Stop the Shame, Stop the Blame, Stop the Threats and Use of Force and Then You Can Talk About “Recovery”

I am exceedingly tired of hearing about recovery by mental health administrators and public providers and even some with lived experience.  It has 1) become another way to make people with emotional issues feel inadequate if they don’t meet societal norms that most without emotional issues don’t meet these days (most American households are single adults, the ranks of the unemployed and underemployed are high, those who don’t comply with health recommendations are legion etc.)  and 2) is not possible in an atmosphere of continued shaming and blaming and high expressed emotion with low willingness to listen by mental health providers, especially in psychiatric units and hospitals and in an atmosphere of coercion with the ultimate threat of violence in a take down and restraint and isolation still available in every psychiatric hospital except perhaps those for the rich and even there those who can not fit in risk transfer to the coercive regular psychiatric hospital.  There can be no recovery in an atmosphere of coercion, blaming and shaming.  Mental health providers, especially psychiatrists, have to stop having it both ways by both insisting people with emotional differences have a real illness and emphasizing to the public and to their patients that they are bad and not good enough for society and need to be fixed to have a reasonable life.   Medical doctors of people with life threatening diseases whose patients may well die on them often do not imply nor tell their patients that they are to blame for their illness and need to take responsibility in order to fit into society.  They offer their advice and voluntary treatment and the best and even the mediocre try to provide hope and encouragement and support for the hard work of medical treatment.  Medical doctors and nurses warn their patients when a procedure will hurt.  Mental health workers and psychiatrists pretend that huting and humiliating their patients by taking them down leaving bruises, injecting them, tying them up and isolating them and mocking them is good treatment and never tell their patients it will hurt them and leave scars that will give them shame and nightmares and fear and low self esteem for the rest of their lives. 

Let us stop pretending we are ready to talk about recovery in a system that still uses power as its main “treatment” modality.  It is not possible, it is harmful and it has already stolen too many lives and souls.  I am taking my soul back but I have lost too many years of my life to the scars of psychiatric mistreatment, not just my kidneys, that is almost the least of it, but the self-blame and the fear and the shame have made me afraid of interaction with others, made me feel less than, enabled a bully in my circle to bully me for 26 years until this weekend when she continued to bully but I broke the cycle by standing up to her, perpetuated my problems and now, after years away from psychiatric power misuse and coercion changed my life yet again, made me question my life, made me fragmented for a time, made me unable to do what I used to be able to do effortlessly.  I will survive and thrive this time because I faced down every implanted fear and shame and lie this time, but how many years were lost, how much potential and how many will not survive and will and are having their lives wasted by the abuse of power and shaming and blaming?  It is time to stop, way past time.  If psychiatry and public mental health systems will not control their own acting out it is time for society to act and take away their power over the lives of others once and for all until they can prove they have anything to offer that is more  helpful than harmful.

The “Abuse Excuse”, Not What You Think It Is

I’m sure you have heard the term the “abuse excuse” used to say that people who commit crimes or even people who don’t fit in are using the “abuse excuse” if they mention a history of trauma.  Well my observations in this town and others is that the REAL “abuse excuse” is the excuse for abusive behavior towards people labelled with psychiatric problems used by not just professionals but many family members as well.  I heard a young man blame himself for his mother shaking the car and putting him out on the side of the road because, get this, he kept talking when she asked him to stop.  This was her excuse for her abusive behavior towards her adult and conveniently psychiatrically labelled adult son.  He blames himself and does not even see this as abuse.  Do you think he is getting any help obtaining insight into the ways his mother continues to damage him emotionally into adulthood at Region Ten? Think again.  There is no family therapy available at Region Ten.  There is virtually no therapy available at Region Ten.  There are drugs and a clubhouse to perform simple tasks for free and for some services in the home and “case management” to refer to services that are increasingly not available but no chance to process what happened to someone that put them into the position of identified patient in their family.  Why? I could say I blame the patriarchy and I do.  Psychiatry has been misogynistic since its founding and men are hurt by this too because a man who breaks under abuse is still seen as feminine in our town and our culture and thus is a victim of misogyny just as much as a woman.  And because there has NEVER been a woman Commissioner of Mental Health etc. in Virginia, remarkable even for a Southern state and because there has NEVER been a woman director of Region Ten, remarkable even for Virginia.  But that is only one layer, the utter dominance of men in the administrative positions of power at the state and local level in mental health.  Not to mention the completely white board of Region Ten and the completely white top administrative structure of our Department of Mental Health soon to change its name to something more descriptive of what it’s about, the Department of “Behavioral Health” since emotions have no place in our system of care for those who ask for or are forced into our mental health system in Virginia in the main.  Some areas still have therapy available, some may even have family therapy, but neither are “evidence based practices” and neither are reimbursed at a rate to pay their way nor encouraged by the state. 

Our mental health system in this country began to maintain the social order by locking up women and men who couldn’t or wouldn’t fit in, were poor, were “bad” wives, were going through menopause, were unable to get over a romantic loss in the proper amount of time, were a financial burden on their families or communities and back in the beginning the heads of the state institutions were called keepers not doctors nor directors and the caretakers were called “alienists” not M.D.’s and certainly not psychiatrists because psychiatry had not been invented yet. 

How much have things changed since then? Well common mythology is that things have improved oh so much since the bad old days.  I’m here to say that’s not true, things just look different than they used to and the worst oppressions have gone underground where most can’t see them.  No longer can the public go gawk at people in state hospitals but then again, neither can the public see what actually goes on in state hospitals and the people who get out aren’t listened to and only talk amongst themselves.  We have a psychiatric unit at UVA and at Martha Jefferson run by UVA.  We have an ECT machine at Martha Jefferson, the only one in miles around, people come from West Virginia to be “treated” with it.  How many readers from the Charlottesville area even knew that? How many know that involuntary ECT is still legal in Virginia? How many knew that more commonly an “authorized representative” chosen by an institution head or doctor is allowed to “volunteer” an unwilling patient for ECT with no hearing and no oversight by anyone?

How many know that drugs are coerced on many, many people in our community in their own homes as a condition of having housing or services or sometimes even staying out of jail? How many knew that commitment hearings in this region are a joke with a 99.5 per cent commitment rate?  How many knew that 2 doctors with no training in competency examinations can simply declare any psychiatric patient incapacitated and appoint a family member to make all decisions for them or if they think that won’t work simply get a “Judicial Authorization of Treatment” without any history of non-compliance with treatment nor proof of its need at all?  With this they can force a person to take any and all drugs against their will with the threat of restraints and a needle to back them up.  And if those threats don’t work there is always the threat of sending someone from UVA to Western State for up to 6 months. 

How many knew that all possessions are routinely taken from patients admitted to UVA 5 East including human rights booklets with a phone number to call if ones rights are violated.  Booklets being so dangerous of course.  That cell phones are taken and left on for the battery to die and patients not allowed to make a phone call to a friend or lawyer before they lose all their contact numbers?  How many knew there is no right to a phone call for someone detained under a temporary detention order? How many knew that someone with connections will get out if they have memorized the right phone numbers and someone without or who hasn’t memorized their numbers will not? 

Back to the “Abuse Excuse”. People who are labelled mentally ill have one of the highest rates of child and adult abuse and trauma experiences in the population.  Is this even a question on the routine screening for detention? No it is not.  Are there services for trauma survivors that they want? No, not at Region Ten which hands out booklets and uses CBT otherwise known as clean up your behavior and don’t think about your past among the abused who have experienced it. 

I have met too, too many abuse survivors in our community looking for or supposedly receiving services from Region Ten and UVA. What I see is re-enactment of their abuse and denial of their real experiences and covering up of their feelings and possible insight and recovery with heavy duty and medically and brain shrinking drugs that make money for big pharma.  What I see is a lack of basic respect for people who have survived trauma with a Region Ten website that still says “Our Consumers” and “For Our Staff” and doesn’t even get how disrespectful and accurate as to their attitude this is.  What I see is an Albemarle County Board of Supervisors who listens to the director of Region Ten who doesn’t want any out and outspoken people with lived experience on his board, a director who is patronizing and rude to outspoken people with lived experience.  What I see is co-optation of anyone who shows signs of becoming a leader who isn’t too stubborn to be bought or praised into toeing the Region Ten line.

What I see makes me very sad and angry for my people and not hopeful about the future.

Thank You to 2 Catholic Hospitals for Telling Me Being a Lesbian Was Mental Illness

Misercordia, I don’t remember the psychiatrist’s name, but he was so confident that I was delusional that I was a lesbian.  Sacred Heart Hospital, who violated my rights in so many ways and wanted me to quit graduate school to go on welfare and live in a group home with no sex, I remember your telling me so many times that my lesbian therapist had corrupted and misled me and that you refused to let her visit me.  You kept me so many days longer than others until I gave in and said I wasn’t a lesbian, I was crazy.  Just like 5 East tried to convert me to bipolarism instead of the reality of a common steroid reaction  to for 6 + months, 2 Catholic hospitals tried to convert me to the idea that lesbianism was a delusion and a mental illness.  The only difference is neither of the Catholic hospitals threatened to send me to a state hospital even though that was so much more common all those years ago and 5 East decided I belonged in Western the first day I got there.  For my hereticism I guess.  If psychiatry isn’t a religion, a false one, than I guess it is more like the Spanish Inquisition, but not the funny kind.  Thanks for all you have done to mess up my life with your false prophecy and arrogance and moralism in the guise of medicine and most of all, your bigotry.  Your welcome is that I am still here and I am free to be whoever I want to be and you can not force toxic drugs on me and you can not hinder my free speech outside your snake pits.  Nor can you threaten me with physical assault without being arrested.  So sad.  For you.

Am I Not a Member of This “Community”?

I was psychiatrically assaulted more than once.   The last time was a month or so ago.  I call the SAARA hot line and am told there is no place for people like me, as I knew there would not be, people, women and men, like me, people who were assaulted in a system everyone in group think thinks is benign, do not need or do not belong in groups for survivors, we should talk to our specialists who of course we already talk to as often as we can after another unearned and violent assault as sexual and pornographic as any rape, tying a woman or man down and injecting them in front of or by men, what is that if not an assault? A sexual assault?  It is not medical treatment, that is a perversion of the term medical treatment.  Yet once again I am told the only resource for people like me is psychiatric and psychological professionals.  This is not unique to Charlottesville, the UVA company town, it happens in every town and every city.  Men and women like me are patronized or avoided or treated like lepers or told to keep quiet if we want to keep our jobs and reputations or chance at friendship and the community support we never get except from each other and a few others who get it sort of.  

I went to church on Sunday.  It had been a long time for me. I exchanged the peace with many in that church including someone who doesn’t agree with me on most things but 2 people who have known me the longest and knew I had been in a psychiatric uni against reason and justice would not exchange the peace with me, pretended not to see me.  This is what we live with as psychiatric survivors.  I will not return to that church.  I will keep looking for a Christian church that takes me as I am or perhaps where no one knows me but why should I have to be ostracized by the fact my assaults came in the medical establishment (and not all did)?  Why is there no group?  Why am I told the only option for people like me is the professionals I already rely on heavily?  Why can I not be a full member of this community with full support or even a little support? Am I not your sister, your daughter, your mother, your aunt? Am I not a person?

Hey 5 East, You Might Want to Check This Out, It’s in Your Bible. Or Are You Non-Believers or Atheists?

http://allpsych.com/disorders/sleep/sleepwalking.html

Psychiatric Disorders

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Sleepwalking Disorder (COMING SOON)   Category Sleep Disorders

New York Times Prints a “Disability Debate” Without Any People On Disability Included, hmm.

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/the-disability-mess/?8ty&emc=ty

What a great idea! Let’s have a young professor who doesn’t know the history of the Reagan era apparently from her part of the debate, Jennifer L. Erkulwater, an associate professor of political science at the University of Richmond, is the author of “Disability Rights and the American Social Safety Net.”  who blames bipartisan policy changes made 2 decades ago but fails to mention this was after the late President Reagan’s administration threw people off off Social Security Disability willy nilly, resulting in many suicides, especially among the group that she mentions: people with mental illness.  Um, yes, Congress responded to the outrage over the tragic consequences of Reagan’s policies by Fixing them.  I bet any disability rights activist could have told the New York Times that, but of course they just did not think to ask someone who actually is on disability.  And yes, it is just like Clinton’s horrible so called Welfare “Reform” which has left millions now in this new Depression/Recession with no safety net and only now finding out what horrible barriers and what demeaning procedures including requirements to work for no money, usually called by other names in  other circumstances, they voted for the poor to suffer from.  It was not going to be them, so why not continue the war on the poor that started under Reagan?

Then we have Richard V. Burkhauser is the Sarah Gibson Blanding professor of public policy in the department of policy analysis at Cornell ,  a person with tenure for life in his job unless he goes to jail and if he becomes disabled, most likely has a very nice long term disability plan through his university, comparing people with no jobs and no prospects for jobs in this or past economies with a 90% unemployment rate among all adults with disabilities and the ongoing employment discrimination in hiring against people with disabilities that is impossible for individuals to prove in court as long as the employer does not “say” it’s because the applicant has a disability.  He wants to subject people on disability, people with chronic and incurable medical conditions, people with psychiatric disabilities who are likely to have co-morbid medical conditions from the drugs prescribed to them and die 25 years younger than the rest of the population, let alone parents who are poor (and you have to be poor to qualify for SSI for your under 18 child), to the horrors that are and were the “Reform of Welfare”.   Well must be nice when you have employment for life to decide that people with disabilities just need “incentives” to “get a job you loafer”, not that he said that, but you know, that is exactly how it sounds to my ears and I bet what a lot of people with invisible disabilities and visible disabilities have been told by all kinds of not so nice folks.

At least  Gary Burtless, a former Labor Department economist, is a senior fellowat the Brookings Institution,  who must remember his history, says: “There will be collateral damage, however. The reviews will impose real hardship on some disabled workers whose cases are reviewed.” I do not like the sound of “tough-minded reviews” on people on disability as if up until now everyone has found these reviews a cake walk, not something that people actually turn to professionals to help them through in many cases and as if what everyone on disability needs is just a little more “toughness” in their lives, but still, he remembers his history and suggests focusing on people who might actually be able to return to work rather than the scatter shot that was the Reagan debacle in the 1980’s. 

Then we have at the very bottom of the article someone who actually gets it, that SSI is the only real social safety net we have left for people who are unemployable and poor:  

It’s the System, Not the Individual

Morley White is an administrative law judge in Cleveland for the Social Security Administration. The views here are his own and in no way are they expressions of the Social Security Administration, who has empathy, something some Republican propagandists now make fun of in their alternate reality and says in part: “I generally believe in the sincerity of what they say. They are poor and the benefits they receive are now only $674 a month for an eligible individual. What are these people supposed to do in this economy with the limitations they say they have?”

So the war on the poor, the sick and people with disabilities  continues.  People who are not “overcomers” or simply aren’t lucky or heck, simply can not work due to say, a disability?  A severe and chronic condition expected to last at least a year, including people who have incurable cancer, people who can not even get out of a hospital or nursing home because they have no home health care, people who no one will hire because of prejudice, people who do not have foundations named after them, people who can not get a job no matter what”incentive” the non-disabled have in mind “for” them and “about” “them” but definitely not “with them” and not even deigning to include such a person in the discussion as if people with disabilities have no voice.  Well look at my blogroll, go to Google and go to “blogs” and type in “disability” and see how many voices people with disabilities have.  But not, of course, at one of the “Papers of Record”.  Couldn’t have those kind of people included in a debate about them, now could we?

C’ville Weekly Journalist Calls Local Children and Teens with Psych. Disabilities “head cases”.

I am reposting this because the article remains in the C’ville Weekly archive with no retraction and no apology for the demeaning and prejudiced and inaccurate language used about children and adolescents treated in the Commonwealth Center for Children and Adolescents. Children (and their parents) with psychiatric disabilities are members of our community, for a popular weekly to publish this kind of prejudiced language without apology is saying that they are not “really” members of our community in my view. I had hoped that mental health providers and agencies and advocates in our community would speak up about this degradation of members of our community by now, but only one person wrote a letter to the editor and as far as I know she is not associated with any mental health provider nor mental health advocacy group in our community.

http://c-ville.com/index.php?cat=121304062461064&ShowArticle_ID=11802302094565042

He also speculates with no evidence that most of the children (as young as 3 and 4 at  Commonwealth) are violent and dangerous.  But go read the whole thing if you can stand it.  This is a complex issue, reasonable people can disagree on what is best but nothing is gained and much is lost by perpetuating prejudice and ignorance about children with emotional disabilities and focusing on violence when every expert knows that kids and teens and adults with all disabilities but especially psychiatric are much more likely to be victims of crime than the average person and more likely to be victims than perpetrators by far. 

This is unacceptable hate speech about children.  Speak up, speak out, object to this sensationalized simplistic article that fails to address any of the complexities of the issue but chooses instead to make it even less likely that children with emotional problems will be accepted and integrated into our schools, neighborhoods, Little League, churches, homes of friends in our home town because it is our children he is writing about. 

This must not go unchallenged.  It is prejudice.  It is about children.  It is not okay.

C’ville Weekly Reader Speaks Out, Speaks Up in Print about Fear-Mongering and Prejudice

http://www.c-ville.com/index.php?cat=141404064423910&ShowArticle_ID=11800203092814347

Don’t blame the victim

I am writing in response to the cover story, “Under Threat” [February 24].  I appreciate your attention to the important issue of ensuring adequate mental health treatment resources for Virginia’s children and adolescents. To meet these needs, a spectrum of treatment options should be available, including community-based treatment and acute inpatient hospitalization. However, I was profoundly disturbed by the irresponsible and inflammatory language used to portray the children and adolescents in need of such treatment. The author’s descriptions of people with mental illness as “the off-kilter minds of Virginia’s most disturbed children” and “kids who are so messed up in the head”  and “deranged kids,” only serve to reinforce existing pervasive negative stereotypes. In addition, the article’s repeated focus on violent themes is misleading and unbalanced. The general public continues to link mental illness to violence, with little understanding of the true picture. The vast majority of people with mental illness are not violent, and the vast majority of violent acts are perpetrated by people without mental illness. In fact, people with mental illness are more likely to be victims of violent crime than to be perpetrators. This fear mongering is irresponsible. Inaccurate stereotyping of people with mental illness strengthens stigma and fear. Societal discrimination against the mentally ill is actually largely responsible for the chronic underfunding of the U.S. mental health system, leading to woefully inadequate treatment resources. It is vital that the media work to create an accurate portrayal of mental illness and its treatment in order to correct public misperceptions and build the support needed to appropriately care for these children and their communities.
 
Lillian Mezey
Albemarle County

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There Is No Hierarchy of Cause of Death and No Hierarchy of Disability nor Illness.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is  what I have lived with for many years.  I am fortunate, very fortunate, to have found someone to work with who really gets it and to be in recovery, to have learned how to manage my post-traumatic stress disorder by many every day and common sense (once you learn them, not before) self-care activities and methods.   I can manage triggers much better, can figure out when I need to take a break or distract myself or talk it out or think or write it out for myself or just take a rest or a walk or reach out to help someone else, often the most useful way of taking care of myself but not always. 

Keeping things in perspective is important and very helpful to me personally.  Reality testing–is this as scary as I feel it is? Can I do it even if I am scared? Can I get support or do I need support? Asking myself what I need and what will help me get through keeps me steady.  It doesn’t mean I don’t have times when things get rough internally.  But I am so used to that and have learned so much that I can handle much more than I ever thought I could on my own.

I have also learned how ordinary and expected many of my reactions are to situations.  What I used to see as a symptom is often a common response to a difficult and scary situation, in fact my reactions to many situations are the same as many people’s reactions, I have learned to try not to “patholigize” every feeling and every fear and every sadness.  For instance, very few people are not afraid of surgery or would not be scared if they had reason to believe they were having a heart attack. (I wasn’t, I’m fine, it was a rare complication of anti-rejection drugs).  Most people are going to be very upset if they lose a dog to death or  face the need to choose between two dogs they love becaue those two dogs can not get along no matter what you try and one has to be re-homed. 

I have noticed that many people assume because my kidney failure was due to the use of lithium for 14 years (strangely enough I said 12 years for years and only recently corrected my arithmetic and realized it was 14 years)  that I must have bipolar disorder.  I do not.  I had PTSD when I was mis-diagnosed with bipolar disorder but because I was not very questioning and because I believed the experts, it took a very long time for me to realize and accept that this did not apply to me, even though many experts questioned my diagnosis along the way.  I was determined not to be “one of those bipolars who go off their meds” as I heard and my family heard all too often, that horrible and damaging stereotype, as soon as I was mis-diagnosed.  I was going to be the exception. I would never listen to a doctor who questioned whether I was correctly diagnosed as I had heard warnings from other people of the dire consequences to them of doing just that.  I was stubborn and determined and scared all at once.  Scared of being seen as “one of them”.  Stubborn about not fitting that horrible and prejudiced stereotype.  Determined to be a model patient and success story.  I was wrong.  I failed to listen to my own instincts.  I accepted the labels and boxes of others and not my own experience and my own feelings. 

I am very grateful not to still be in that box.  I am grateful to experts who were gentle with me as they led me to understand and accept that what I had been told was not true about me. I am grateful to a doctor who stuck with me as I resisted ceasing my last mood stabilizer years ago even though it had warnings out about it that I should take seriously. 

I am not grateful for having kidney failure due to a wrong diagnosis.  I am not grateful for in the past and occasionally in the present being treated differently and with less respect in medical settings which I have no choice but to be in anymore.  I am not grateful for attitudes from anyone that say “get over it” or on the other hand “you are other, you are less, you are not one of us”.  I am not grateful when people feel okay about asking me very personal questions they have no reason to know the answer to when I (rarely) disclose that I have PTSD.  I understand the instinct to ask what happened, I do not attribute bad intentions to those who ask what caused this in you or who ask what were you doing that caused you to be misdiagnosed.  People want to know and understand and that is not coming from a bad place in anyone.  But my personal history  is mine and shared only with those I trust very much and those to whom I am very close and not even to all who fit in those categories.  I think I share a lot actually, but some things I will not share and that is my choice to make.  I am resigned by now to the fact that there will always be those who will ask or those who will assume I am at fault for my wrong diagnosis, that I must have been “doing” something or it wouldn’t have happened. 

Strangely enough I am equally bothered when people assume I am “good” or “better than others” or virtuous or something along those lines when I share my great luck at being able to get off of dialysis about 9 months after I got on it and stay off of it for over a year and a half. I know where this comes from in me though, it is not strange to me.  I was much younger when AIDS hit my home town of Philadelphia and hit the United States in general and people were dying before the cocktail and I listened to all the folks making distinctions between people who had AIDS based on how they got it, even asking people how they got it as if it were their business.  Even before any of us had heard of AIDS, I was disturbed by a story from a former therapist of mine about her father’s death–and yes I now know she should never have shared it with me–how determined she was to get the doctor at the time of her elderly father’s death to tell her and her mother that it was smoking cigarettes that killed him and how angry she was that the doctor would not do that.  From memory, he was old, he had many medical problems, his cause of death was complicated and not clear cut as is so often the case both in death and in life.  But she wanted to blame him.  She was grieving, I get that, when people are grieving they are not themselves.  I do not blame her now.  But it made an impact on me.  It made me think early on about how we talk about people and their illnesses and disabilities and their deaths.  I came to the maybe simplistic conclusion/statement that no one deserves the death penalty for “fill in the blank” with smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, using recreational/illegal drugs, not eating a healthy diet and on and on.  We all will die.  We may hasten our deaths by our actions or we may not.  We may be lucky or we may be unlucky.  I knew and admired a man who lived to 96 who smoked into his 50’s and drank decades beyond that.  My great-aunt smoke until she died from complications from an earlier car accident at 83.  And little children die of dysentery in places without clean water, people are dying of AIDS all over the world due to lack of medicine and lack of protection, people who  never smoked get lung cancer, people who never drank lose their livers, death is not fair, death is never deserved, death is death and comes to us all even if we do everything “right” all the time every day of our lives, short or long. 

There is no hierarchy of cause of death.  There is no hierarchy of disability.  We all will die and if we live long enough we all will face disability and illness.

Large Study Shows Mental Illness Without Drug Abuse Is Not Correlated With Violence

Mental illness alone is no trigger for violence

The Associated Press

Monday, February 2, 2009

CHICAGO: A new large U.S. study challenges the idea that mental illness alone is a leading cause of violence.

Researchers instead blame a combination of factors, specifically substance abuse and a history of violent acts, that drives up the danger when combined with mental illness in what they call an “intricate link.”

People with serious mental illness, without other big risk factors, are no more violent than most people, according to the study of more than 34,000 U.S. adults. The research was released Monday in Archives of General Psychiatry.

“Mental illness can provide the knee-jerk explanation for the Virginia Tech shootings,” but it’s not a strong predictor of violence by itself, said lead author Eric Elbogen of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.

Elbogen compiled a “top 10″ list of things that predict violent behavior, based on the analysis.

Younger age topped the list. History of violence came next, followed by male gender, history of juvenile detention, divorce or separation in the past year, history of physical abuse, parental criminal history and unemployment in the past year. Rounding out the list were severe mental illness with substance abuse and being a crime victim in the past year.

After the 2007 Virginia Tech killings by a student ordered to get psychiatric treatment, some states considered laws adding mental health questions to background checks for gun buyers or denying weapons to people who’ve been involuntarily committed for mental health treatment.

The new research, which bolsters other similar findings, raises questions about such laws, experts said. Such legislation may be both ineffective and discourage people who need help from getting treatment.

“We are being misled by our own fears,” said Columbia University psychiatry professor Dr. Paul Appelbaum, who wasn’t involved in the new study. “We ought to be concerned about providing good treatment and helping people lead fulfilling lives, not obsessed with protecting ourselves from phantom threats that appear to be unrelated to mental illness.”

U.S. systems to treat mental illness and substance abuse are separate, uncoordinated and could do a better job treating people with both problems, Appelbaum said.

For the new study, the researchers analyzed data from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. The original survey in 2001-2002 involved more than 43,000 face-to-face interviews with a representative sample of American adults. Three years later, many of the same people, more than 34,000, were interviewed again.

Questions about violence in both interviews included:

_”Ever use a weapon like a stick, knife or gun in a fight?”

_”Ever hit someone so hard that you injured them or they had to see a doctor?”

_”Ever start a fire on purpose to destroy someone’s property or just to see it burn?”

_”Ever force someone to have sex with you against their will?”

From the responses, the researchers determined what elements raised the risk of violent behavior.

There were 3,089 people deemed to have severe mental illness — schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression — but no history of either violence or substance abuse. They reported very few violent acts, about 50, between interviews.

But when mental illness was combined with a history of violence and a history of substance abuse, as in about 1,600 people, the risk of future violence increased by a factor of 10.

The relationship between mental illness and violence is there, “but it’s not as strong as people think,” Elbogen said.

Predicting who will act violently is complex, said John Monahan, a psychologist at University of Virginia’s law school, who has done similar research but was not involved in the new study.

“It is true that our crystal balls are very murky,” Monahan said. “The vast majority of violence that occurs in American society has absolutely nothing to do with mental illness.”

The large national survey, conducted by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, included people living in shelters, hotels and group homes, as well as houses and apartments, but it didn’t include people living in hospitals, jails or prisons.

Rosanna Esposito of the nonprofit Treatment Advocacy Center in Arlington, Virginia, applauded the study but pointed out the researchers weren’t able to analyze whether the subjects were in psychiatric treatment or not. Medication for serious mental illness can reduce the risk of violence, she said.

___

On the Net:

Archives of General Psychiatry: http://www.archgenpsychiatry.com

Virginia Senate Passes Name Change to Behavioral Health and Developmental Services with 5 Nays

After a push poll with 3 out of 4 suggestions including the name “Behavioral Health” on the former Department of Mental Health etc.’s website, after one Senator spoke very eloquently about how wrong and inappropriate it was to call mental health and mental retardation “behaviors”, after one woman senator said that the former DMHMRSAS said they only had 28 votes in opposition to Behavioral Health, a disappointing behavior on the part of the Department, Virginia’s Senate changed the name of the Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse to a  name no one in any of those groups served wanted and a name that makes Virginia look backwards (Developmental) and corporate and sheep-like (Behavioral Health) and offended every citizen and their families who are forced to use the Department’s services due to lack of money or insurance or lack of alternatives where they live.

After last year I thought maybe the General Assembly was finished with insulting and degrading and ignoring the voice of people with disabilities, but I was far too optimistic to think that.    I do wish to thank the gentleman who spoke so eloquently againsgt the name change despite knowing he would lose and will try to find his name and update this post to reflect that.

Behavioral Health May Be A More Honest Description of What DMHMRSAS Does and Cares About

I object to to the term “behavioral health”, a term invented by managed care companies, not by individuals who seek mental health or substance use disorder services nor by the folks who treat them.  It is insulting, offensive, all that.  It is the same name used for the sex offender facility in this state.  It is stigmatizing, prejudicial.  But perhaps, for once, the Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse is being honest about who they are and what they do and care about by pushing this name on us with a push poll on their site in the summer in which 3 out of 4 choices included behavioral health and the 4th was too vague to be usable. 

Because DMHMRSAS does care and act only on behavior, not emotions and feelings of people served by it.  DMHMRSAS does not care as an agency about the feelings of people with mental illness nor people with substance use disorders nor people with intellectual disabilities.  They offer practically no services that help people deal with feelings, they do not mandate counseling of any kind in their community services nor in their state hospitals.  They sometimes “act” as if they care about advocates with mental illness they are forced into contact with by federal and state mandates, but most of them, most of the time, are only acting as if they care and a few of them, only if others are watching them. 

So I will oppose this name change but if it passes anyway, I will have the satisfaction of knowing that DMHMRSAS has been forced to be honest for once about who they are and what they do and  who they care about and who they do not care about.  And that’s something.  Not much, but something, because honesty from DMHMRSAS?  Really, that’s priceless.

Regressive Mental Health Laws Inhibit Free Speech

Someone once told me that I don’t share enough about myself on this blog.  I didn’t agree but it is true that there are many important things I never write about on this blog.  Why? Because Virginia, and to be fair, most other states in this country, have now passed such regressive commitment laws that they inhibit my free speech.  Anything I put on this blog could and would be used against me in the kangaroo court they call a civil commitment proceeding under the regressive laws passed as “reform” last year due to the high emotions after Virginia Tech. in which no leader in this state was willing to step up and ask citizens not to take their feelings out on everyone with a psychiatric label or history or mislabel or even the perception of such.  Even George W. Bush eventually spoke publically of the need not to scapegoat American citizens who happened to be Muslim or from the Middle East after 9/11.  But no one in this state had the courage (sic) of George W. Bush when it came to people with psychiatric labels. 

So I don’t write as much these days.  I value honesty and full disclosure, but I value my health and well being and freedom more.   But hey,  free speech isn’t for people like me anyway, who do I think I am?  A law abiding citizen who has never even gotten a parking ticket and has voted  in every election since I was 18 except one where I was too ill? A volunteer for many groups in my community who has probably spent more money volunteering than I ever earned working?  People like me absolutely should not have free speech, that just makes good……..prejudice and bigotry and intimidation.

Who Would Lock Up Jesus Christ? The State of Virginia, That’s Who

Questioning the authority of the government, getting angry and knocking over furniture (tables in front of the temple), announcing he was the Son of G-d, attracting crowds, walking on water, preaching outside, not in a church or synagogue, no visible means of support, no home of his own, walking everywhere, upsetting people of means and status, of course Jesus Christ would be commitable under the current and soon to come lowered standards for involuntary commitment to a mental hospital in Virginia. 

But, you say, there was that one, that one who shot people up, he was one of “them”, even if he wasn’t really, even if he had a very rare disorder and even if most of “them” are less likely to be violent than the general population, still we must make an example of all of “them” because of that one.  We need someone to blame, of course we do, in fact, as we did 2,000 years ago, we need a scapegoat, someone or some group to take the blame for our own sins and our own faults and omissions.  Human beings have had scapegoats for thousands of years, why should the present be any different?  But it’s medicine or science you say.  No, it’s not.  It’s social control and it’s intolerance of difference and it’s archaic and brutal and largely avoidable if voluntary CARE is available to all, which it is not.  But never mind, we need scapegoats.  And we forget, those of us who are Christian, that G-d already gave us His only Son so that we would not need to scapegoat each other anymore. 

Merry Christmas.

Maryland Created Database That Will Actually Save Lives, Unlike Virginia Which Created One That Only Creates Fear and Prejudice

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/10/AR2008121001813.html

Virginia created a database of folks who have been committed to a psychiatric unit for any reason including a psychiatric reaction to a prescribed medical medication or temporary inability to care for self years ago and last year made it even more extensive by adding in folks who volunteer for hospitalization after being detained initially.  There is no evidence this database, created years before the massacre at Virginia Tech. ever saved any lives or ever will.   There is every reason to believe that it will  create prejudice and stigma  againtt Virginia citizens who have committed no crime and are no danger to anyone at all and that it will deter people from both seeking treatment for themselves and loved ones and from volunteering for hospitalization. 

Maryland on the other hand created a database that makes sense and will save lives–a database of all court orders around domestic violence that sheriffs can access at any time of day or night without going to a courthouse, impossible in the middle of the night, and which also allows them to print out orders in their patrol cars in case a perpetrator has torn up a protective or restraining order or an order was issued very recently.  In Maryland, men (and a few women) known to be violent and likely to be violent again are in a database that law enforcement can use in the moment to keep victims, including their children, safe and protected.  In Virginia, we have only succeeded in regressing the status of people who have psychiatric issues at any time in their lives and in increasing popular misconceptions that people with psychiatric histories are dangerous which has no scientific basis at all.  But hey, Virginia’s politicians had to show they were tough on….people with disabilities?  G-d forbid Virginia’s politicians showed any sign that they were tough on people who beat their wives and/or children, after all, the Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse does not even bother to check if someone who is detained is in an abusive living situation, and they know best, right?  Oh, except for that unfortunate and preventable killing in Fairfax in which a woman in an abusive relationship was taken to her Community Services Board’s crisis center and no one there seemed to realize the danger of her situation so when she left and was attacked by her abusive boyfriend she killed him in self-defense and was found not guilty months later after being restored to competency because she was defending herself, not because she was mentally ill.  Do you know how innocent she must have been with a psychiatric label in a criminal court to actually be found not guilty?   Ordinary citizens figured it out, but not the trained clinicians at her community services board.  Virginia’s Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse created a new pre-screening form this year.  A perfect opportunity to add screening for abuse to the process, instead they added a nonsensical and non-existent “level of insight” called “blaming” on their pre-screening form.  Sort of telling about their real attitude towards people with psychiatric disabilities, don’t you think?

“All Our Lives We Must Struggle to Rid the Earth of All Such Crimes”

Two Good Arms by Charlie Parker sung by Holly Near

We All Matter

Inspiration in the Face of Setbacks–We Can Keep This up to Our Late 80’s Too!

If It Is Any Night of the Week, Cesar Chumil Is Locked in His Cell With No One to Say Good-Night to Him

Good night Cesar, sleep tight.

Why Feminists Should Be Concerned About the Next Diagnostic and Statistical Manual

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-lane16-2008nov16,0,5678764.story

Parental Alienation Syndrome, which has no scientific basis whatsoever, is most often used against women in custody cases including by ex-husbands with documented histories of domestic violence against their ex-wife and/or children.  It does not mean “alienated parent” as the author above implies, it means that a parent, usually a mother, is being accused in court of alienating her child or children from their father by being truthful about the danger they pose to their child’s physical safety or the mother’s safety.  Courts seem to love the made up syndrome as an excuse to give custody rights or shared custody to men who have abused their wives and/or children, but until now there has been no official status for this made up syndrome.  If it makes it into the DSM’s next version, divorce lawyers and abusive divorcing spouses will have even more ability to continue to abuse their exes through the courts and to put their children in danger in some cases.  Women will continue to be labelled hysterical for reacting normally to horrible experiences such as discovering their children have been sexually abused by their father but now there will be so called scientific backing for these made up claims in court.  Up for inclusion again is making women’s menstrual cycles into a psychiatric condition also.  We now have many more women psychiatrists than we did when the first DSM came out, why do women continue to be the target of sexist and destructive labelling by the American Psychiatric Association behind closed doors even so?  While there is a dearth of concern about psychiatry and its destructive effect on women over the ages today, nothing like the great work that was done in the ’70’s and 80’s is out there now and in fact many feminist blogs are guilty of the same continuation of prejudice against people with psychiatric labels as the rest of society, forgetting their history altogether in my personal opinion, maybe the threat to custody of children will start to wake feminists up to the destructive and continuing sexist power of psychiatry over the lives of women in the United States.

Erosion of Educational Confidentiality Laws for “Benign MH Purposes” Could Have Malignant Unintended Consequences

The Commission on Mental Health Law Reform, while insisting on confidentiality for its own work by not releasing already completed task force reports to the public that they are using in their own deliberations and by not publishing the names of members of its new task forces nor holding any open meetings of its task forces/committees, is still working on loosening confidentiality protections for anyone in Virginia with a psychiatric label or history including students.  Maybe they should not only open up their deliberations to the public and concerned stakeholders but also step outside their comfort zone and look at the malignant consequences when officials do not abide by educational privacy laws for their own reasons as evidenced in this report in the Washington Post on lives disrupted and people demeaned by a school violating educational privacy laws:

“School officials in the City of Manassas admitted this week that they skirted federal privacy laws when they divulged personal information about a number of Hispanic students to city inspectors investigating anonymous complaints about overcrowded housing.”

“Inspectors came to Taylor’s home late one night in December 2005 and inspected it when the only person present was her 15-year-old daughter. They gave Taylor 30 days to evict her niece or be found in violation of the city’s overcrowding ordinance.

Taylor did so in December 2005, turning her niece’s family into the street just days before Christmas. On Dec. 25, Taylor’s extended family gathered for Christmas dinner. Distraught after bouncing from relative to relative for weeks, her niece begged Taylor to let her stay at her home for just one night.

“I had to say no. I was afraid they would come back,” Taylor said in Spanish. “That was the most difficult moment. Your family is your family. But I had to say no.”

 Taylor, without the income from her niece’s family, lost her home and now lives in an apartment.”

Mental Disorder as a “Sin”? What Century Is This at the New York Times?

I have no idea why a television critic is doing areview of a book on anorexia nervosa in the New York Times but they chose her and printed it so it is fair to ask what the heck are the editors at the New York Times thinking to let this get past them?  I have not read the book in question, a collection of first person accounts of surviving anorexia nervosa, a recognized mental disorder in the DSM.  It is the review that shocked me in its judgmental tone ending in a sentence that calls the behavior associated with this mental disorder a “sin”.  “Sin” is the last word of the book review in fact.  What is going on here?  Hey, a lot of us know that even within the mental health profession people with anorexia tend to be treated with less respect than other patients, and there is surely something about the disorder that provokes counter-transference in professionals and lay people alike, but to call the behavior which can lead and often does lead to disability and death a “sin”?  This is helpful?  This is a modern approach to psychological disorders?  If I didn’t live in Virginia I think I would just write WTF???????? and let it go at that actually.  This is outrageous and the New York Times should issue an apology to the survivors of those who have died from anorexia nervosa and to the folks living with it today.

Would the New York Times Print a Poorly Written and Judgmental Essay About People With Kidney Disease?

Dr. Sally Satel is at it again in the New York Times, this time writing an essay that conflates intentional behavior with both circumstances someone is born into and illness someone does not choose to acquire.  She rails that we should not say that drug and alcohol addiction does not discriminate because some ethnic groups are more prone to it and because children who are sexual abused are more prone to it as adults and because people with co-occuring mental illness have a harder time recovering from it.  And then she rails about the many bad decisons made by those who relapse in their drug and alcohol addiction and how it is really their fault, they missed or purposely ignored the signs of a relapse coming on, they made bad choices, they are at fault, it is not a disease.  Okay then, why is she as a medical doctor treating these people if it is not a disease one could reasonably ask?  And why if she despises her patients so much does she not get another job, go into another field of medicine?  Or even another branch of psychiatry? 

Would the New York Times print such a badly written and researched and logically inconsistent essay by a nephrologist judging his patients with kidney disease and pointing out the reality and true fact that kidney failure does discriminate, it is not an equal opportunity disease.  Poor people and ethnic minorities are more likely to develop chronic kidney disease.  Behavior plays an enormous role in the development and progression of kidney failure in many patients, diabetics who do not take care of their diabetes, folks with diagnosed high blood pressure who do not take care of their hypertension, folks who have been prescribed nephrotoxic drugs at some point in their lives and never check to see if there has been damage to their kidneys until they are in full renal failure as Dr. Satel herself has admitted caused her own kidney failure.  Now I’m of a mind not to judge her on that one.  I bet no one warned her of the possible dangers to her kidneys just as no one warned me.  And I think it is very difficult for people who inherit type I diabetes as children to keep to the rigid diet and blood testing required to stay healthy and I know even when folks do everything right they can still end up with kidney failure.  I am not prepared to say that the only folks who should not be judged for their kidney failure are those who have PKD and those whose kidneys were injured by malpractice or medical accident.  In fact I have no interest in judging anyone with kidney failure for the fact that they have kidney failure.  Nor in saying because certain groups are more likely to get it we should downplay the possibility that anyone could get it and decrease the chance that kidney disease research might get decent funding some day.  In fact the whole idea that certain groups are more likely to get a disease as relevant to what we do about them is repugnant to me.  Can you imagine an essay in the New  York Times about sickle cell anemia only affecting certain groups?  I can’t. 

Is there really no other right wing psychiatrist the New York Times can find to write essays for them?  There is no shortage of which I am aware and many psychiatrists write and reason quite well even if I disagree with many of them.  Is it too much to ask for a well written, non-prejudicing, well reasonsed essay in the New York Times?

Lack of Screening for Domestic Violence May Have Led to Death of Man

The Treatment Advocacy Center is unlikely to publish the end of the story of the woman who was taken to a Fairfax crisis stabilization center by a police officer, left to wait for 45 minutes and then left and ended up killing her live in boyfriend when she got home because it does not fit with their agenda of psychiatric patients as irrational perpetrators of violence.  I do hope that the Office of the Inspector General however will re-open its investigation into this critical incident now that new information and a verdict of not guilty have occurred.  The woman in question was, according to news reports of trial testimony, in an abusive relationship and that is what got her so upset and taken to the crisis stabilization center.  However she was not seen quickly and if she had been there is no space on Virginia’s pre-screening nor any requirement in performance contracts that women or men who seek crisis psychiatric services be screened for domestic violence, unlike most medical contacts for women even with their obstetrician or in a medical hospital.  This despite the known fact that women with mental illness are far more likely to enter into abusive relationships than women without mental illness diagnoses.

If this woman had been screened for domestic violence it is unlikely she would have been sent home.  Instead she would we hope have been referred to a domestic violence shelter for women.  If that had happened, she would not have faced a murder trial even though she was found not guilty in the end, and her abusive boyfriend would probably still be alive. 

It is past time to take the issue of domestic violence perpetrated ON people with mental illness labels seriously and to screen for it at every juncture that a person with a psychiatric label interfaces with the mental health system.  It could save lives.

Screen Psychiatric Staff For Patients’ Sakes

All this talk of screening the population for mental illness these days in Virginia and elsewhere and NO talk about screening the folks who work in mental health facilities such as psychiatric units and hospitals for attitude problems, anti-social behavior or histories of founded abuse or criminal records that indicate a risk to patients.  In fact Virginia just made it easier to hire staff with a history of conviction for assault and battery this past legislative session and the one 2 years ago even though past violence has always been the best predictor of future violence. 

Screening for professionals who just don’t give a darn or who are empathy challenged but have no criminal nor documented abuse history is more work, but aren’t people who are completely at the mercy of staff in psychiatric institutions worth it?  We need to do a better job of screening out folks who don’t like people with mental illness who end up commenting on newspaper stories or in blogs about how horrible their mental health patients are to the public and those who lack the basic empathy of a head of lettuce that you don’t tell someone who just tried to kill herself that she wasn’t serious enough and to tell other staff to be mean to her.  A young woman died, her parents have lost their young daughter, at least in Australia there is a public coroner’s inquest, does that ever happen in Virginia or elsewhere in the United States when a psychiatric patient dies?  We have to develop better and more rigorous screening of those who work with people in psychiatric institutions in this country.  Our people are being traumatized for life and some of them are dying. 

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/hanging-victim-afraid-in-hospital/2008/08/18/1218911572802.html

Hanging victim afraid in hospital
Email Printer friendly version Normal font Large font Daughter wrote letter … John and Judith Chapman, inset, Lynne Murphy arrives at the court.

 

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Geesche Jacobsen
August 19, 2008

 

THE previous time Emily Chapman tried to hang herself in the psychiatric unit, she pressed the emergency button, and was saved.

 

A night nurse, Margot Gattenby, then allegedly made her crawl back to her bed and refused to help her up.

 

Later, the nurse allegedly said loudly: “She’s just an attention seeker. If she was serious, she would not have pressed the emergency button.” Ms Chapman, who heard the comment, told another nurse: “I will never press that button again.”

 

The next time Emily Chapman hanged herself in the Cumberland Hospital psychiatric unit she did not press the emergency button. She died the following day.

 

The 20-year-old had been admitted in December 2005 after a suicide attempt. She had suffered chronic fatigue syndrome since she was 13, and had been admitted to hospital nine times with pancreatitis, her father, John Chapman, told Glebe Coroner’s Court yesterday.

 

She had told staff she was afraid of the fixtures in the bathroom, felt unsafe and had a desire to hang or strangle herself.

 

Dr Chapman told the court his daughter had written a letter complaining about Ms Gattenby but had not sent it for fear of retribution. She wrote of being deliberately kept awake, of being denied her medication, and being told to “watch the television” when she was feeling anxious.

 

Ms Gattenby also allegedly told her she had “run out of compassion” for her, and that she was not really ill.

 

“All of these experiences have been traumatic and damaging above and beyond the illness that I’m already suffering,” Ms Chapman wrote. “I trust that you will take this matter seriously, address this inexcusable behaviour and attitude, and act to change the situation for the good of all the patients in the ward.”

 

Another nurse, Lynne Murphy, who became close to Ms Chapman, resigned in protest at the “patient abuse” on the ward. Ms Chapman told her she had been sexually assaulted in other hospitals but this was not followed up and she was left alone with a male nurse at night.

 

Ms Murphy said Ms Gattenby told her not to reward Ms Chapman for her suicide attempt by giving her attention. “You have to decide whether long-term behavioural change is your goal or preventing suicide … In order to prevent suicide, you have to show empathy and compassion,” Ms Murphy told the court.

 

The inquest continues.

 

How to File A HIPPA Privacy Complaint for Yourself or Anyone Else with the Office For Civil Rights

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U.S. Department of Health and Human Services • Office for Civil Rights  

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HOW TO FILE A HEALTH INFORMATION PRIVACY COMPLAINT
WITH THE OFFICE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS

 

If you believe that a person, agency or organization covered under the HIPAA Privacy Rule (”a covered entity”) violated your (or someone else’s ) health information privacy rights or committed another violation of the Privacy Rule, you may file a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights (OCR). OCR has authority to receive and investigate complaints against covered entities related to the Privacy Rule. A covered entity is a health plan, health care clearinghouse, and any health care provider who conducts certain health care transactions electronically. For more information about the Privacy Rule, please look at our responses to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and our Privacy Guidance. (See the web link near the bottom of this form.)

Complaints to the Office for Civil Rights must: (1) Be filed in writing, either on paper or electronically; (2) name the entity that is the subject of the complaint and describe the acts or omissions believed to be in violation of the applicable requirements of the Privacy Rule; and (3) be filed within 180 days of when you knew that the act or omission complained of occurred. OCR may extend the 180-day period if you can show “good cause.” Any alleged violation must have occurred on or after April 14, 2003 (on or after April 14, 2004 for small health plans), for OCR to have authority to investigate.

Anyone can file written complaints with OCR by mail, fax, or email. If you need help filing a complaint or have a question about the complaint form, please call this OCR toll free number: 1-800-368-1019. OCR has ten regional offices, and each regional office covers certain states. You should send your complaint to the appropriate OCR Regional Office, based on the region where the alleged violation took place. Use the OCR Regions list at the end of this Fact Sheet, or you can look at the regional office map to help you determine where to send your complaint. Complaints should be sent to the attention off the appropriate OCR Regional Manager.

You can submit your complaint in any written format. We recommend that you use the OCR Health Information Privacy Complaint Form which can be found on our web site or at an OCR Regional office. If you prefer, you may submit a written complaint in your own format. Be sure to include the following information in your written complaint:

 

Your name, full address, home and work telephone numbers, email address. If you are filing a complaint on someone’s behalf, also provide the name of the person on whose behalf you are filing. Name, full address and phone of the person, agency or organization you believe violated your (or someone else’s) health information privacy rights or committed another violation of the Privacy Rule. Briefly describe what happened. How, why, and when do believe your (or someone else’s) health information privacy rights were violated, or the Privacy Rule otherwise was violated? Any other relevant information. Please sign your name and date your letter. The following information is optional: Do you need special accommodations for us to communicate with you about this complaint? If we cannot reach you directly, is there someone else we can contact to help us reach you? Have you filed your complaint somewhere else?

The Privacy Rule, developed under authority of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), prohibits the alleged violating party from taking retaliatory action against anyone for filing a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights. You should notify OCR immediately in the event of any retaliatory action. To submit a complaint with OCR, please use one of the following methods. If you mail or fax the complaint, be sure to follow the instructions above for determining the correct regional office.

Option 1: Open and print out the Health Information Privacy Complaint Form in PDF format (you will need Adobe Reader software) and fill it out. Return the completed complaint to the appropriate OCR Regional Office by mail or fax.

Option 2: Download the Health Information Privacy Complaint Form in Microsoft Word format to your own computer, fill out and save the form using Microsoft Word. Use the Tab and Shift/Tab on your keyboard to move from field to field in the form. Then, you can either: (a) print the completed form and mail or fax it to the appropriate OCR Regional Office; or (b) email the form to OCR at OCRComplaint@hhs.gov.

Option 3: If you choose not to use the OCR-provided Health Information Privacy Complaint Form (although we recommend that you do), please provide the information specified above and either: (a) send a letter or fax to the appropriate OCR Regional Office; or (b) send an email OCR at OCRComplaint@hhs.gov.

If you require an answer regarding a general health information privacy question, please view our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). If you still need assistance, you may call OCR (toll-free) at: 1-866-627-7748. You may also send an email to OCRPrivacy@hhs.gov with suggestions regarding future FAQs. Emails will not receive individual responses.

Website: http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa

OCR Regional Addresses
Region I – CT, ME, MA, NH, RI, VT Office for Civil Rights U.S. Department of Health & Human Services JFK Federal Building – Room 1875 Boston, MA 02203 (617) 565-1340; (617) 565-1343 (TDD) (617) 565-3809 FAX	Region VI – AR, LA, NM, OK, TX Office for Civil Rights U.S. Department of Health & Human Services 1301 Young Street – Suite 1169 Dallas, TX 75202 (214) 767-4056; (214) 767-8940 (TDD) (214) 767-0432 FAX
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Region III – DE, DC, MD, PA, VA, WV Office for Civil Rights U.S. Department of Health & Human Services 150 S. Independence Mall West – Suite 372 Philadelphia, PA 19106-3499 (215) 861-4441; (215) 861-4440 (TDD) (215) 861-4431 FAX	Region VIII – CO, MT, ND, SD, UT, WY Office for Civil Rights U.S. Department of Health & Human Services 1961 Stout Street – Room 1426 Denver, CO 80294 (303) 844-2024; (303) 844-3439 (TDD) (303) 844-2025 FAX
Region IV – AL, FL, GA, KY, MS, NC, SC, TN Office for Civil Rights U.S. Department of Health & Human Services 61 Forsyth Street, SW. – Suite 3B70 Atlanta, GA 30323 (404) 562-7886; (404) 331-2867 (TDD) (404) 562-7881 FAX	Region IX – AZ, CA, HI, NV, AS, GU, The U.S. Affiliated Pacific Island Jurisdictions Office for Civil Rights U.S. Department of Health & Human Services 90 7th Street, Suite 4-100 San Francisco, CA 94103 (415) 437-8310; (415) 437-8311 (TDD) (415) 437-8329 FAX
Region V – IL, IN, MI, MN, OH, WI Office for Civil Rights U.S. Department of Health & Human Services 233 N. Michigan Ave. – Suite 240 Chicago, IL 60601 (312) 886-2359; (312) 353-5693 (TDD) (312) 886-1807 FAX	Region X – AK, ID, OR, WA Office for Civil Rights U.S. Department of Health & Human Services 2201 Sixth Avenue – Mail Stop RX-11 Seattle, WA 98121 (206) 615-2290; (206) 615-2296 (TDD) (206) 615-2297 FAX

 

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Round up of News Stories on Fridays State Human Rights Committee Hearing on Man Secluded for Years at Western State Hospital

Don’t be lazy, click on the links as our pals at the Fascism Advocacy Center will tell you… LOL.  Speaking of oppression and its side effects, one of the first casualties of the oppression of Cesar Chumil for all these years at Western State Hospital under the direction of its director, Jack Barber M.D. and with the permission of the current Commissioner James Reinhard M.D. and the previous Commissioner Robert Kellog and on and on and with the implicit permission of the Commissioner’s boss, Secretary of Health Marilyn Taverner and her boss, Governor Tim Kaine, has been adherence to the first ethical principal of medical care, confidentiality.  From the number of Western state staff who feel free to make public comments on news stories referencing information (often misinformation) they learned while employed at Western and from the number of times Mr. C.’s confidentiality has been broken to me by folks who work or worked at Western State (again, often with misinformation), it is quite clear that defensiveness about this horrible situation has bred an all bets are off attitude towards confidentiality among Western State staff.  People who have no responsibility for his care are clearly being told stories about him.  There is no provision in the confidentiality laws nor regulations that permit sharing of protected health information with another staff member who does not and will not be working with a patient.  Sharing of information is only allowed for purposes of treatment of the individual, not for purposes of defending your employer or your institution and certainly not for purposes of spreading misinformation to counter bad publicity for your employer. 

The only Western State Hospital staff who may legally share information about Mr. Chumil are the Director because he is being sued over human rights violations and/or his designees speaking on his behalf.  So people who just happen to work at Western who have not been asked to speak for Dr. Barber or for the Department of Mental Health have no legal leg to stand on if they speak or write about him to the public or even to other staff who are not involved in his so called treatment. 

Someone needs to show some leadership and put an end to the climate of Us against  C.C, his attorneys and anyone who is on his side among staff at Western State.  Sadly, I just can not think of anyone with the authority to do so who will. 

 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/aug/02/panel-tells-hospital-to-relax-15-years-of-patient-/

http://www.newsvirginian.com/wnv/news/local/article/western_state_patient_to_remain_secluded/25694/

http://www.newsleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080801/NEWS05/80801011/1002/NEWS01

http://www.whsv.com/news/headlines/26199054.html

Friday Links

http://www.thepsychologist.org.uk/archive/archive_home.cfm?volumeID=21&editionID=155&ArticleID=1291           Questioning the banality of evil

http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/title6.html   YOUR RIGHTS UNDER TITLE VI OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964

http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/36/23/40  Elizabeth Packard, psychiatric survivor pioneer for mental patients’ rights in the U.S.

http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?000+cod+37.2-419  Human rights and licensing enforcement and sanctions; notice.  (Code of Virginia)

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14444-killings-by-the-mentally-ill-reach-new-low.html  U.K. study finds their outpatient forced drugging act was passed due to propaganda and fear-mongering, not facts.  Imagine that. Treatment Advocacy Center anyone?  The U.S. does not keep statistics like this so the Treatment Advocacy Center and politicians looking for issues to make themselves look good can make up their own facts and pass legislation that hurts the many and helps virtually nobody.  Yay Virginia General Assembly, Governor Kaine and the Attorney General’s Office!  Great work!  Who are you going to use as your scapegoat next year?  I know, go after kids.  Kids these days you know.  Lots of evidence.  Sheesh.

No!!!! The Only Thing That Would Make Me Not Vote For President is Kaine as VP. NO!!

Sources: Obama Campaign Seriously Vetting Kaine

This has to be joke right?  We need a vice presidential candidate who is against the death penalty but signs death warrants anyway?  A vice-president who used people with psychiatric disabilities as a scapegoat to boost his own political ratings while doing nothing to address the responsibility of people in charge?  A VP who has done nothing for folks on fixed incomes in his own state but raise fees and keep Medicaid just as hard to obtain as ever and kept the cap on Medicaid lifetime expenditures that other states don’t have?  A VP who is pro-business but not pro-union nor pro-poor people.  A VP who retreats immediately in the face of opposition from lobbyists when he does have a good idea such as putting expensive, no more effective and dangerous neuroleptics into the state formulary?  A VP with no foreign policy experience?  No Senate nor House experience?  A VP who will add absolutely nothing to the ticket but baggage?  A VP who will not clean up his own state hospitals so is unlikely to help clean up those across the country?

WHY????????????????????????????

Abuse of Power Is Contagious and Can Infect an Entire Institution and Its Staff and Patients

“
In one undated document written by Western State’s current director, Jack Barber, Chumil is described as a patient whose demands overwhelmed the hospital’s staff.

“The focus of the staff is primarily on Mr. Chumil, around whom the entire operation is revolving. It is not clear to me how much more of this can be tolerated without a very major issue developing, with a loss of control by the staff, a severe injury, or a massive loss of staff,” the memo reads.

It then lays out a scenario of decreased attention to Chumil by establishing a plan that is “sufficiently restrictive that it restores control of the ward to the staff.”

“I think when there is a degree of crisis which has been building and has now fully arrived, ‘cutting our losses’ is simply all we can do,” Barber wrote.

Gulotta said the memo appears to set up Chumil’s isolation from the rest of the hospital’s population, ending a pattern of shackling or temporarily secluding him for his erratic behaviors.”

It may seem to some outsiders that this case is only about one patient in Western State Hospital and one case of founded violation of his human rights (see eariier posts on Western State Hospital and Mr. C.).  But what I have observed and learned is that the ongoing violation of this one patient’s rights in such an egregious manner has infected the entire institutional culture of Western State Hospital.  Staff are infected by the sense that anything less than the total loss of freedom of Mr. C. is not such a big deal and one Western State psychiatrist has been going around the state of Virginia showing a film of a former patient stating that a week in restraints ( a violation of state and federal regulations on the use/length of use of restraints on its face) was good for him.   This at a time when all psychiatric hospitals are supposed to be reducing the use of restraint and seclusion and viewing it as a treatment failure.  But of course in comparison to 20 years in seclusion, a decade or more of those in restraints 24/7, a week does not seem like much does it?  Even if it is illegal under Virginia law.  So why not boast about it if you are a psychiatrist at Western and see that the state and everybody else will let one person stay in seclusion fed through a hole in a door for years on end?

Patients are infected by being aware of Mr. C’s treatment.  Some are scared it could happen to them, some distance themselves out of  protection and see him as less than human thus identifying with the staff who oppress them.   This will leave lingering scars on all these patients.

Staff feel a need to defend this horrible long lasting situation to the point where they feel free to violate confidentiality and once they feel free to do that in one case, it spreads to other patients who are not Mr. C. and we have staff that just does not get that they have a legal, moral, professional and ethical obligation to keep the confidentiality of patients from outsiders no matter what. 

Senior staff have reacted by re-defining reality to make themselves more comfortable in ways that pervert the very concepts of dignity, respect, recovery and human rights.  One senior staff told me years ago that other patients were “jealous” of Mr. C’s living situation!  If she can say and believe that, how must this situation have infected her ability to see Western State Hospital patients as human beings like herself? 

It is too simple to point fingers at one person although it is tempting to place sole blame on the psychiatrist who started this horror at Western.  What we have here is an entire institution that has been infected with authoritarianism, dehumanization of patients, disregard for the human rights rules and regulations and disregard for confidentiality.  We have something approaching the infamous Zimbardo fake prison experiment, but he closed that experiment down, this has been going on for 20 years. 

I believe this infection has spread beyond the walls of Western State Hospital as well. When conditions are this awful in one hospital, real but less mind boggling human rights violations in other hospitals and other licensed programs in Virginia do not have the same impact and spur the same impetus to reform on our Protection and Advocacy agency and others whose role it is to protect and advocate for people who use our mental health system.

Who will have the courage to step in and take steps to stop the infection at Western State Hospital from festering and spreading?  Commissoner Reinhard?  Governor Kaine?  The Department of Justice?  Who?

Politically Correct Prejudice and Bigotry

It’s very amusing to me that Sally Satel entitled her book before last P.C. MD: How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine because Satel is in so many ways the epitome of psychiatric political correctness. She makes fun of the idea that psychiatric survivors have anything to say or offer to the psychiatric system–this is very politically correct in the U.S. culture, particularly on the left/liberal side of the culture. Using psychiatric labels and diagnoses as put downs and jokes is commonplace and accepted without question as to its effect on people who have been so labelled in real life in left/liberal circles. Of course there are many who do the same on the right/neocon side and Bush himself called Sadaam a “madman” at one point and his DOJ isn’t exactly overly interested in civil rights violations against people in psychiatric institutions.

But I really get tired of hearing and reading people who consider themselves enlightened repeat the propaganda pushed by lobbyists who want to erode the minimal civil rights in existence for people with psychiatric labels in this country. These lobbyists deliberately and openly choose to push the idea that people with psychiatric labels are a threat to public safety, knowing the reality is that very few are and that you are much more likely to be killed by a non-diagnosed person than you ever are by someone with a psychiatric label and that folks with psychiatric labels are significantly over represented in the population of victims of violent crime. They also know that people with psychiatric labels are subject to discriminatory policing and prosecution, but ignore those facts to get well meaning folks upset about the fact that there are people with mental illness in our prisons and jails.

They also pretend that acts of violence can be both predicted and prevented by the psychiatric system knowing this is hogwash. The only way the psychiatric system can reliably predict future violence is from a history of past violence, age (young) and gender (male), and substance abuse, just like everybody else in our society and in fact, very few folks don’t have the common sense to predict that someone who has been violent in the past, is young, is male and abuses drugs is more likely to be violent in the future than someone who doesn’t fit any of those categories.

If it were any other marginalized group in our society being targeted as threats to public safety through propaganda (illegal immigrants have been targeted this way as well, but there has been pushback), liberals and the left would see through it and push back. But the prejudice and bigotry against people with psychiatric labels is so strong that even folks with psychiatric labels themselves will sometimes buy into the propaganda and lies being pushed by lobbyists who want to take away what little civil rights we have left.

It’s not politically incorrect to call someone crazy, a wingnut, or disturbed instead of bad, ignorant or obnoxious, it’s absolutely politically correct in our culture. And that’s a shame.

Governor Kaine Chooses To Appear With President Bush at Monticello

GOVERNOR’S PUBLIC SCHEDULE FOR

FRIDAY, JULY 4 – FRIDAY JULY 11

 

Friday, July 4

 

Independence Day Celebration and Naturalization Ceremony. Governor Timothy M. Kaine will attend the annual Independence Day Celebration and Naturalization Ceremony at Monticello. The ceremony will feature remarks by President George W. Bush.

 

When:         10:00 a.m.  

 

Where:       Monticello

Charlottesville, Virginia

The New Easier Civil Commitment Laws: At Least They Fixed The Problems in Cho’s Case, Right? Wrong.

1. The Virginia Tech. shooter was allowed to live on campus again after being kicked off for misbehavior and nothing has been done to change Virginia Techs’ policies in situations such as his.

2.  The Virginia Tech. shooter’s commitment hearing was held in less than 24 hours after he was picked up by police for evaluation and the hospital had no time to properly observe him because he was there on a Sunday night and only for 14 hours.  The reason his hearing was held so quickly and without time for proper evaluation? Because the New River Valley holds commitment hearings Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the convenience of the 2 lawyers who switch roles each month as special justice and attorney for the person being committed and nothing was enacted in law nor policy to change this situation.  So if someone is picked up this Sunday afternoon in the New River Valley, the CSB and the hospital will still only have less than 24 hours to evaluate the person.  Great job of addressing the problems General Assembly, Governor and Commission on Mental Health Law Reform.  I would have supported waiting 24 hours before holding a hearing to give a fairer chance in both directions but we had a special special justice from Richmond on the Commission who said it would prevent him from ordering forced drugging immediately if he had to wait 24 hours and we all know it’s all about the forced injections……not.

3. The Virginia Tech. shooter was selectively mute but was ordered into talk therapy, clearly there was no thought of what actually would work to help him.  Was money given to CSB’s and others to provide alternative therapies to folks who cannot benefit from traditional treatment by the General Assembly et. al.? No.  In fact, the new legislation provides no new money even for traditional talk therapy which most CSB’s in Virginia cannot afford to provide given the extremely low reimbursement rate by Virginia’s Medicaid program.  The new money is all about crisis services after the fact and inpatient beds.  Or is it?  Because apparently the funds for LOS purchase of community inpatient funds have been cut to CSB’s as of July 1, the same day the new laws go into effect.  So we will have more folks committed and less money to pay for community beds for them.  Catch and release with a permanent and stigmatizing record.

4. The Virginia Tech shooter’s evaluation and hearing were both extremely short, less than 15 minutes.  So presumably this was fixed in the new laws to make sure enough time is taken in evaluation and hearings to make sure everyone knows what is really going on with someone, right?  Wrong.  There is no requirement in the new laws that evaluators nor special justices spend more time with the people being sent for commitment and no incentive for them to given that the scandalously low fees paid to both have not been raised one bit.  But, independent evaluators will now be allowed to evaluate someone by video conference which is sure to help with picking up on nuances of behavior and issues, not. 

5. Well at least we must have made commitment hearings and hospitalization more trauma-informed and less likely to cause narcissistic injury which could lead to rage and acting out in someone such as Cho right?  Okay, don’t make me laugh.  Not even close, nothing, nada, trauma is the order of the day as it always was. 

So in some, we have taken away the civil liberties of an entire group of Virginia citizens and called it the “Virginia Tech.” legislation which is offensive and stigmatizing in itself and on top of that, not even true.  The legislation that was passed would not have prevented the Virginia Tech. tragedy.  Not that anyone with any common sense and without a political agenda ever really thought we could prevent tragedies by changing laws.  Let’s outlaw tornadoes! That will work. 

Never Give Up

T-4 Revisited: A reminder of what can happen when fascism is cloaked in compassionate care of the handicapped

Do we think this cannot happen again? Maybe not in the exact same way, but it is happening…NOW…all across our country, fueled by greed, hatred, fear and spread as progressive transformation for the good of our society. Through intentional misinformation about mental illness and those affected by it, certain interest groups with deep pockets and strong political ties have been waging an insidious war on the consciousness of our nation, urging on fear and prejudice, yet concealed quietly within the gift of a Trojan Horse…”compassion and treatment for the sickest of the sick”.

We hear about “the right to treatment” from lobby groups like NAMI and the Treatment Advocacy Center, much the same as you will hear about “the right to death” in the excerpt below. We hear about “incurable illness” as well, but framed in a slightly different package, because the goal here for our government and it’s utilization of psychiatry and their interdependent relationships all funded by Pharma and tax dollars is not the same as it was for the Nazis. The goal here is not necessarily to kill, but to create the necessary lower strata of society that is required for the bureaucracies involved to serve themselves and each other by organizing their power to promote their own wealth, a wealth that depends on a class of people that must be managed and held in place. The underlying principles of fascism are the same however for both the Nazis and our “compassionate advocates” fighting for forced drugging and looser commitment standards.

We are told that there is no point in providing housing or food or other programs of support for those mentally ill who refuse the drugs…”life unworthy” of basic necessities…unless “medicated”.

We are to be convinced that forcing sedating, mind-numbing drugs into the bodies of innocent people will prevent crime…a better, safer society for all by way of chemical straightjacket.

Families and patients are being told that these psych laws will provide “access” to “the best and most modern treatments available”.

We are being sold the idea that forcible drugging with dangerous psychotropics and looser commitment criteria is for the good of “the severely and persistently mentally ill”, and that this “is a therapeutic treatment and a compassionate act completely consistent with medical ethics.”

Our doctors did not become psychiatric police overnight. The transformation has taken time and required a veneer of scientific justification along with the politically opportunistic use of tragedy to wear down public resistance, the shock doctrine in play.

We are being offered pseudo-scientific rationalizations for the forced drugging and involuntary commitment of the “sickest of the sick” which are being bolstered by misguided economic considerations. According to bureaucratic calculations, state funds that go to the care of criminals and the mentally ill could be put to better use, for example, by building new large state hospitals or outpatient commitment laws…

The scapegoating of the mentally ill as a danger and threat to society for the purpose of degrading civil rights and increasing legal authority over certain groups is a pre-figuration of what is to come for all. No one will be immune. The dragnet has been cast.

The parallels are uncanny…

Murder of the handicapped

Berenbaum, Michael (1993). The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as told in the United States Holocaust memorial Museum. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company. (pp.63-65).

Mass murder began with the death of a few individuals. In September 1939, Hitler signed an order empowering his personal physician and the chief of Fuhrer Chancellory to put to death, those unsuited to live. He backdated it to September 1^st 1939, the day World War II began, to give it the appearance of a wartime measure. In the directive:

Reich leader Philip Bouhler and Dr. Brandt are charged with responsibility for expanding the authority of physicians, to be designated by name, to the end that patients considered incurable according to the best available human judgment of their state of health, can be granted a mercy killing.

What followed was the so-called euthanasia program, in which men, women, and children who were physically disabled, mentally retarded, or emotionally disturbed were systematically killed.

Within a few months, the T-4 program involved virtually the entire German psychiatric community. A new bureaucracy, headed by physicians, was established with a mandate to “take executive measures against those defined as ‘life unworthy of living’”.

A statistical survey of all psychiatric institutions, hospitals, and homes for the chronically ill patients was ordered. At Tiergarten 4, three medical experts reviewed the forms reviewed by institutions throughout Germany, but did not examine any patients or read their medical records. Nevertheless, they had the power to decide life or death.

Patients whom it was decided to kill were transported to six killing centers: Hartheim, Sonnenstein, Grafeneck, Bernberg, Hadamar, and Brandenburg. The members of the SS in charge of the transports donned white coats to keep up the charade of a medical procedure.

The first killings were by starvation: starvation is passive, simple and natural. Then injections of lethal doses of sedatives were used. Children were easily “put to sleep”. But gassing soon became the preferred method of killing. Fifteen to twenty people were killed in a chamber disguised as a shower. The lethal gas was provided by chemists, and the process was supervised by physicians. Afterward, black smoke billowed from the chimneys as the bodies were burned in adjacent crematoria.

Families of those killed were informed of the transfer. They were assured that their loved ones were being moved in order to receive the best and most modern treatments available. Visits, however, were not possible. The relatives then received condolence letters, falsified death certificates signed by physicians, and urns containing ashes. There were occasional lapses in bureaucratic efficiency, and some families received more than one urn. They soon realized something was amiss.

A few doctors protested. Heinrich Bonhoeffer, a leading psychiatrist, worked with his son Dietrich, a pastor who actively opposed the regime, to contact church groups, urging them not to turn patients in church-run institutions over to the SS. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed by the SS just before the end of the war.) A few physicians refused to fill out the requisite forms. Only one psychiatrist, Professor Gottfried Ewald of the University of Gottingen, openly opposed the killing.

Doctors did not become killers overnight. The transformation took time and required a veneer of scientific justification. As early as 1895, a widely used German medical textbook made a claim for “the right to death”. In 1920, a physician and a prominent jurist argued that destroying “life unworthy of life” is a therapeutic treatment and a compassionate act completely consistent with medical ethics.

Soon after the Nazis came to power, the Bavarian Minister of Health proposed the mentally ill, the mentally retarded and other “inferior” people be isolated and killed. “This policy has already been initiated in our concentration camps,” he noted. A year later, mental institutions throughout the Reich were instructed to “neglect” their patients by withholding food and medical treatment.

Pseudo-scientific rationalizations for the killing of the “unworthy” were bolstered by economic considerations. According to bureaucratic calculations, state funds that went to the care of criminals and the insane could be put to better use, for example, by loans to newly married couples. Incurably sick children were seen as a burden for the healthy body of the Volk, the German people. In a time of war, it was not difficult to lose sight of the absolute value of human life. Hitler understood this. Wartime, he said, “was the best time for elimination of the incurably ill”.

The murder of the handicapped was a pre-figuration of the Holocaust. The killing centers to which the handicapped were transported were the antecedents of death camps. The organized transportation of the handicapped foreshadowed mass deportation. Some of the physicians who became specialists in the technology of cold-blooded murder in the late 1930s later staffed the death camps. All their moral, professional and ethical inhibitions had been lost.

During the German euthanasia program, psychiatrists were able to save some patients, at least temporarily, but only if the psychiatrists cooperated in sending others to their death. In the Jewish communities of the territories later conquered by the Nazi’s, Judenrat leaders, Jews appointed by the Germans to take charge of the ghettos, had to make similar choices.

Gas chambers were first developed at the handicapped killing centers. So was the use of burning to dispose of dead bodies. In the death camps, the technology was taken to a new level: thousands could be killed at one time and their bodies burned within hours.

The Roman Catholic church, which had not taken a stand on the Jewish question, protested the “mercy killing”. Count von Galen, the Bishop of Munster, openly challenged the regime, arguing that it was the duty of Christians to oppose the taking of human life even if this were to cost them their own lives. It seemed to have an effect.

On August 24, 1941, almost two years after the euthanasia program was initiated, it appeared to cease. In fact, it had gone underground. The killing did not end; mass murder was just beginning. Physicians trained in the medical killing centers went on to grander tasks. Irmfired Eberl, a doctor whose career began in the T-4 program, became the commandant of Treblinka, where killing of a magnitude as yet unimagined would take place…

New Uniform Preadmission Screening Report: Includes “Blaming” as a “Level of Insight”!!!!

uniformpreadmscreen

And I Bet A Lot of You Thought Mandatory Outpatient Treatment Would Be Supervised by an M.D. or a Psychologist…

Silly you, than.  Everyone knows people with psychiatric labels don’t need licensed professionals to manage even court ordered care, pretty much anyone who is willing to relocate will do.  Heck, they aren’t even asking for a mental health degree.  But who cares?  As long as that forced drugging is in place who cares if no one qualified to notice serious side effects that can lead to death and disability occur under order of the state?  No one in power in this state cares.  If you think I’m taking this personally, yes, I am.  Which is still my right in Virginia at least until the Commission on Mental Health Law Reform and all its enablers in Virginia gets more laws passed restricting my thoughts and feelings to what they decide are “appropriate.”

Mandatory Outpatient Treatment Commitment Hearing Crossroads Service Board

Mandatory Outpatient Treatment/ Commitment Hearing Coordinator To provide coordination of services to persons who have been ordered to participate in mandatory outpatient treatment for mental illness and to insure that these services are provided in accordance with the expectations of the courts. Responsible to coordinate with psychiatric hospitals to attend hearings, coordination of further assessment if required with special justice, and evaluation. Master’s degree in human services field is req’d as is previous exp. in similar setting providing care. Salary commensurate w/exp. Reimbursement of relocation expenses up to $2,000 avail. to qualified applicant. Exc. fringe benefits. To apply submit agency application & salary requirement to: HR, Crossroads CSB, P. O. Drawer 248, Farmville, VA 23901. EOE. Or call (434)392-7049 for additional information. Check us out at: www.crossroadscsb.org Position #9015 will be recruited until filled.

The New Mental Health Laws Are Worse Than You Thought: A Radical Intepretation of the Laws by Bonnie, Cohen and Monahan is Being Taught to All Special Justices and CSB staff

Reprised because the post after this has drawn attention away from the most important issue facing us in my opinion.

It is also not clear why the print media is not covering this radical interpretation of the new laws which makes them even looser than the language of the law as passed.  Perhaps interpretation is not dramatic enough to make a good story, unfortunately, drama does not teach the public what they need to know:  that interpretation of their laws has been handed over to 3 men who are not legislators, not judges and not in the executive branch of government, 3 men who have not been elected nor appointed to any public office in fact, two law professors and a psychiatrist. 

For citizens affected by these laws, which is everyone, this interpretation and its implications are critical. 

You can now be committed if someone says there is a substantial likelihood that you will lose your job due to symptoms of mental illness.

You can now be committed if someone says there is a substantial likelihood that you could be evicted due to your mental illness or perceived mental illness.

You can now be committed if you are diabetic from taking the new psychiatric drugs and choose to stop taking your insulin at any time even though folks who did not become diabetic from the new drugs can not be committed for failing to take their insulin.  Apparently, the decision to risk amputation and kidney failure is always rational when made by the not yet diagnosed and always irrational when made by the psychiatrically labelled since Dr. Cohen argued with me more than once in taskforce meetings that non-compliant diabetics were making a rational decision.  Dr. Cohen has also written that he supports “rational suicide”, whatever that might be, but clearly it only applies to “people like us” or I should say “people like him”.  Personally, I do not believe in rational suicide and am a supporter of Not Dead Yet and would encourage anyone to try and live with their illness as long as they can, but hey, what do I know?  I’m not a psychiatrist, just a person who believes in life. 

Any hearsay or rumor of past actions or any slander or inaccuracy on an old mental health record can now be used to help lock you up against your will and force drugs on you.

According to the interpretation of Bonnie, Cohen and Monahan, if there is a 1 in 4 chance of serious harm/danger, you should be committed.  25% chance despite the Supreme Court of the United States decision that a standard of clear and convincing-more like 72% must be used in involuntary commitment.

Is it a coincidence that 3 white upper middle class men were allowed to interpret the laws of Virginia for every citizen?  I do not believe it is.  The mental health system in Virginia has been run by upper middle class white men since it began and continues to this day.  We have never had a woman Commissioner nor an African American Commissioner of our Department of Mental Health in Virginia, unlike other states.  We continue to act as if the white man knows best for women and for minorities in this state and we will all suffer for it. 

Moving out of this state where homophobia and ablism are now enshrined into law but basic health services are not funded  and the homeless are told to get a job without any help to do so is looking better and better and as soon as the real estate market comes back, if it does, I will. 

The New Mental Health Laws Are Worse Than You Thought: A Radical Intepretation of the Laws by Bonnie, Cohen and Monahan is Being Taught to All Special Justices and CSB staff

All Virginia Special Justices have now been trained in the new laws under an interpretation developed by Richard Bonnie, John Monahan and Bruce Cohen of the University of Virginia’s Institute on Law and Psychiatry.  Their interpretation is the loosest interpretation anyone could have imagined and more.  It is not clear who decided to use this radical interpretation to train not only special justices who hold hearings but also Community Service Board employees who make pre-screening decisions at an earlier training and as available on the Department of Mental Health and Retardation etc. website under Mental Health Law “Reform”.  

It is also not clear why the print media is not covering this radical interpretation of the new laws which makes them even looser than the language of the law as passed.  Perhaps interpretation is not dramatic enough to make a good story, unfortunately, drama does not teach the public what they need to know:  that interpretation of their laws has been handed over to 3 men who are not legislators, not judges and not in the executive branch of government, 3 men who have not been elected nor appointed to any public office in fact, two law professors and a psychiatrist. 

For citizens affected by these laws, which is everyone, this interpretation and its implications are critical. 

You can now be committed if someone says there is a substantial likelihood that you will lose your job due to symptoms of mental illness.

You can now be committed if someone says there is a substantial likelihood that you could be evicted due to your mental illness or perceived mental illness.

You can now be committed if you are diabetic from taking the new psychiatric drugs and choose to stop taking your insulin at any time even folks who did not become diabetic from the new drugs can now be committed for failing to take their insulin.

Any hearsay or rumor of past actions or any slander or inaccuracy on an old mental health record can now be used to help lock you up against your will and force drugs on you.

According to the interpretation of Bonnie, Cohen and Monahan, if there is a 1 in 4 chance of serious harm/danger, you should be committed.  25% chance despite the Supreme Court of the United States decision that a standard of clear and convincing-more like 72% must be used in involuntary commitment.

Is it a coincidence that 3 white upper middle class men were allowed to interpret the laws of Virginia for every citizen?  I do not believe it is.  The mental health system in Virginia has been run by upper middle class white men since it began and continues to this day.  We have never had a woman Commissioner nor an African American Commissioner of our Department of Mental Health in Virginia, unlike other states.  We continue to act as if the white man knows best for women and for minorities in this state and we will all suffer for it. 

Moving out of this state where homophobia and ablism are now enshrined into law but basic health services are not funded  and the homeless are told to get a job without any help to do so is looking better and better and as soon as the real estate market comes back, if it does, I will. 

You Have the Right to Request a Copy of the Tape of Your Involuntary Commitment Hearing in Virginia After July 1

Under the new mental health regression laws, commitment hearings will no longer be open to monitoring by advocates, lawyers and the fourth estate unless you specifically request your hearing be open.  Secret hearings have a long history of being abuses of process and this is a huge concern.  But, you now have the right to request a copy of the tape recording of your hearing after the fact at your local courthouse.  If you do not want to listen to it yourself, you may still want to request a copy for any future commitment hearing watch program that may develop in Virginia.  Don’t keep the copy where someone in your family or someone who might use it against you can find it.  As before the law changed, hearings can be closed at the “discretion” of the special justice, a discretion which was used to close all hearings to a Washington Post reporter in Prince William County.  Whether that was an abuse of discretion or not is not my call. 

It’s Opposites Day and Nobody Told Me? Why Didn’t I Get the Memo the Treatment Advocacy Center Did? Huh? :)

The (forced and coercive and drugs only) Treatment Advocacy Center was told it was Opposites Day today and I was not.  I call no fair!  .  Why did no one tell me?  I could have done a great post on how empowering and safe and patient centered Virginia’s mental health system is if I had gotten the memo!

So they got to have all the fun because now it’s the end of Opposites Day and I’m too tired from kidney failure caused by fear of forced treatment to do a good humor post now.  Whine. 

So have fun, read their very humorous post, and please, someone make sure I get the memo on the NEXT Opposites Day?  I like to have fun too.

 

If You Think I’m Over-Reacting Or That This Has No Relevance You Have Not Been Paying Attention

Thank You, I’ll Continue to Honor the Prophets of the Torah and the Bible if You Don’t Mind :)

Can you say pretentious? I know you can.    This is so funny because if someone with a psychiatric label instead of a long retired psychiatrist such as Dr. McHugh (who is against sexual reassignment surgery and supports the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and is an admirer of Sally Satel by the way) wrote this, they would be asked if they were symptomatic.  Now I just find it hilarious personally, over hype, but it does bring home what the non-labelled can get away with saying and writing with no fear of being locked up or medicated.  E. Fuller Torrey may be a prophet of doom, that does not make him a Prophet. 

 

“In just a few short days of publication, those words ring so true that the book is receiving attention of biblical proportions.

“There are times and situations that call for prophets,” writes Johns Hopkins University Professor Dr. Paul McHugh in The Wall Street Journal. “Not fortunetellers or soothsayers, but biblical prophets like Amos or Jeremiah who furiously proclaim the old truths, puncture our pretensions and predict from current tribulations worse to come if what lies deeper than sin — idolatrous worship of false gods — continues. E. Fuller Torrey, a psychiatrist who cares for patients with schizophrenia and manic-depression, is to my mind the doctor nearest in character to an ancient Hebrew prophet.””

The Joys of Lithium Induced Kidney Defects

Lithium damages the kidneys and causes polyuria and polydypsia also known as nephrogenic diabetes inspidus when it lasts long after lithium has been discontinued, as in 11 years after due to toxicity caused by lack of appropriate testing being ordered by a psychiatrist.  This is what has woken me up in the middle of the night, not just to use the bathroom but because my leg is cramping due to dehydration from being asleep and not drinking water for several hours. 

This is just one of the joys that citizens who have broken no laws and are no danger to others or even themselves will get to enjoy because our legislature, our Governor, the Supreme Court of Virginia and all of our CSB’s chose to scapegoat people with psychiatric diagnoses for the tragedy at Virginia Tech. by passing laws enabling forced drugging in people’s own homes and easier forced drugging in hospitals.  How many citizens of this Commonwealth will join me in having ruined kidney function and permenent chronic dehydration because of this scapegoating?  Nobody knows and nobody much cares is the answer nor will there be any collection of research data on the medical harm done by the passage of this legislation because those in power just don’t want that kind of information out there to keep them up at night.  As if it would…..

 

Family Keeps Mentally Ill “Loved One” Locked Up in Filth for 18 Years

Mentally ill Italian woman locked up

Jun 14, 2008 8:17 AM
A 47-year-old mentally ill Italian woman was locked up in a room by family members for 18 years, Italian police said after freeing the woman on Friday.

The woman was found in a crumbling room with “indescribable” sanitary conditions, police in the southern Italian town of Santa Maria Capua Vetere, near Naples, said.

The woman was apparently locked up 18 years ago after giving birth to a son out of wedlock.

She has been admitted to the psychiatric ward of a Naples hospital while her mother, brother and sister were arrested on charges of mistreatment and sequestration, the Ansa news agency reported.

The woman’s son, a student, was found to be living with her relatives, but has not been charged, the news agency said.

Police are investigating whether the woman’s mental illness began before or after her period of captivity, it said.

E. Fuller Torrey, President of Treatment Advocacy Center, Admits He Offered To Testify in Defense of Mother and Sister Who Murdered Their Psychiatrically Disabled Son and Brother

E. Fuller Torrey, founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center and brother of a woman living with schizophrenia, has yet another hate and fear mongering screed out in the Wall Street Journal.  What makes this one a little different is that he writes that he offered to testify in DEFENSE of a mother and sister who murdered their son and brother who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and romanticizes their killing of their disabled, obviously not “loved” one as a noble act akin to a Greek tragedy.  Besides the fact that E. Fuller Torrey clearly suffers from delusions of grandeur, diagnosed or not, the fact that he can get such hate speech, almost inciting to violence in a mainstream paper shows just how far we have to go in overcoming prejudice, ignorance and discrimination against people with psychiatric diagnoses, prejudice made worse every year by E. Fuller Torrey and his Treatment (Hatred) Advocacy Center.  How extreme and out of the mainstream does this man and this advocacy group have to go before decent people disavow and disassociate themselves from it loudly and publicly? 

Note To Seclusion Apologists

I am not going to publish any comments defending the indefensible 20 year seclusion of a human being who is a patient at Western State Hospital.  But if I think you are a hospital employee from the content of your comment indicating inside information, I am going to pass it along to the Department along with your ISP and email address.  More than one person employed by DMHMRSAS has broken Mr. C’s confidentiality to me personally over the years, people who were obligated by law to keep his confidentiality, unlike me as a private citizen who has no duty to keep confidentiality once it has been breached.  I have however chosen not to publish details about this case that have been shared with me in breach of Mr. C’s privacy rights. 

I do not think it is unreasonable of me to expect state employees to refrain from trying to post information they should not share especially when their agenda is to defend Western State’s violation of human rights and blame the victim.  Your time would be better spent examining why you failed to report this abuse of human rights as you were obligated to do by law and why you are more invested in an institution than in justice and civil rights for all citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia. 

Long Haul

 Long Haul
Words and Music by Margie Adam

Many times I’ve seen their faces on the TV screen
Some of them are still among us
Some of them are history
But what always stops me
Is the message in their eyes
The truth they fight for freedom
In their daily lives
With a steady voice they call us,
Those of us who choose to see
With a steady voice they speak to us
With simple dignity.
And they say:
     CHORUS
     I am in it for the long haul
     I will be there for the last call
     You can count on me if you stumble and fall
     I am in it for the long haul
     I will be there for the last call
     You can count on me if you stumble and fall
     On the long haul.

All the ones who came before are calling out to me
Drawing my attention to the things that should not be
Though I’ve tried to look away
My heart would not be still
The cost of my distraction
is just not worth the bill.

With a steady heart I reach out
Taking hold of others’ hands
With the teachers and the lovers here
I join to take a stand.
   

  CHORUS

It’s no secret – all around us suffering goes on
Every day we make a choice to witness and respond
I don’t know the answer – why we are here awake
While the others sleep beside us
Content to only take.
With a steady voice we call out
Those of us who choose to see
With a steady voice we speak to all
With simple dignity
     Are you in it for the long haul?
     Will you be there for the last call?
     Can we count on you if we stumble and fall?
     We are in it for the long haul
     We will be there for the last call
     You can count on us if you stumble and fall
     ‘Cause we’re here
     For the long haul.
© Labyris Music Co. 1990

For more information: info@margieadam.com
Pleiades Records – 510.528.8193

Secluded Western Patient Allowed to Go to Wal-mart Without Hospital Supervision But Put Back In Isolation On Return From Passes

But his seclusion was not about the convenience and interests of the institution instead of treatment issues, oh no, not at all…….

Report: Hospital erred by secluding mental patient
By DENA POTTER
Associated Press Writer
June 6, 2008
RICHMOND, Va.
An oversight committee determined that a Virginia mental hospital violated state law by holding a mentally ill patient in solitary confinement for 20 years.

Western State Hospital’s local human rights committee found that the facility violated laws governing the use of seclusion and requiring that appropriate changes be made to an individual’s treatment based on ongoing review.

It found that the hospital did not violate laws concerning abuse and neglect.

The patient was identified only as “C.C.” His attorney said he is a Hispanic man in his late 50s.

The report, issued May 25, does not outline why the man was placed in solitary confinement at the Staunton hospital. One of the man’s attorneys, Nathan J.D. Veldhuis, said the family believes it was simply for administrative convenience.

“At times he was reportedly, according to the hospital, difficult to deal with so our position is it was easier to put him in this room than to do what the law requires,” Veldhuis said Friday.

Meghan McGuire, spokeswoman for the state Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services, said the hospital is reviewing the committee’s recommendations and that it would respond.

“Western State Hospital is known for its excellent care of individuals with mental illness, and special care is taken to make sure each patient under their care is safe and that the safety of staff and other patients is also ensured,” she said.

Virginia law outlines when patients can be secluded and restrained and requires that those methods be used only in extreme circumstances and for short periods of time.

Veldhuis said the man has been placed in solitary confinement for long periods of time since 1988, and that he has lived there permanently since 1993.

The man lives in a room the size of a dormitory room with cinderblock walls painted white, tile floors, a bathroom with a shower, commode and sink, and a small outdoor area where he remains separated from the other patients. The solid door is locked at all times, and the man’s food is pushed through a slot in the door.

Despite his living arrangements, the man has been allowed to take numerous trips with his family to local parks, his favorite restaurants and Wal-Mart not accompanied by hospital staff. When he returns, Veldhuis said he is immediately returned to his room until the next visit.

“One of the greatest ironies in this case is that fact that he is somehow not dangerous enough to be released into the community unsupervised, under the watch of his family, but he is so dangerous that he must be locked in a room at all times once he’s back in the hospital,” Veldhuis said.

Family also complained that the man’s teeth were removed but that he was not fitted with dentures. The committee recommended that the family be allowed to provide dentures for the man.

“We believe teeth are a basic human necessity,” Veldhuis said. “To put the onus on the family to get him dentures is just wrong.”

The committee also recommended that the man be transferred to a facility closer to his family so that they could visit him weekly, that Spanish-speaking physicians and staff be made available to him and that a treatment plan be developed that includes increasing increments of time out of the locked containment area while he remains at Western State.

Veldhuis said the family hopes to someday get the man into a community treatment center but is worried that his years without socialization could hurt that chance.

“That fact that he has been in this place for so long is really going to make any type of transition a difficult thing,” he said. “To be secluded and isolated from other human beings, in our view, is damaging by itself.”

Western State houses 224 patients and is one of five state psychiatric hospitals. Each is required to have a local human rights committee made up of health care providers, advocates and community members to address alleged violations of patients’ rights.

The state will have the opportunity to respond to the committee’s findings, and either side can appeal to the state human rights committee.

Although no criminal charges can be filed, Veldhuis said the family hasn’t ruled out filing a civil suit against the institution and individual administrators.
Copyright © 2008, Newport News, Va., Daily Press

Can We Be Like Drops Of Water, Falling On the Stone?

SIXTEEN YEAR OLD VIRGIN
SPRING TIME TAKES HER TO THE PARK
WHERE THE MOON SHINES DOWN LIKE THE FUTURE
CALLING HER OUT OF THE DARK

BUT HER NIGHTMARE FINDS HER FREEDOM
AND LEAVES HER LYING, WOUNDED, WARM FROM INVASION

LIGHT AS A FEATHER FLOATING BY
LANDING THEN COVERED WITH SOOT
WAITING NOW WATCHING NOW FOR RAIN
TO WASH CLEAN HER PAIN

CAN WE BE LIKE DROPS OF WATER FALLING ON THE STONE
SPLASHING, BREAKING DISBURSING IN AIR
WEAKER THAN THE STONE BY FAR BUT BE AWARE
THAT AS TIME GOES BY THE ROCK WILL WEAR AWAY
AND THE WATER COMES AGAIN

CAN WE BE LIKE DROPS OF WATER FALLING ON THE STONE
SPLASHING, BREAKING DISBURSING IN AIR
WEAKER THAN THE STONE BY FAR BUT BE AWARE
THAT AS TIME GOES BY THE ROCK WILL WEAR AWAY
AND THE WATER COMES AGAIN

80 YEAR OLD POET
WINTER KEEPS HER HOME AND ALONE
WHERE SHE FREEZES
AND DARKNESS KEEPS HER FROM WRITING HER FINAL WISDOM
BUT SHE LIGHTS HER LAST RED CANDLE AND AS IT IS MELTING
TILTING IT, WRITING NOW

CAN WE BE LIKE DROPS OF WATER FALLING ON THE STONE
SPLASHING, BREAKING DISBURSING IN AIR
WEAKER THAN THE STONE BY FAR BUT BE AWARE
THAT AS TIME GOES BY THE ROCK WILL WEAR AWAY

© 1977 by Hereford Music/Thumbelina Music (ASCAP)
all rights reserved

AND THE WATER COMES AGAIN

In Case Anyone Has Occasion To Need A Chant :)

One, Two, Three, Four

Open Up The Seclusion Door!

Five, Six, Seven, Eight

Help Us Heal With Love, Not Hate! 

 

It All Comes Down To Fear and Intimidation and Keeping Us Scared and Fighting With Our Friends

I’m reading the Commission on Mental Health Law Reform’s research on commitment hearings in May of 2007.  It’s a long read but last night I skipped to the part about the commitment rate per jurisdiction and figured out 16 was Charlottesville and that the numbers weren’t lying and that in May of 2007 only one person out of 106 people who were subject to commitment hearings in our area were released at the hearing.  The rest were either involuntarily hospitalized, “volunteered” after being detained, which after July 1 of this year will give them an FBI record or outpatient committed to forced “treatment” in their own homes.  One person.  One.  One.

Why hold hearings at all?  What is the point?  One.  In an entire month.  One. 

So many of us who fight for our rights have been traumatized by the mental health system that it is no wonder we fight amongst ourselves in these conditions.  We are hostages to fear and intimidation by the system and the laws which are about to get worse and we fight each other because we are afraid to fight the ones with the power to lock us up without trial, kill and injure our bodies and kill our spirits and risk our homes if we have them and our jobs if we have them and our friends and our reputations and if we are on the transplant list?  Our very lives depend on not getting caught up in this system.  So we fight amongst ourselves and take it out on each other when we need to unite in fear and loathing of the people who would and have done this to us and our people and think they have the right to do it even more as if they were G-ds or even decent human beings. 

Decent human beings don’t tie people up in the name of “treatment”.  Decent human beings don’t inject people against their will.  Decent human beings don’t lock other human beings into small rooms with a lock on the door.  Decent human beings don’t participate in a system that does this to people, they find another line of work or they find a way to work that doesn’t involve bullying and oppression and traumatizing innocent people. 

Enough with the politeness.  I’m done.  I will fight those who want to bully and intimidate us as long as I have breath in my body.  Please join me in wearing a black ribbon to mourn the loss of our civil rights at every occasion at which those who instigated and supported this oppression are present, starting with the training on the new commitment laws on Tuesday at the DoubleTree.  I won’t be there, I won’t go near that training, but if you are going, wear a black ribbon in solidarity if you are ready to fight back. 

 

 

Experiment, Please Ignore: Treatment Advocacy Center, Western State Hospital: Coercion and Trauma and Disregard for Patients’ Rights

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Now Here’s the Confidentiality and Lack of Communication the General Assembly and Commission on Mental Health Law Reform *Should* Have Eviscerated

Don’t think this does not happen in Virginia or can not happen here, we don’t have a process to put fired state direct care workers on a list so they will not be rehired elsewhere in the state unless they abuse or neglect children instead of adults with disabilities.  I suggested to the Virginia Office of Protection and Advocacy Director a few years back that employees fired for abuse should be place in the Adult Protective Services list but she said that psychiatric patients were not reliable witnesses and it could be slander.  Hmm, more about that another day.  In Texas many state direct care workers fired from their jobs have been rehired in jobs caring for other vulnerable adults and children and gone on to perform poorly in their new jobs.  It seems there is a lack of communication between agencies and protection of workers’ employment records getting in the way of protecting vulnerable institutionalized adults and children from abuse.  Now wouldn’t it have been great if the Commission on Mental Health Law Reform had or did now even care about this instance of confidentiality and lack of communication leading to injuries and perhaps deaths?  Or the General Assembly?  But that would not have fit with the scapegoat all people with mental illness for the actions of one agenda of the Commission on Mental Health Law Reform and the General Assembly.  What’s even sadder to me personally is to hear a  consumer “leader” say there is reason for safety concerns on TV, buying into and spreading the myths and propaganda that decrease the quality of life of consumers and survivors and patients who do not have high paying jobs being professional consumers. 

Hey All You Forced Treatment and Restraint Chair Advocates! Your Favorite Movie Is On Retro! :)

_Judgment at Nuremberg_. 8:00 p.m. Retro.  If you miss this movie on your future, they replay it a lot, I’m sure you can catch it later. 

Have a nice night, sleep well. 

Bad Laws Are Nothing New and We Do Not Have to Reinvent the Wheel in Our Response to Them

110 Million for a New Warehouse for People With Mental Illness, 41 Million for Coercive Community Services: Virginia May Soon Be Worst In Nation

On top of failing to fund community mental health services this year, instead spending 41 million on implementing outpatient commitment and crisis centered care, the General Assembly and Governor Kaine are going to spend 110 million in Bond funds to rebuild Western State Hospital, a snake pit that uses the restraint chairs in the post before this one, provides almost no psychotherapy even to long term residents, fails to execute proper discharge plans, has not reduced seclusion and restraint despite federal mandates to do so, has no record of leading to recovery outcomes for its residents, has been investigated by the Department of Justice, has fired a medical doctor who complained of poor care and disobeyed a Supreme Court decision to rehire him without any apparent consequences, uses involuntary ECT on residents, does not protect its residents from assault and rape and tells families that it is their loved ones’ fault if they don’t recover in this snake pit. 

Great job Virginia!  We are regressing in new and creative ways.  All the other states must be jealous of our success at implementing ignorant, backwards, ineffective and coercive, prejudiced systems of care.  Or not.

Dr. Jeff Swanson of Duke Goes Over to the Dark Side

Duke medical sociologist Dr. Jeffrey Swanson says that people with mental disorders are three times more likely to commit violent acts than are others.

Either Dr. Swanson was misquoted or he is lying to the press to push an agenda for more forced outpatient commitment/forced drugging in people’s own homes.  There is NO reputable data to support such a slander against people with mental illness who don’t abuse substances or alcohol.  What’s almost funny is Dr. Swanson goes on to say that “the rest of the violence” (clearly the reporter didn’t get that even 3 times more likely doesn’t create much of a percentage of our nationwide violence but lots of folks mistake probabilities for percentages) is caused by child abuse and substance abuse.  Huh, child abuse causes an awful lot of mental illness, so does Dr. Swanson want our society to address trauma issues among people with mental illness?  Of course not, don’t be silly!  We can’t spend precious resources offering psychotherapy to people with mental illness!  Sheesh, psychotherapy is for well people.  No, Dr. Swanson wants society to force more drugs that cause serious medical side effects down the throats of people with mental illness.   Leave addressing child abuse consequences for actual people, not “the mentally ill” who are clearly sub-human in Dr. Swanson’s view. 

He knows better.  This is really sad.

Imagine If:

The Pope prayed with victims of sexual abuse by priests yesterday.  Even though I know the long history of denial and obfuscation by the Catholic Church, reading this brought tears to my eyes.  I tried to imagine mental health officials meeting with victims of abuse in state and other psychiatric hospitals, maybe not praying, but acknowledging their very real pain and apologizing on behalf of the mental health system.  This Pope did not abuse anyone, but he took responsibility for His Church’s failure to protect members of His church from abuse.  In New Zealand, the government held tribunals that gave survivors of institutional abuse the opportunity to tell their stories and be heard.  In Canada survivors of state boarding schools were given a similar opportunity and even compensated.   In the United States?  Well we have had a series of states express regret in a general way for eugenics in the past, but no compensation and no hearings where survivors could tell their stories and be heard.  We have never had hearings on psychiatric abuse for survivors to tell their stories and be heard.  We have lawsuits on occasion which states fight until they know they will lose and then settle.  We have confidentiality agreements and payments to prevent public lawsuits. We have no accountability, no reconciliation, no sitting down with and seeing as suffering human beings the many survivors of abuse in psychiatric hospitals.  And because of the prejudice in our society against people with psychiatric diagnoses, we do not even have a movement for such accountability in our country nor our state.  Who would want or dare to speak out about their abuse in a psychiatric hospital at a time when the civil rights of all folks with psychiatric histories are disappearing and hatred and bigotry and scapegoating are not only more acceptable but encouraged by our own Governor as he continues to make a false connnection between the tragedy at Virgniia Tech. and all people in the state with psychiatric histories.  One can feel like an American Arab right after 9/11 still in the state of Virginia as the Governor and others continue the scapegoating and raise their own political stature on the backs of our quality of life and liberty and as dilettante rich folks start “lie-in” movements thinking they are doing good by continually insisting that anyone who has been in a psychiatric hospital is a likely mass murderer. 

Imagine if we were thought of as people.  Imagine if we were thought of as citizens.  Imagine if someone in power sat down with us, not with advocates for us, but us, and said: “I am sorry for what has happened to so many of you in institutions run by the state of Virginia.”  Imagine. 

T-4 Remembrance Is In May. Don’t Know What T-4 Was? Look it up.

I’ll give you a hint.  It’s not your fault it’s never taught in history class.  It’s prejudice’s fault.

Governor Kaine Signs Bills To Erode Civil Liberties and Health Record Confidentiality For All Virginians

For the actual press release, unedited, go to www.governor.virginia.gov

COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA
Office of the Governor ( Or Not)

Timothy M. Kaine FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Governor

April 9, 2008

Internet: www.governor.virginia.gov

GOVERNOR KAINE SIGNS LEGISLATION

~ Legislation includes bills to regress mental health laws and fund forced psychiatric drugging and monitoring and institutionalization, make involuntary commitment criteria so low I could commit a sandwich, and virtually eliminate co