{"id":433,"date":"2011-05-01T07:55:16","date_gmt":"2011-05-01T13:55:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/?p=433"},"modified":"2024-07-14T05:42:30","modified_gmt":"2024-07-14T10:42:30","slug":"the-real-crisis-in-mental-health-care-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/2011\/05\/01\/the-real-crisis-in-mental-health-care-today\/","title":{"rendered":"The Real Crisis in Mental Health Care Today"},"content":{"rendered":"<dl>\n<dd><em><strong>Seen on a T-Shirt:<\/strong><\/em> <\/dd>\n<dd><em>I take Aspirin for the headache caused by the Zyrtec I take for the  hayfever I got from Relenza for the uneasy stomach from the Ritalin I take for  the short attention span caused by the Scopederm Ts I take for motion sickness I  got from the Lomotil I take for the diarrhea caused by the Zenikal for the  uncontrolled weight gain from the Paxil I take for the anxiety from Zocor I take  for my high cholesterol because exercise, a good diet, and regular chiropractic  care are just too much trouble.<\/em><\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<p>Health care costs are being driven out of control by litigation, malpractice  suits, fraud, and the coercive use of drugs and medical devices.<\/p>\n<p>Mandated mental health parity is an effort by the mental health industry to  have governments force insurers, employers, consumers and taxpayers pay for a  service they will not buy of their own free will. It drives up the cost of  insurance and has skyrocketed the number of uninsured.<\/p>\n<p>By one estimate, one of out every four uninsured people has been priced out  of the market by state-mandated health insurance laws.<\/p>\n<p>With mental health treatment costing up to 300% more than general medical  treatment, spiraling costs are unavoidable when mental health care is  mandated.<\/p>\n<p>In May, 2001, the Office of the Inspector General reported that one-third of  out-patient mental health care services provided to Medicare beneficiaries were  \u00e2\u20ac\u0153medically unnecessary, billed incorrectly, rendered by unqualified provider,  and undocumented or poorly documented.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Psychiatrists proclaim a worldwide epidemic of mental health problems and  urge massive funding increases as the only solution. But before we commit more  millions, do we know enough about the &#8220;crisis?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Community Mental Health programs have an expensive and colossal failure,  creating homelessness, drug addiction, crime and unemployment all over the  world.<\/p>\n<p>Mental health courts assert that criminal behavior is caused by a psychiatric  problem and that treatment will stop the behavior. There is no evidence to  support this.<\/p>\n<p>Individuals are sometimes forced to pay for a legal defense against treatment  that they do not want and against incarceration that consumes their insurance  coverage.<\/p>\n<p>Psychiatry&#8217;s budget in the United States for Community Mental Health Centers  and outpatient clinics soared from $143 million in 1969 to over $9 billion in  1997. In 2011 the Missouri Department of Mental Health budget alone is over $1  billion per year.<\/p>\n<p>When governments and courts are lobbied to strengthen involuntary commitment  and community treatment laws, and to establish &#8220;mental health courts&#8221; to promote  treatment rather than punishment, they are never told of the lack of scientific  basis for psychiatric methods, of the consequences of those treatments for the  patient or of the lack of accountability for those treatment outcomes.<\/p>\n<p>Whenever a &#8220;mental patient&#8221; commits an act of senseless violence,  psychiatrists invariably blame the tragedy on the person&#8217;s failure to continue  their medication. Such incidents are used to justify mandated community  treatment and involuntary commitment laws. However, statistics and facts show it  is psychiatric drugs themselves that can create the very violence or mental  incompetence they are prescribed to treat.<\/p>\n<p>Proper medical screening by non-psychiatric diagnostic specialists could  eliminate more than 40% of psychiatric admissions. Health insurance coverage for  mental health problems should only be provided on the proviso that full,  searching physical examinations are first undertaken to determine that no  underlying and, thereby, untreated physical condition is causing the person\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s  mental health condition.<\/p>\n<p>In 2002, the U.S. President&#8217;s Commission on Excellence in Special Education  found that 40% of American children (2.8 million) in special education programs  labeled with &#8220;learning disorders&#8221; had simply never been taught to read.<\/p>\n<p>Decades of psychiatric monopoly over mental health has only lead to upwardly  spiraling mental illness statistics and continuously escalating funding  demands.<\/p>\n<p>While psychiatry strenuously denies it, much knowledgeable and skillful help  is administered by non-psychiatric professionals. There are many  non-psychiatric, humane and workable practices for the achievement and recovery  of mental health, even for the most disturbed individuals.<\/p>\n<p>The claim that only increased funding will cure the problems of psychiatry  has lost its ring of truth. Psychiatry and psychology should be held accountable  for the funds already given them, and irrefutably and scientifically prove the  physical existence of mental disorders they claim should be treated and covered  by insurance, in the same way as physical diseases are.<\/p>\n<p>The many critical challenges facing societies today reflect the vital need to  strengthen individuals through workable, viable and humanitarian alternatives to  harmful psychiatric options.<\/p>\n<p>For more information and recommendations, download and read the CCHR booklet  <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/realcrisis.shtml\">The Real Crisis in Mental  Health Today &#8211; Report and recommendations on the lack of science and results  within the mental health industry.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Seen on a T-Shirt: I take Aspirin for the headache caused by the Zyrtec I take for the hayfever I got from Relenza for the uneasy stomach from the Ritalin I take for the short attention span caused by the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/2011\/05\/01\/the-real-crisis-in-mental-health-care-today\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-muddy-river-newsletter","category-press-releases"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6NMpC-6Z","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}