Ongoing list of examples of how the system is used against innocent people whose only crime is to stand between evil people and their goals.
With only a loaf of bread I stood in the grocery checkout line behind a "normie" with a cartful of groceries. "I'm a decent person. I have a cartful of groceries and somebody's behind me with one or two items I let them in ahead," I told the cashier. "But not everybody's decent."
"It doesn't work that way," the bitch said. "Jesus loves you!"
"God hates self-righteous people like you and won't accept you in Heaven!" I shot back.
Threatening to beat me up, like most people nowadays she paid for her groceries with plastic and she knew the cashier could identify her from the register's tape. She and others like her, teaching their cockamamie values of false piety to their children, are socially upheld. Zealots and their followers will never single them out like blacks, Jews, cats and women of earlier eras and force them to give up their freedom because they're labeled "mentally ill".
* SEE SPOT RUN! Dick and Jane are boring. You read newspapers at home with your parents. You can buy a whole quart of milk at the store for what the school charges for 1/2 pint.
* You're under 18. Your parents buy the doctor's word, pressured harder and harder to let doctors give you Ritalin, containing methamphetamines that kill even quicker.
* Mom/Dad loves him/her. You wish he/she were dead and off your back, with you not blamed. Your only option is to run away. You're caught and Mom/Dad decide you need "help" with your "problems" . . .
* Your parents want to buy out Acapulco with your inheritance from Uncle Ned. The judge hears about the big blowout argument you had with them 2 years ago you don't even remember and you can kiss it all goodbye. You'll live in another town as you wanted to but not in the 4-plex you planned to buy yourself.
* Library security head repeatedly threatens you with EPS. You've done nothing to warrant it. Your lawyer likes your snappy answers. You copyright them and avoid the library on days he's on duty and your lawyer isn't.
* Your state-hired psychiatrist receives little state reimbursement for his services. Blissfully married to routines he learned at his alma mater's knee he won't explore alternatives to treatment you know is harmful and debilitating. Your consumer advocate, only there to defend the system despite mandates to the contrary, is so enthusiastic about the system and how it helped him/her you can't get a hearing.
* You see a psychiatrist for help with depression and end up locked in a state hellhole, shocked against your wishes. It's a nightmare you never wanted. You dream of running away but white-uniformed thugs chase you and pull you back.
* Given drugs you don't know are dangerous you lose control of your nervous system function and chew on your tongue. Nobody told you this could happen. You've only been on Haldol a year. Psychiatrists dismiss your concerns as an idiot's ravings. Your clinic consumer advocate thinks the system can do no wrong. You're hopelessly confused and distressed. You aren't sure of your own observations. How can doctors be wrong? Surely they won't mislead you.
* Your presence in the facility, however inappropriate, automatically labels you as needing treatment. The burden of proof is on you. You're there for keeps because they said so and they can enforce it with no accountability. They're paid to keep people. Their "expert" word is what counts, the halo effect.
WOMEN
* He pinches you. You hit him for it. You're punished, he's not. Or you tell staff like you're supposed to. They defend him. You're punished, he's not.
* His main pastime: randomly assaulting women. He has "rights". Women he attacks don't.
* Philandering husband wants freedom to ramble without a messy divorce.
* Unwanted suitor retaliates.
* Leaving an expensive New York psychiatric hospital, you're not judged in court a threat to others or yourself. You're warehoused indefinitely on a locked upstairs nursing home floor with no outside contact and little ability if any to contest your detention. New York's yearslong Adult Home Scandal is a flagrant Habeas Corpus violation. Rights lawyers are unaware of the situation until N Y Times reporter Clifford J Levy finds the facility and interviews you.
* 3 months' forced treatment and medication makes you 3 times your original size. You need an expensive, hard-to-find new wardrobe. The Miraculous Roadkill Diet doesn't really burn fat. Macrobiotics only pass right through you like an express train going south. While cursing the extra weight you're hard put to ever take off you daydream about the real estate empire you could build for yourself on lawsuit proceeds while helping your lawyer transfer his kids to senior college. If only you had documented proof such as photos and medical records of your weight from before your incarceration -
* Police always ask you where you live. Why be at system beck and call, fair game for shots, restraining orders and detention? Just tell them that's personal information.
* Social workers and others keep trying to talk you into moving to a board and care home. You put your foot down and refuse. Why live with riffraff who sexually assault you in the shower or tattle on you for showering outside certain hours?
* You've already gotten all the benefit you could from therapy and no longer go. You're told you could lose your benefits at your next review.
* A prominent psychiatry professor says he's evaluated serial killers and calls the Washington DC sniper bipolar. People with this disorder run to their lawyers and stock up on medication.
* You get a felony record instantly while you sleep. You're sent through the system again and again at the whim of the screwball element. You're a dangerous felon without portfolio. With no legitimate case against you they make one up, forcing you to drop everything and put your life on hold with court dates to keep or else. You're not allowed to file complaints against them for bullying you. You buy only two days' groceries at a time and scramble to get your affairs in order. You know what will happen to you if you lose. You should be plaintiff for a change instead of defendant. You're lucky to have credible, willing defense witnesses the judge will hear.
* You flyer neighborhoods for a local pizza parlor. Neighbors' homes are alive with activity and joy but this one's a dead, vacant, silent tomb. It's a locked care facility, an LCF. You flyer the place and hurry away before they gobble you up too.
* Widow Shirley Allen's family wants the property he left her and will put her away to get it. Police arrest neighbors for trying to sneak her food and water across their siege line around her house. The county psychiatrist, bless his soul, tells the court she's not insane.
* Out of treatment 6 years you're Vice President and serve on the board of directors of your state's client network. You're a troublemaker, organizing and coordinating protests. Forced treatment bills you beg the governor to veto could put you back in the system and on medication against your will.
* You're an advocate. Consumers you represent are treated like cattle, disabled by dogmatic, inflexible psychiatry. Nobody listens to you. Why should they? They have the upper hand. Generalizing, stereotyping, one-size-fits all destroys lives, marginalizes clients, destroys personal potential. Forced treatment laws continually passed and upheld make you look more and more like window dressing. You go home at 5. Your clients don't.
* You're a popular artist or writer and an antipsychiatry troublemaker who must be stopped because your influence endangers the status quo and costs the system money.
* You're proud to be a mentally ill wounded veteran. Dealing daily with discrimination gives you power to keep moving, and a positive outlook seeing others involved in the client empowerment movement. You know you're not alone. You lose your driver's license because of your medication.
* You're one of many labeled MI and forcibly sterilized by state eugenics laws in the footsteps of 1800s British scientist Francis Galton, enacted between 1900 and 1925 in 33 states. Some of these laws were only repealed as late as the 1980s (Oregon) The governor proclaims Human Rights Day and publicly apologizes. You're not impressed. You want compensation.
* You're a dangerous radical in trouble with powers that be who don't want to hear that the system is a shambles and needs to get its house in order. System-employed consumers' hands are tied and their advocacy scope is limited because they have to obey their bosses who see no need for systems change. People don't want to hear that psychosocial support is as important as "treatment".
* Your benefits are up for review every 7 years. The reviewer asks if you have a caseworker. She also wants to know if you want to move to a board and care facility. You ask if she wants to get hit in the head. You know your lawyers can keep her in line. She's mad because you spend your money on yourself, what it's intended for, instead of giving it back to them. You don't want that kind of lifestyle. You don't want your check Bogarted.
* You're conveniently labeled as schizophrenic and forcibly implanted with a device that delivers medication into your bloodstream for up to a year. The court approved the device at the word of some screwball wanting you out of the way. You appeal in vain. You flee the state. APB goes out, you're soon caught.
* Your City Council representative and other officials attend a neighborhood meeting, seeking community imput on current issues. Homeless people are mentioned. Some idiot complains how Governor Reagan closed state hospitals in 1967, releasing patients into the community. You shoot back "He did the right thing." The idiot continues and you shut him up fast with, "they should lock you up instead and get you off our backs." Immediately the screwball element starts blabbering their butts like the building's on fire. Officials and police want to cork them up, get on with the meeting and go home.
Dust off your guitars, all protesters strong and fair. Travel in time, darkly. Topical ballads wait to be written and sung. Not graybeards holding hands and singing Kumbayah and remembering wild, funny things they did as flower children in beads, sandals and bell-bottoms battling in the streets against the war in Viet Nam. Not old vets remembering Korea. Not Grandma and friends remembering their late husbands coming home from World War II. It's innocent brothers and sisters in struggle. Only friendly people should participate and not turn off supporters. Tabling. Banners and cards. Official student clubs. Meetings. Education. Organizing and marching loudly in the streets while news cameras roll. Books, movies, media appearances, press releases, pro-freedom articles and public opinion campaigns online and off. Sponsors, fundraising, grants. Events and panel discussions well advertised and open to the public. Think tanks, online forums, websites with links. Halloween parties. We team up for full course, sit down meals. Staff only comes up with cakes and salads at their events. It's gathering evidence to get mean people fired and not letting them push you around. It's toll-free minuterescuer hotlines. Get involved. Attend public meetings. Participate in fun-things. Support causes you're interested in. Pass out fliers and press releases. Raise funds. Hand out sack lunches to rally members. Make your presence known. Antiwar and other protesters do it, why can't you? It takes hard work and dedication to acquire fame, money, and recognition afforded to causes already sanctioned by the community. In court, dress and act appropriately. Be there on time. Let your lawyer do the talking.
Empowerment on campus came from the need for a CSX-oriented computer literacy class. Andrew Phelps, its instructor and SVNET's moderator, opened the discussion with: "35 years ago blacks and Hispanics faced low expectations in life due to social barriers. Mental health consumers (CSX - consumers, survivors, ex-patients) are still considered as "one of them". Our National Organization is like the NAACP." Panel speakers were divided into two models:
Clinical psychologist NANCY PENA Santa Clara County Mental Health (SCCMH) Director, favoring a peer support treatment paradigm, a radical doctor/patient model, expects in 5 or 10 years a change in thinking to facilitate mental health in individuals on a more equal relationship. As California's 4th largest county it spends $17 million treating 22,000 people a year. Hospital model of doctor, psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker evolved into hiring and training consumers as employees. Pena cites the patient, client, client-consumer, CSX evolution of thinking. Phelps identified 30 CSX activists in California; Pena identified 30 community leaders, including San Jose's police department. In a dialogue inviting consumers as experts, mental health leaders were learners and CSX were educators. "Leadership is important, including and involving CSX input. As staff members with over 100 years total experience CSX play important role in policy," Pena said.
350 clients are in LCFs with skilled mental health nursing, many of them involuntarily. The County wants to move 100 of them out into the community. The expense of keeping them made Pena and her staff realize these people don't need to be there. Pena sees human support as a better way than bricks and mortar. Serving on California's Proposition 36 (drug abuse treatment instead of prison) steering committee when newly voted in, Pena found police, district attorneys, the Sheriff and the MH system itself didn't recognize or handle dual (bipolar) diagnosis. Clients were forced into one slot or another with agencies only looking at slots they're paid to look at. Mental health was seen as a benefit, therefore receiving money for treatment but not for housing and other community-based benefits. This created a fundamental flaw in how the system is set up, like silos. SSI isn't enough to afford anything, and is coupled with strict work disincentives. "It takes 200 hours a week of minimum wage work to afford housing," Pena said.
Pena's road to clinical psychology
Pena's maternal grandmother died in Metro State Hospital. Her mother didn't know about it until age 35. Her mother's mother was kept in a locked closet, not allowed to exist. When Pena was 24 her first husband committed suicide. Only then could she recall his symptoms of schizophrenia's early stages, in which voices he heard grew into delusions. Interested in psychology,
anthropology and sociology Pena's career as a clinical psychologist stemmed from her desire to give back to CSX more from life than warehousing.
BARRY visits wards, helps involve CSX in decision making and gaining access to rights groups. He demonstrates CSX oriented goal changes in mental health delivery, changing how MIs are seen in the community as participating citizens. His MH activism began in the 1980s when he started a united consumers movement, playing a major role in evolving activism and peer support of inpatients. He's concerned with medication side effects. Growing up in a diverse environment, he was involved in 1950s civil rights movements. In the military they put a gun to his head. Separated from family, now reconciled, Barry lived in his car after spending time in an LCF. He's now kept alive by personal recovery, helping peers, excitement that he's still alive. 1980s state MH budgets cut community based services. Barry organized peers, including system/services providers. 1990 brought more community service cuts. Barry gives LCF inpatients faith in recovery and discharge from facilities out to keep people for life. Clients are tired of overmedication, because of which they can't get up - a criteria of moving to the program's next level. His action plans include letters about client concerns to conservators and administration. He provides resource material about rights such as court hearings, housing, and what in the community helps keep people out of LCFs. In a system based on fear, Barry says people leaving the facility must want to leave and to prepare for it. He calls long-term warehousing, with no preparation or desire to return to freedom, an unpleasant atmosphere. He wants self-help centers' open doors to independent housing resources and include women's, men's, substance abuse, and other self-help groups and bring in pertinent videos. His goals for the CSX community is to live in the community without fear, not merely living day to day wondering whether they'll make it to the next day.
Grace Baptist paid intern and SVNET co-chair Diane
Conceived on a psychiatric ward she lived poor and homeless in Oakland, the sole care provider for her mentally ill mother. Two brothers both alcoholic moved back to the house, not preparing Diane for life. She and her mother were crime victims many times. She lost her mother, sister, and a brother. The attacks were depressing, causing hemorrhage. Surgery, counseling, having children helped. Educated in the streets, Diane wants college. She doesn't pity fellow CSX but sees them as friends and encourages them to go to her for help with issues of respect. Hearing overwhelming stories of mistreatment she wants people to be more aware of different levels of CSX in the mental health system.
Computer literacy classes - a path from system level to life level.
SVNET co-chair JOSE grew up in Los Angeles during the 1970s Chicano movement. A homeless MI, away from his family, he got a Master's degree in Chicano studies, teaching at Evergreen College in the 1980s. His dream is using education to reach out to people. "At the yearly alternative conference Hispanics and African-Americans fight over bones, getting the shaft," he says, fascinated by the feminist mystique, seeing blacks, Latinos and women as mostly kept in the background. "Be your own leaders and advocates," he says. Jose's brother is a deputy sheriff, with a house, wife and family. "What's mental illness? Mere recovery isn't radical enough. You're not alone. What opportunity? We're freaks, clowns, etc. We need to organize and see from a self-help perspective." Jose wants the advisory board and the MH community to ask CSX what needs to be addressed.
Campus library head JOE mourns the late Senator Paul Wellstone whose brother is bipolar, and commends Wellstone's mental health parity law. King recalls damage done by his late parents which led to his depression. His mother, also an MI, tried to kill him. He thought it was his fault, the solution being to get more degrees. He likes his job, although hampered by medication side effects. His current projects include moving the campus library to its new quarters. He's writing a book on borderline personality and not knowing who you are. Joe uses his UCLA degree to work with students and help CSX to get jobs. His students notice his feel of comradeship. He once told a student, homeless and on heroin, "You're in a safe place. I'll help you with your education." His help with her schoolwork led to a GPA of A and an SCU scholarship to SCU. Joe also works to end discrimination he says CSX didn't create.
TIM is a teacher's assistant to Andrew Phelps. After 18 years in the MH system Tim wanting a better life became a CSX/ CIS instructor. Phelps arranged for the county MH to pay Tim to assist him. Tim, giving a show and tell lecture on computers, took a computer apart and put it back together. Tim works with CSX wanting to better themselves, wanting more from life than sitting around smoking and drinking coffee and beer. Now allowed to interact with fellow CSX Tim knows where they're from, helping them reach mainstream society. "There's not much opportunity with just day care of TV and medication," he says.
HENRY organized the first ASB student MI club. He served as a Latino family liaison, telling kids in gangs he knew their families. He sees the system's biggest change as students wanting to continue. Many of them work for OCE (office of client empowerment) helping MIs bootstrap. He visits wards. He has friends, some in mainstream society. Wanting to be a campus peer advisor and network facilitator, he studies network technology and administration.
JOHN thanked the panel for holding the meeting and addressing MI and prison issues. John in prison was afraid of people discovering his dual (bipolar) diagnosis. A boat alone in a storm, he was shot at and stabbed. Due to overmedication John had difficulty remembering things and needed assistance to get to the dining room. "It's a nightmare being an MI, molested from ages 4 to 12, given heroin and liquor, raped and left for dead," he said. "People are afraid of a 6-foot 3 bipolar black man." He also said parole officers often returned MIs to prison without hearings. John now teams with other ex-convicts to reach at risk youth. As Black Students Union (BSU) president California's governor candidate Bill Simon wouldn't let John ask him about his budget plans for MIs. John had to let someone else ask his question for him. John feels he must work hard and represent people like him. Attending a Catholic Charities dual diagnosis program post traumatic prison conference he finally put a face on his problems.
ROBIN does peer support. She says Phelps' class helped her work through her fears. Molested as a child and blamed for it, she made her first suicide attempt at 15 but someone saved her.
RICARDO studies nursing and substance abuse counseling. His life experiences include jail time, homelessness and drugs.
ANNA unable to find help with her problems tried to escape into drugs. With no income she had no housing. Unable to live with her parents she lived in her van. Told that SSI benefits were only for women pregnant or with small children she later learned that SSI also included MIs at doctor's signature. After finding no resources because nobody tells her anything except to keep her quiet, Anna does her own research. After living with a couple who bickers constantly she moved to an SLE (clean, sober living environment)
Elaine was taken to Dublin Casualty (Ireland) because of malicious rumors by project housing neighbors without due process. A Casualty psychiatrist drugged and transferred her while asleep to a locked unit. A gp (md) primed to detain signed the detention order late the next afternoon yet she was prevented from leaving. She told them she was allergic to Haldol but they still used it.
Closing Agnews Developmental Center is a positive step in community living plans for disabled Californians as mandated by 1999's Olmstead decision that institutionalizing people whose needs can be met in the community is discrimination based on disability. Integrated community placement and support exists helping many disabled people already live safely in the community. Funds saved from exorbitant costs of running a facility like Agnews could strengthen and expand these programs to provide safe, independent living situations for Agnews residents ready to move successfully to the community. Closing Agnews responsibly realizes the potential many of these people have to function as members of society, not as patients in an institution.
MARYLAND Diagnosis by Neighbor, Family Member and Police
(1) File a petition for emergency evaluation: Any interested person (friend, relative, neighbor or health professional) may file a petition for emergency evaluation for review by a judge. District and Circuit Court hours are M-F 8:30 a m - 4:30 p m Prince George's, Montgomery and Baltimore City handle emergency petitions 24/7. When an emergency evaluation petition is granted the person to be evaluated is taken by police or sheriff to EPS for evaluation for possible hospital admission. (2) If the situation requires immediate intervention within 2 hrs call 911. Police or sheriff will evaluate whether the person meets EPS criteria including all pertinent information, what you tell them about the person and what they observe directly. If they decide evaluation is needed they take the person to the nearest EPS.
ILLINOIS Pregnant women are required to show up for screening during pregnancy for depression and periodically for the first 6 months after she gives birth. The child, a captive audience, is screened until he's 18. Drug companies push this so they can make huge profits.
CALIFORNIA Mental Health Services Act. Tax surcharge while library and bus go without and National Night Out can't afford hamburgers. DMH plans to spend the money on treatment, violating the Olmstead decision. I can't read pdf so I went to the library the next morning. I found info removed from county DMH websites. Monkey see, monkey do.
Sexually abused boy, 5, given to his abusive father to raise because his mother is given a spurious psychiatric diagnosis.
Woman, 27, stops breathing, nearly dies, and undergoes a $750,000 hospital stay when her serious physical illness is missed because she was given a psychiatric diagnosis.
Woman with no psychiatric history becomes disoriented after being severely sleep-deprived. Her husband drives her to a hospital and tells staff she's bipolar, a label he chose himself. Incurious staff immediately make it official and lock her up, after which follow her life's 6 worst weeks.
Woman diagnosed with a psychiatric label about "premenstrual disorder" somebody invented. As a result her pelvic pains are dismissed as all in her mind for decades. By the time her pelvic infection is discovered she has so many internal scars she can't bear children.
Brilliant, beautiful girl, 5, put in foster care after being abused and neglected. Her psychiatric diagnosis becomes the focus of her "treatment," not her understandable anger about abuse and disruptions she endured.
Because of stories like these, 40 organizations and more than 175 therapists, attorneys, and others alarmed by the often-hidden devastation people suffer from a psychiatric label issued a call for Congressional hearings about psychiatric diagnosis. Their aim is to put the unscientific, unregulated nature of psychiatric categories on the national public agenda. Few of the tens of millions of people diagnosed mentally ill every year realize a psychiatric label can cause serious harm even years later, including:
Losing the right to make decisions about one's legal and medical affairs Covering up serious nonpsychiatric medical conditions Losing health insurance or skyhigh premiums Plummeting self-confidence Losing child custody Issue regardless of social class, education, sex, race, and age, with No authorized government agency for regulating diagnosis No one protecting citizens from this kind of harm No one monitoring what happens with diagnosis Clinical and research psychologist Paula J Caplan Ph.D website psychdiagnosis.net