intended to cure anything. On the contrary, psychiatry is the science of control and entrapment, and having power over distressed and vulnerable individuals. Wherever men have advocated and advanced totalitarianism, they have used psychiatric principles to control society, to put limits on individual freedom, to suppress and punish dissent, and to trap people into worsening conditions. It is actually a mis-use of power, since its intentions are to make less of a person’s self-determinism and give more power to others and the state.

Download and read the full CCHR report “Community Ruin — Psychiatry’s Coercive ‘Care’ — Report and recommendations on the failure of community mental health and other coercive psychiatric programs.

Zejdź z moich włosów [“Get Out Of My Hair”]

Monday, November 30th, 2020

(Said by Charlie on Season 2 Episode 13 of Two and a Half Men, 17 January 2005.)

What one might say in English as “Get Out Of My Face”!

The New Face of Psychiatry

[Reference: “The New Face of Psychiatry” by Beverly K. Eakman, October 13, 2009]

The psychopharmaceutical industry has hit the jackpot with “perception management”. Behavioral scientists, psychologists, psychiatrists, educators, and public relations, marketing & advertising gurus all depend upon perception management.

It used to be called “conditioning,” then “group dynamics,” then “behavior modification” and “molding public opinion”. The name changed as various government and private institutions took it up for their own purposes. Bottom line, it’s coercing people to react in a predicted stimulus-response manner.

The Russian communists called it “psychopolitics.

Today, it is coercive psychiatry, plain and simple. People labeled “mentally ill” may be deprived of their freedom and coerced to take drugs or endure electric shock without further consideration.

No person should ever be forced to undergo electric shock treatment, psychosurgery, the enforced administration of mind-altering drugs, or other coercive psychiatric treatment. Governments should outlaw such abuses.

Insist that community treatment and involuntary commitment laws that rely upon mandatory and thereby coercive measures be abolished, and dismantle or prevent “mental health courts” which are another conduit for coercive psychiatric treatment.

Download and read the full CCHR reportCommunity Ruin — Psychiatry’s Coercive ‘Care’ — Report and recommendations on the failure of community mental health and other coercive psychiatric programs.

Get psychiatry out of your face!

Are You Certain About That?

Monday, October 26th, 2020

Definitions
Certainty: Quality or state of being fixed, settled, specific but unspecified character, dependable, reliable, indisputable, inevitable, assured.

[Originally from Latin certus, past participle of cernere “to sift, discern, decide, determine”.]

An even better definition is “A gradient scale of clarity of observation.” By gradient scale we mean a gradually increasing (or decreasing) degree of something.

Scale of Certainty

For example, one might say that certainty is a relative scale from “sure thing” at the top, through “maybe” somewhere in the middle, down to “totally uncertain” at the bottom. Dead, by the way, is not the bottom, exemplified by the phrase “dead sure.”

An uncertainty, or maybe, is the product of two certainties, one a positive conviction and the other a negative conviction. Anxiety, indecision, uncertainty, in other words a state of “maybe”, can exist only in the presence of poor observation or the inability to observe.

People who are at low levels of awareness, in other words relatively uncertain, do not observe; they substitute for observation beliefs, preconceptions, evaluations, suppositions, and even physical pain by which to obtain their certainties.

The certainty of an impact, or pain, is a relatively false certainty. A certainty carried home in terms of physical impact is not self-determined, it is other-determined. The rehabilitation of self-determinism, or the ability to direct oneself, should be the aim of all effective therapies.

Psychiatric “Certainty”

The mistaken use of shock by psychiatry upon the insane seeks to deliver sufficient certainty to cause them to be less insane. However, it only produces stimulus-response behavior, not self-determined behavior. Certainty delivered by force, pain, blows and shock eventually brings about only unconsciousness and the certainty of unawareness.

Thus we see that psychiatry as currently practiced does not and never can cause an improvement in mental health, since it relies solely upon shock as its treatments.

Psychiatry’s brutal therapies can now be seen for what they really are: attempts to overwhelm an individual, eventually rendering them unaware of their mental traumas.

Harmful Psychiatric “Treatments”

All psychiatric treatments are based upon shock of one form or another.

Electroshock, also called electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), creates trauma to the brain.

Psychosurgery, such as prefrontal lobotomy, creates trauma to the brain.

Deadly restraints, create trauma to the individual.

Harmful and addictive psychotropic drugs, often called chemical restraints, create trauma to the individual.

Involuntary commitment, creates trauma to the individual.

Therapist sexual abuse, creates trauma to the individual.

Talk therapy, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), is basically telling the patient what is wrong with them (evaluating for them), and is thus just another form of shock therapy.

Being threatened with involuntary commitment or punishment for refusal of treatment, or
Being coerced into hospitalization or treatment, create trauma to the individual.

The Real Problem

The real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness” and stigmatize unwanted behavior or study problems as “diseases,” using the psychiatric billing bible Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as their justification. The bottom line is that all psychiatric “treatments” are harmful.

Contact your local, state and federal officials, let them know what you think about this and urge them to defund psychiatric research and treatments.

The Gray Shades Of Gaslighting

Monday, March 23rd, 2020
Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation or brainwashing intended to gain control of another person or group and make them question themselves, their memory, their perception, or their sanity.

The term originated from the 1938 play (and subsequent film adaptations) Gas Light, where the protagonist’s husband slowly manipulated her into believing she’s going mad by dimming the gaslights and telling her she was imagining it.

This is apparently a common Hollywood theme; I recall seeing the same premise in a 1960’s Perry Mason episode.

If it’s common in Hollywood, chances are it’s common in real life.

In the current political and social climate, fake news is the new standard for gaslighting. Frankly, this is nothing really new; the Russians have been at it since communism began around 1844, in one form or another.

The psychiatric Connection
The 1920’s Russian Revolutionary Communistic plan for world domination as originally conceived used psychiatry as a weapon designed to undermine the social fabric of the target country. The practice continues today using mind-altering psychiatric drugs to overwhelm a person and create terrorists who have been drug-deluded into committing heinous crimes against humanity.
Not only do psychiatrists commit gaslighting in the form of manipulating terrorists to do their dirty work, but also they cover their tracks by diagnosing and treating the results of such manipulation. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) labels as a mental disorder being a “Victim of terrorism or torture”; or more generally, being a victim of psychological abuse.

And on the other side a person can be diagnosed by a psychiatrist as a perpetrator of psychological abuse.

They’ve got you both coming and going; gaslighting and being gaslighted. And then they can prescribe an addictive, mind-altering psychiatric drug to keep you there, since they don’t keep collecting your insurance unless they can keep diagnosing you and “treating” you with psychiatric drugs.

Don’t think we’re making this up; it’s right there in the DSM.

Coercive psychiatrists are themselves often thought by their patients to be perpetrators of gaslighting. This can create a conflict where the patient is unable to trust their own sense of their feelings and surroundings in favor of evaluations by the therapist. Gaslighting has also been observed between patients and staff in inpatient psychiatric facilities.

All in all such manipulations are unhealthy. Since the psychiatric industry itself admits it has no capacity to cure, we observe psychology and psychiatry taking advantage of vulnerable patients for their own purposes instead of the therapeutic care and treatment of individuals who are suffering emotional disturbance.

Don’t be caught gaslighted — execute a Living WillLetter of Protection from Psychiatric Incarceration and/or Treatment.”

Psychiatry: An Industry Of Death

Friday, January 31st, 2020
Psychiatry is probably the single most destructive force that has affected society within the last sixty years.
—Dr. Thomas Szasz, M.D. Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus

An unflinching documentary investigation into psychiatry’s long and dark history is now available online on demand.

Find out about psychiatry’s origins in Germany’s inhumane asylums up to its present day practice of taking everyday life experiences and labeling them as mental illnesses.

Mental health professionals, survivors and their family members, give harrowing accounts of the multiple abuses perpetrated upon them and an unsuspecting public in the form of mass-drugging of children and adults, forced institutionalization and torturous electroshock therapy, for the sake of profit.

This is the most complete and devastating documentary of psychiatric abuse ever produced. In this gripping exposé, the $5.4 billion ECT business, its history, practitioners and devastating results are revealed in graphic detail.

This riveting presentation, two years in the making, lays bare the destruction wrought by psychiatrists upon every sector of our society.

Graphic footage from archival and current films depicting psychiatrists in action, eye-opening interviews with medical experts and moving accounts from victims and their families, make this the most complete and devastating documentary of psychiatric abuse ever produced.

Governments, insurance companies and private individuals pay billions of dollars each year to psychiatrists in pursuit of cures that psychiatrists admit do not exist. Psychiatry’s “therapies” have caused millions of deaths.

Watch this documentary now and find out why psychiatry is called An Industry of Death.

Psychiatry: An Industry of Death
Psychiatry: An Industry of Death

Power to the Patients

Monday, January 27th, 2020
Listening to a radio program about considerations of political power in the Middle East made us wonder more generally about the concept of power. Their main consideration was the accumulation of power in order to control various elements of society. We noticed how this might apply to abuses in the mental health industry.

Power is one of those English words with multiple definitions. Generally it means “the ability to act or produce an effect”. In other contexts, for example in physics, it has the definition “the time rate of doing work.” In the referenced radio program it meant “relating to political, social, or economic control.” There are other specific definitions in mathematics, religion, business, law, etc.

In a very practical personal sense power means “being able to do what one is doing when one is doing it.” In another practical sense it means “the ability to hold a position in space.” Power represents total abundance where nothing can strike you down. A Zone of Power could be considered the area over which one has responsibility and control.

We ask how all this might relate to patient abuse in the mental health industry.

Coercive Psychiatry

When we speak of “coercive psychiatry” we mean that psychiatry is used as a means of social control against which one has no recourse and cannot fight back. Prime examples are involuntary commitment and enforced treatment.

As the late Professor Thomas Szasz said, “coercive psychiatrists function as judges and jailers not physicians and healers” with the power of life and death over the most vulnerable people.

“Disguising social control as medical treatment is a deceit which conceals an abuse.” This is a de facto abuse of power, as it seeks to limit and control the individual instead of helping the individual to get better and improve their conditions in life.

Coercive psychiatry is not intended to cure anything. On the contrary, psychiatry is the science of control and entrapment, and having power over distressed and vulnerable individuals. Wherever men have advocated and advanced totalitarianism, they have used psychiatric principles to control society, to put limits on individual freedom, to suppress and punish dissent, and to trap people into worsening conditions. It is actually a mis-use of power, since its intentions are to make less of a person’s self-determinism and give more power to others and the state.

All too often people may mistakenly disparage their own strength or power; do not allow psychiatry to crush you even further.

Click here to read more about psychopolitics — the art of asserting power over the thoughts and loyalties of individuals and the conquest of enemy nations through “mental healing”.