New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced a major effort on November 29, 2022 to involuntarily commit the homeless and anyone found suffering from mental trauma.
Involuntary Commitment, sometimes euphemistically called “Civil Commitment”, is a profound violation of Human Rights, and a major tool of coercive psychiatry to funnel government funds into the mental health system.
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.
The World Health Organization (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.”
There is a heavy ongoing push country-wide, called Crisis Intervention Teams (CIT), to train police officers to “handle” difficult situations involving “suspected mental illness.” In the name of “help”, it removes unwanted citizens from the street and forces them, using government funds, into mental health facilities.
Your mental health, and the mental health of your family, friends and associates, can be questioned by CIT-trained police. If this makes you uncomfortable, execute a Living Will (Letter of Protection from Psychiatric Incarceration and/or Treatment) and then express your opinion to your local, state and federal officials, especially if you live in New York City.
Faith (some of the many definitions): * confidence, trust or loyalty for a person or thing * belief that is not based on objective observations * a system of religious beliefs
[From the Latin root fidere “to trust”.]
In Hebrew, faith is emunah ?????. It is an innate conviction, a perception of truth that transcends, rather than evades, reason.
Furthermore, faith is confidence in one’s abilities, especially confidence in one’s ability to create. An individual who cannot create has to hold on to what they already have; thus the obsessiveness of some faiths.
Faith is not the same as Faith-In. When one has Faith In something or someone, there is an inflow of agreement from another to self, thus placing oneself under the control of another. This is what hypnotism is. Faith by itself has no flow, is native to the individual, and expresses that one is in full control of one’s own beingness, doingness and havingness.
The opposite of faith is distrust (i.e. trust nothing) or disbelief. At the top of this dichotomy [Faith/Distrust] is Life; at the bottom is Death.
The philosopher who said “have faith” was mistaken, for one does not “have” faith, one “is” faith. That is, the source of faith is oneself. This misunderstanding leads one to be afraid to understand, substituting obsessive faith [belief] for actual understanding.
The scale of faith is very close to the scale of self-determinism. At the top of the scale, an individual’s greatest health, sanity and effectiveness are achieved with the greatest self-determinism, and thus the greatest faith. At the bottom of the scale, where self-determinism is lacking and other-determinism predominates, ill-health, insanity, and ineffectiveness are the norm, and thus the greatest distrust.
One could say that self-determinism is the ability to direct oneself. The technical definition of self-determinism is the relative ability to determine location in time and space, and the ability to create and destroy space, time, energy and matter.
Faith Corrupted By Psychiatry
Contrast this with 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, which is destructive of one’s self-determinism, causing distrust instead of faith. Prime examples are involuntary commitment, electroshock, and enforced treatment.
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 yours even further.
Contact your local, state and federal officials and tell them to stop funding coercive psychiatry.
Coercion is “built into mental health systems, including in professional education and training, and is reinforced through national mental health and other legislation.“ – World Health Organization, June 2021
CITIZENS COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS International denounces American Psychiatric Association (APA) executives for failing to address the World Health Organization and UN Human Rights Council reports that demand psychiatry move away from coercive practices and towards human rights.
The WHO condemned coercive psychiatric practices, which it says, “are pervasive and are increasingly used in services in countries around the world, 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.”
Psychiatry is a coercive practice. One can see this intuitively, as no one would voluntarily subject themselves to psychiatric treatment knowing its devastating consequences.
By ignoring this, the APA supports involuntary detainment and forced treatment, and a lack of accountability for the inherent abuses so rife in the mental health system.
Involuntary commitment laws must be abolished and this unconstitutional and coercive practice stopped.
Any psychiatrist found to be using coercion, threats or malice to get people to “accept” psychiatric treatment, or who hospitalizes a patient against their will should be charged with assault and false imprisonment.
Write, call and visit your local, state and federal representatives and tell them what you think about this.
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.
The child mental health industry is a system that puts profit above children’s lives, preying on unsuspecting parents and taking advantage of disadvantaged children, such as those covered under Medicaid (state and federal health coverage for lower income families and those with disabilities). It is rife with abuse, yet this hugely profitable industry is rarely held to account for its rampant abuse of our most vulnerable—children.
It is an industry which milks the foster care system for huge profit, where children are four times more likely to be given mind-altering psychotropic drugs than non-foster care children, and much more likely to be prescribed cocktails of these drugs.
It is an industry that electroshocks children including babies, using state funds for lower income families (Medicaid).
It is a business masquerading as healthcare which sells parents and legislators on the idea of helping troubled children. Yet this help is more often simply incarcerating children in behavioral schools or psychiatric wards, where treatment consists of psychiatric drug cocktails, degradation, solitary confinement, and brutal restraint procedures which have killed children. And all of this is done under the guise of helping children.
The abuse is not limited to one chain of psychiatric facilities or one mode of psychiatric behavioral “treatment.” This abuse in the child mental health industry is systemic—yet unknown to most of the public.
For example: Information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reveals that 19 states are currently administering electroshock to children, with 7 of those states electroshocking children aged 0-5 years old. These are all children being electroshocked while psychiatrists and facilities bill Medicaid for their “treatment.”
Yet another example — Only one month after the world witnessed the tragic death of George Floyd, unable to breathe as he was physically restrained and held to the ground, 16-year-old Cornelius Frederick, an African American, was physically restrained at Sequel Youth & Family Services’ facility in Michigan, and also cried out, “I can’t breathe!” before passing out. Thirty hours later, on May 1, 2020, he was dead. Cornelius had gone into cardiac arrest while being restrained by Lakeside Academy staff, a residential psychiatric facility that treated foster care and other kids with behavioral issues. A witness to Cornelius’s restraint said, “[T]his kid threw a sandwich. He was being unruly and they couldn’t control him. So, four guys…the size of rugby players tackled him.”
Cornelius is not alone; countless children have suffocated and died after being subjected to deadly restraints within these psychiatric facilities and behavioral treatment centers.
This is not healthcare. This is child abuse. And it is just the tip of the iceberg.
Please help us to support the cause and end the abuse of children in the psychiatric industry. We are making incredible progress, as many of the psychiatric facilities abusing these children are now under investigation. And many state legislators want to put an end to this abuse. There is more to be done, and so we ask you to continue to support our Fight For Kids campaign. Please support the cause and also watch our latest video here.
Both facilities have a long history of handling involuntarily committed individuals from the criminal justice system.
By combining the two hospitals for a total of 230 patient beds, the department hopes to be able to take advantage of natural efficiencies across both campuses.
They claim to reintegrate individuals into the community, but in the case of Sex Offender Rehabilitation and Treatment Services (SORTS), individuals are involuntarily committed for the rest of their lives after having completed their prison terms.
The DMH budget for 2020-2021 is approximately $2.4 Billion. Roughly $36.8 Million from General Revenue is allocated to the SORTS program. Roughly $30.5 Million from General Revenue is allocated to the two St. Louis adult psychiatric hospitals. This does not include any Federal funds or State funds other than General Revenue.
The MO DMH Division of Behavioral Health (DBH) operates six adult inpatient facilities and one children’s psychiatric hospital. The two forensic hospitals under discussion are in this Division.
Involuntary Commitment: A Crack In The Door Of Constitutional Freedoms
Every 1¼ minutes, someone in the U.S. becomes the next victim of involuntary incarceration in a psychiatric hospital. 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.
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.
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 552 Section 20, Chapter 632 Section 300, Chapter 632 Section 305, Chapter 632 Section 484, and Chapter 660 Section 290 specify the conditions under which, and by whom, someone can be forcibly incarcerated in a mental health facility. It isn’t always called “involuntary commitment”; other euphemisms are “detention” or “civil commitment”.
The fact that these actions are couched in such Orwellian doublespeak as “for his own good,” “to prevent him from committing harm,” etc., is unfortunate, for it obfuscates the intention, which is undeniably to harm instead of help.
The first thing to realize is that if mental asylums were places of rest, where people did not fear to seek help, knowing they would not be assaulted with restraints, drugs and electric shock — but where they could receive real medical help — people would be more approachable about being helped.
The dangerous person who is violent must be dealt with independent of psychiatrists. If a dangerous offense is committed by a person, then the fact remains criminal statutes exist to address this. As the late psychiatrist Thomas Szasz stated, “All criminal behavior should be controlled by means of the criminal law, from the administration of which psychiatrists ought to be excluded.”
What Must Be Done?
First there needs to be an increase in humane and rational alternatives to psychiatric involuntary institutionalization.
Second, involuntary commitment laws must be abolished and this unconstitutional and coercive practice stopped.
Third, any psychiatrist found to be using coercion, threats or malice to get people to “accept” psychiatric treatment, or who hospitalizes a patient against their will should be charged with assault and false imprisonment.
Take the initiative today towards achieving human rights in this country and contact your local, state, and federal officials to have these oppressive commitment laws abolished.
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.
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.
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.
We keep coming across the subject of Judgment. So many news articles and social media posts deal, directly or indirectly, with good or bad judgment.
We see so many people asking “How do I deal with this or that situation?” where the only truly comprehensive response should be “use good judgment.”
Of course, then they want to know what is good judgment? And while there is a good answer, it isn’t easy to give this a short answer. So we decided to address it here. We’ll give an example from which we hope one can make some useful generalizations.
There is no shortage of advice, aphorisms and quotes about judgment; and when there is so much discussion around a topic one can be sure it is generally not well understood, not the least of which is exactly how to spell the word. “Judgment” and “judgement” are alternate spellings of the same word. They are both common in British English, although only one, judgment, is acceptable in American English.
Not even to mention the religious overtones of Judgment, with which we respectfully leave to other experts.
Definitions
Just as a simple word, there are a number of dictionary meanings to fit different circumstances. Here are some common definitions: — the process of forming an opinion or evaluation by discerning and comparing — the cognitive process of reaching a decision or drawing conclusions — a formal utterance of an authoritative opinion — a formal decision given by a court — good sense
[Ultimately from Latin judicare, from judic-, judex judge, from jus right, law + dicere to decide]
How Does One Make A Judgment?
Judgment is measured by the ability to evaluate relative importances. One must be able to evaluate what is important or unimportant in order to make a judgment. Yet this still does not fully answer the question of how to do this, since one must still recognize what is or is not important in the situation under consideration.
Motivation
There are several areas of Life along which one either survives or succumbs. One can be relatively constructive or destructive along each area of Life. One is motivated by these impulses.
Let’s say one has to make a decision that impacts not only oneself but also one’s family. Should I take this new job in another city? On the one hand, it surely benefits my own career and income; on the other hand it uproots my family which is comfortable where it is. How do I decide? It’s constructive for me myself, but destructive for my family. There isn’t a hard and fast rule about which is better or worse; but there is judgment.
Judgment
Judgment is how many of these motivational impulses can one evaluate instantly, and whether these impulses are constructive or destructive. Looking at all sides, all the facts, each area-of-life impulse, its importance or unimportance, its constructive or destructive nature.
You can see there isn’t a fixed answer; there is an evaluation of importances. What are the consequences? How is the survival of both myself and my family benefited or harmed by each different decision?
Good judgment then is dependent on recognizing benefit and harm along every area of Life touched by the situation at hand. How fast can you reach a decision given all the facts? What’s best for me and my family may not be best for you and your family.
The Psychiatric Connection
Given this knowledge about judgment, how does all this relate to psychiatric fraud and abuse?
One obvious connection is psychiatry’s corruption of justice. Psychiatry’s influence has eroded the once-firm basis of justice: the differentiation of right and wrong, compromising the ability of justice systems to reach sane judgments. And everyone knows that both the prosecution and the defense hire psychiatrists to testify on opposite sides of a judgment.
Studies also show that professional clinicians do not in fact make more accurate clinical judgments than lay persons. The fraudulent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the basis of psychiatric diagnoses, skews and subverts the judgment of what is sane or insane, benign or harmful, behavior.
The huge and growing variety of mind-altering psychiatric drugs impair one’s ability to make correct judgments. Side effects include many things which can interfere with one’s ability to make judgments, such as hallucinations, aggression, irritation, mood swings, psychosis, abnormal thoughts, anxiety, delusions, forgetfulness, panic attacks, confusion, poor concentration, fear, and just simply trouble with judgment. The consumption of these drugs can cause loss of judgment and self-control leading to increased violence and suicidal impulses.
Involuntary Commitment, euphemistically called “civil commitment”, is a tool psychiatrists use to coerce treatment and collect insurance money, not to mention its use as a political tool to suppress dissent. Who judges someone to be a danger to themselves or others as a criterion for this unconstitutional practice? Why, the psychiatrists of course. They say they are the only ones qualified to make such judgments. Yet psychiatrists themselves admit that they cannot predict violence.
The Bottom Line
Where judgment is concerned, psychiatry is not your friend. Beware, judgment may be in short supply when under the influence of psychiatry.
Recently I was at my sister’s house and I told a joke that had the word “suicide” in it. Unbidden, Alexa started to tell us how to call a suicide hotline. For a moment I half expected the police to barge in and take me away.
You see, in Missouri and all other states, involuntary commitment “for your own good” is the law.
According to the Revised Statutes of Missouri (RSMo) state law 192.2465, when a peace officer has probable cause to believe that an adult will suffer an imminent likelihood of serious physical harm if not immediately placed in a medical facility the officer may summarily take the person against their will to a psychiatric hospital.
Missouri law euphemistically calls this “civil detention”; also known as civil commitment or involuntary commitment.
There is a religious exemption, so CCHR recommends that you execute a Living Will (Letter of protection from psychiatric incarceration and/or treatment) that expresses this.
Involuntary Commitment
Can this really happen in America today? Can this happen in a country where even criminals are set free if they are not given their rights, where the strongest Constitution in man’s history guarantees the individual his liberties? It not only can, but it does. The fact is, more than 1.5 million U.S. citizens per year become the next victim of involuntary incarceration in a psychiatric hospital, forced to undergo dangerous and harmful treatments against their will. And there’s nothing they can do about it.
This less-than-charitable “concern for the troubled individual” yields the psychiatric industry upwards of $25 billion per year. And it is ultimately financed by the unwitting taxpayer who, more likely than not, has never even heard of involuntary commitment procedures.
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. And while psychiatrists and psychiatric hospitals are today being investigated nationally and in state hearings for insurance fraud, mistreatment of patients, sexual violations and other crimes, the crux of their power — involuntary commitment laws — receives no focused attention.
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”.
