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

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.

Modern KKK Tactics in Katrina’s Aftermath Documented by the Nation Institute

Katrina’s Hidden Race War produced by the Nation Institute.  Documents white residents of town on the way to a Katrina evacuation point that was dry shooting randomly and maliciously at innocent African Americans escaping New Orleans and even threatening their African American neighbors who had lived there all along.  Why was there no coverage of this in the mainstream media?  Why is this only coming out now. How can it be that not one person has been arrested for these crimes?  And can folks stop repeating the idiotic idea that our race problems in this country were solved by the election of Barack Obama?

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????????????????????????????

Hide Your Feelings In Public, Don’t Laugh Too Loud and Watch What You Say and Write: Easy Peasy Involuntary Commitment Will Be Signed Into Law By Virginia’s Governor This Wednesday

This Wednesday Governor Kaine will sign laws that will make it even easier to involuntarily hospitalize and commit to forced drugging in their own homes Virginia citizens than it is already.  (See previous posts on the 91% rate of hospitalization after commitment hearings in May of 2007, 84% in 1994 study). 

These laws also force private mental health practitioners, psychiatrists, psychologists, licensed professional counselors and clinical social workers to turn over your health records even if they as your primary mental health provider do not think you are in need of forced treatment.  Police will get to see some of your records, how much is unclear, supposedly it is limited to “what is necessary” to their role in commitment hearings and transporting folks but there will be no way to ensure they don’t retain nor disclose your private health information since they are not health providers and are not subject to HIPPA.  They could tell everyone in your town and you would have no real recourse. 

Private psychiatrists finally woke up to the fact that their patients’ rights and their rights were being usurped according to an article in an American Psychiatric Association publication, but a little too late since the law is being signed in 2 days.  Maybe next time they will not rely on the rest of medicine, especially emergency room doctors, to make their patients’ and their case in the General Assembly.  I saw the emergency room doctors in action; they were not about protecting the interests of neither psychiatrists nor their patients, quite the opposite.

Governor Kaine insists on calling these new laws a “response to the Virginia Tech. tragedy” when they are no such thing unless you call scapegoating thousands of innocent Virginians with a disability rather than face the reality of that tragedy a “response”.  The fact is many folks were itching to get these laws passed for years and when that tragedy happened they were practically gleeful that they could use it to push their agenda despite the Governor’s statement that he would not let the tragedy be exploited for political purposes. 

Although the laws eroding the civil rights of all Virginians will be signed this Wednesday, they will not go into effect until July 1 of this year, so you have some time to practice never looking crazy in the street, never getting too loud, never making your landlord or wife or husband or roommate angry enough that they would use the new laws against you, never expressing too much feeling around others–too much will be defined in a completely unstandardized fashion by the thousands of folks now authorized to be “independent examiners” for involuntary commitment including nurse practitioners and nurse clinicians. 

The truly depressing part of all this?  No one outside of the mental health community seems to know or care about the loss of civil liberties that is about to happen, they do not even want to hear about it.  History repeats itself in Virginia. 

 

 

Rob Bell Flip Flops On Confidentiality

Delegate Rob Bell told me himself that he was proud of helping to pass  20-124.3:1 of the Code of Virginia in his first term in office.  This session, he voted to repeal it on 2/29/08.  While I appreciate the bills Delegate Bell passed to help prosecute abuse of people in our state institutions, this year he has seemed to turn his back on the rights of people with disabilities in every way possible.  And now, to vote to repeal a bill that kept divorced spouses from using the fact that one went for counseling and the other did not in custody and visitation cases when he was for that very bill before the hysterical scapegoating of all people with mental health issues over the actions of one hit Virginia, well I expected better from Rob Bell.  Shows how much I know.

Mentally ill more likely to be crime victims than perpetrators

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=138907

 Mentally ill more likely to be crime victims than perpetrators

In some of the comments about the tragic shooting at Northern Illinois University, I sense an underlying fear that all people with mental illnesses are just one bad week, one missed medication or one bizarre tattoo away from becoming homicidal psychopaths.
The truth is that there is a very strong link between people with mental illnesses and violence — just not the way it generally is portrayed.
“The notion that mentally ill people are dangerous, I think, is a dangerous notion,” says Mitch Bruski, chief executive officer of the Kenneth Young Center, an Elk Grove Village-based provider of mental health and senior citizens’ support services. “They actually statistically are much more likely to be hurt than to hurt other people.”
A 2005 study by researchers at Northwestern University found that more than one-fourth of people with severe mental illnesses are the victims of violent crime each year. People with mental illness were 23 times more likely to be raped, 15 times more likely to be assaulted, eight times more likely to be robbed and were the victims of theft 140 times more often than those in the general population.
Slayings committed by people who may suffer from mental illnesses certainly grab our attention. But a study published in The Lancet British medical journal said that mentally ill patients are six times more likely to be murdered than are people in the general population.
“People with mental illnesses are more vulnerable,” explains Danise Habun, executive director of the Hanover Township Mental Health Board, which has its office in Bartlett.
“I know the stereotypes,” Habun says, describing how society can “vilify these people as monsters.” But the reality she sees more often reflects an opposite image.
“The mentally ill young woman who was sexually assaulted and tricked and raped — that kind of violence happens against the mentally ill pretty frequently, and we don’t read about them,” Habun says.
Of course, most of the 62.5 million Americans (one in five people) who experience some form of mental disorder each year manage to live “normal” lives without becoming either victims or criminals.
Even among the people with mental illnesses who do commit violent crimes, other factors — especially substance abuse — play a role.
One article in The New England Journal of Medicine notes that people with no mental disorders are seven times more likely to commit violent crimes if they abuse alcohol or drugs. Mentally ill people fall prey to those same problems, and often have the added burdens of homelessness, unemployment, financial woes and the stigma (and sometimes teasing and abuse) that unfortunately accompanies mental illness.
One obstacle is “the lack of investment we put in our mental health system — putting them on the road of having to lose everything before they can get any treatment sometimes, or good treatment,” says Carol Wozniewski, executive director of Mental Health America of Illinois. “We have a long way to go to bring mental health care up to par with all other health care. We need to be investing more in our mental health services.”
While the NIU shooting has led to discussions about mental health, guns, security, mood medications and other issues, there are no easy and quick answers — just this simple advice that can help everybody’s mental state.
“We have to treat each other kindly, and treat ourselves kindly,” Habun says. “That’s what I’ve been telling people this week.”

Mentally ill more likely to be crime victims than perpetrators

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=138907

 Mentally ill more likely to be crime victims than perpetrators

In some of the comments about the tragic shooting at Northern Illinois University, I sense an underlying fear that all people with mental illnesses are just one bad week, one missed medication or one bizarre tattoo away from becoming homicidal psychopaths.
The truth is that there is a very strong link between people with mental illnesses and violence — just not the way it generally is portrayed.
“The notion that mentally ill people are dangerous, I think, is a dangerous notion,” says Mitch Bruski, chief executive officer of the Kenneth Young Center, an Elk Grove Village-based provider of mental health and senior citizens’ support services. “They actually statistically are much more likely to be hurt than to hurt other people.”
A 2005 study by researchers at Northwestern University found that more than one-fourth of people with severe mental illnesses are the victims of violent crime each year. People with mental illness were 23 times more likely to be raped, 15 times more likely to be assaulted, eight times more likely to be robbed and were the victims of theft 140 times more often than those in the general population.
Slayings committed by people who may suffer from mental illnesses certainly grab our attention. But a study published in The Lancet British medical journal said that mentally ill patients are six times more likely to be murdered than are people in the general population.
“People with mental illnesses are more vulnerable,” explains Danise Habun, executive director of the Hanover Township Mental Health Board, which has its office in Bartlett.
“I know the stereotypes,” Habun says, describing how society can “vilify these people as monsters.” But the reality she sees more often reflects an opposite image.
“The mentally ill young woman who was sexually assaulted and tricked and raped — that kind of violence happens against the mentally ill pretty frequently, and we don’t read about them,” Habun says.
Of course, most of the 62.5 million Americans (one in five people) who experience some form of mental disorder each year manage to live “normal” lives without becoming either victims or criminals.
Even among the people with mental illnesses who do commit violent crimes, other factors — especially substance abuse — play a role.
One article in The New England Journal of Medicine notes that people with no mental disorders are seven times more likely to commit violent crimes if they abuse alcohol or drugs. Mentally ill people fall prey to those same problems, and often have the added burdens of homelessness, unemployment, financial woes and the stigma (and sometimes teasing and abuse) that unfortunately accompanies mental illness.
One obstacle is “the lack of investment we put in our mental health system — putting them on the road of having to lose everything before they can get any treatment sometimes, or good treatment,” says Carol Wozniewski, executive director of Mental Health America of Illinois. “We have a long way to go to bring mental health care up to par with all other health care. We need to be investing more in our mental health services.”
While the NIU shooting has led to discussions about mental health, guns, security, mood medications and other issues, there are no easy and quick answers — just this simple advice that can help everybody’s mental state.
“We have to treat each other kindly, and treat ourselves kindly,” Habun says. “That’s what I’ve been telling people this week.”

If It Were Up To Me

If It Were Up to Me

Words and Lyrics by:

Cheryl Wheeler

Maybe it’s the movies, maybe it’s the books

Maybe it’s the bullets, maybe it’s the real crooks

Maybe it’s the drugs, maybe it’s the parents

Maybe it’s the colors everybody’s wearin

Maybe it’s the President, maybe it’s the last one

Maybe it’s the one before that, what he done

Maybe it’s the high schools, maybe it’s the teachers

Maybe it’s the tattooed children in the bleachers

Maybe it’s the Bible, maybe it’s the lack

Maybe it’s the music, maybe it’s the crack

Maybe it’s the hairdos, maybe it’s the TV

Maybe it’s the cigarettes, maybe it’s the family

Maybe it’s the fast food, maybe it’s the news

Maybe it’s divorce, maybe it’s abuse

Maybe it’s the lawyers, maybe it’s the prisons

Maybe it’s the Senators, maybe it’s the system

Maybe it’s the fathers, maybe it’s the sons

Maybe it’s the sisters, maybe it’s the moms

Maybe it’s the radio, maybe it’s road rage

Maybe El Nino, or UV rays

Maybe it’s the army, maybe it’s the liquor

Maybe it’s the papers, maybe the militia

Maybe it’s the athletes, maybe it’s the ads

Maybe it’s the sports fans, maybe it’s a fad

Maybe it’s the magazines, maybe it’s the internet

Maybe it’s the lottery, maybe it’s the immigrants

Maybe it’s taxes, big business

Maybe it’s the KKK and the skinheads

Maybe it’s the communists, maybe it’s the Catholics

Maybe it’s the hippies, maybe it’s the addicts

Maybe it’s the art, maybe it’s the sex

Maybe it’s the homeless, maybe it’s the banks

Maybe it’s the clearcut, maybe it’s the ozone

Maybe it’s the chemicals, maybe it’s the car phones

Maybe it’s the fertilizer, maybe it’s the nose rings

Maybe it’s the end, but I know one thing.

If it were up to me, I’d take away the guns.

(P) October 1, 1997

Penrod And Higgins Music / Amachrist Music

ACF Music Group

International Copyright Reserved

Richard Bonnie Admits On UVA TV That Existing Privacy Regulations Did Not Prevent Disclosures About V. Tech. Shooter, So Why Is He Supporting Changes In Confidentiality Laws?

I’m listening with raised blood pressure to Richard Bonnie speaking at a conference held at the University of Virginia to which apparently only pro-forced treatment folks were invited, and I am startled to hear him say what we all know, that existing privacy regulations did not prevent sharing of information about the shooter at Virginia Tech. So why are Mr. Bonnie and Delegates Bell and Toscano and Senators Howell and Edwards all supporting eroding the confidentiality rights of all people who seek mental health treatment?  Why do I have to give up my psychotherapy for no good reason at all? 

Thanks so much for being such a strong advocate for human rights and civil liberties for all Mr. Bonnie.  Maybe for your next cause you could do something about all those dangerous wheelchair users crossing the street on green lights and being hit by police officers who aren’t looking where they are going.  Forced staying on one side of the street for wheelchair users perhaps?  I count on you to come up with a just and humane solution to this problem Mr. Bonnie.  But then I’m nuts.   

For Dear Old Liberals Who Are Supporting Forced Treatment and Erosion Of Privacy Rights

 Love Me, I’m a Liberal

By Phil Ochs (Born 1940, died 1976) I cried when they shot Medgar Evers Tears ran down my spine I cried when they shot Mr. Kennedy As though I’d lost a father of mine But Malcolm X got what was coming He got what he asked for this time So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberalI go to civil rights rallies And I put down the old D.A.R. I love Harry and Sidney and Sammy I hope every coloured boy becomes a star But don’t talk about revolution That’s going a little bit too far So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal I cheered when Humphrey was chosen My faith in the system restored I’m glad the commies were thrown out of the AFL-CIO board I love Puerto Ricans and Negros as long as they don’t move next door So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal The people of old Mississippi Should all hang their heads in shame I can’t understand how their minds work What’s the matter don’t they watch Les Crain? But if you ask me to bus my children I hope the cops take down your name So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal I read New Republic and Nation I’ve learned to take every view You know, I’ve memorized Lerner and Golden I feel like I’m almost a Jew But when it comes to times like Korea There’s no one more red, white and blue So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal I vote for the Democratic Party. They want the U.N. to be strong I go to all the Pete Seeger concerts He sure gets me singing those songs I’ll send all the money you ask for But don’t ask me to come on along So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal Once I was young and impulsive I wore every conceivable pin Even went to the socialist meetings Learned all the old union hymns But I’ve grown older and wiser And that’s why I’m turning you in So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal

Who Will Listen To The Central State Hospital Families?

 http://www.statesman.com/shared-gen/content/shared-gen/ap/National/Virginia_Tech_Lobbying_for_Change.html?cxntlid=inform

3 patients have died at the hands of staff at Central State Hospital that we know of this year, but no one in the legislature is announcing that their families will be listened to if they speak to the legislature.  Because they won’t be heard.  Neither will the families of those who have died from metabolic syndrome caused by atypical anti-psychotics prescribed in Virginia’s state hospitals and Community Service Boards, nor will the families of those who have died because they were turned away from voluntary services before they killed themselves, and of course those who actually have mental illness will not be listened to by the legislature at all. 

This state is making law based not just on emotion and grief but on whose lives they think matter, and it is very clear that the lives of people with mental illness do not matter to legislators, the Attorney General and the Governor.  Other states, many other states are actually suing the makers of Zyprexa for the thousands of deaths resulting from its use, but not Virginia.  Why is that?  Thousands versus 32.  The tragedy at Virginia Tech. was horrendous, but using it to risk the lives and liberty of thousands of innocent people who are less likely to be violent than their non-mentally ill neighbor is as sensible as starting a war with Iraq over non-existent WMD’s.  Oh wait, we did that.  Sigh.

Journalism/Reporting Or Editorializing? You Decide

Read the transcript of Washington Post reporter Tom Jackman’s discussion of Virginia’s commitment laws and decide for yourself if he has a bias towards easier commitment laws and a belief in the mental illness equals violence “big lie” or not.  Than think twice before you give him an interview for his next story on “our side” of the story.  Seriously. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/11/28/DI2007112800753.html

I’m Going To Die From Psychiatric Side Effects, Would You Mind Not Smirking About It?

Yes, I’m still seeing the guy with the Masters in Education on the Commission in the front row smirking at me as I tried to argue for medical protections for people forced to take psychiatric drugs in their own home against their will.  His responses didn’t even make sense.  He said in response to the psychiatrist who proposed maximum caseloads for psychiatrists in Community Service Boards as a compromise that “the time isn’t right for that (insert smirk), we have areas with too many psychiatrists and areas with too few.”  That is illogical.  It wasn’t even an attempt at an intelligent response, it was just obstructionism.  If an area has too many psychiatrists working in public mental health (and I’d really like to know what area of the state that is), how would a maximum caseload even affect that region?  But that’s where the “discussion” ended.  With his illogical response and his smirk.  About the rights to medical protection of thousands of Virginia’s citizens, a smirk and a stupid comment from an administrator with no medical training and no personal experience of being coerced to take medication.  And that’s what I worked all year for?

Because all our objections to the big  proposals somehow did not make it to the powerpoint presentation on the two big screens, all those pros and cons we worked so hard on all year in meeting after difficult meeting.  The Commission voted with  insufficient information about the disadvantages of what they were voting on. 

And to make it all worse, the big political fight is not about our civil rights and our liberty interests, nor about the effect on access to voluntary treatment in the public mental health system, but about who is going to get “credit” for taking away our civil rights and leading Virginia back into the dark ages.  Will the Commission get “credit”, will the Senate? Will the House? Will the Democrats? Will the Republicans?

As far as I am concerned, they can all get the “credit” for mental health law regression.  When people look back at this time in Virginia’s history, I want all the names on record.  Just so we can make sure we don’t name any psychiatric facilities after any of them.  And I include myself for being foolish enough to think I could make a difference, do some damage control, get some traction on civil rights, we are human beings not objects, recovery is possible, coercion is not recovery, please don’t kill my people with your forced drugs and your hostility to the idea of us as equal citizens with equal, not special rights.

So the nightmares continue, and I alternate between dreaming I was completely left behind and dreaming I was a collaborator.  I haven’t had such dreams since childhood when I used to dream about a witch coming and killing my family and making me watch.  Survivor guilt.  I will not be hurt by these laws.  I will be okay.  So many other people will be hurt, suffer and die.  And I get to sit by and survive and watch until I am no longer here.  May G-d have mercy on my soul.

Just One Of The Many Exceptions To Confidentiality In Current Virginia Law

§ 37.2-839. Exchange of information between community services boards or behavioral health authorities and state facilities.

Community services boards or behavioral health authorities and state facilities may, when the individual has refused authorization, exchange the information required to prepare and implement a comprehensive individualized treatment plan, including a discharge plan as specified in subsection A of § 37.2-837. This section shall apply to all consumers of community services boards, behavioral health authorities, and state facilities.

When a consumer who is deemed suitable for discharge pursuant to subsection A of § 37.2-837 or his guardian or conservator refuses to authorize the release of information that is required to formulate and implement a discharge plan as specified in subsection A of § 37.2-837, then the community services board or behavioral health authority may release without authorization to those service providers and human service agencies identified in the discharge plan only the information needed to secure those services specified in the plan.

The release of any other consumer information to any agency or individual not affiliated directly or by contract with community services boards, behavioral health authorities, or state facilities shall be subject to all regulations adopted by the Board or by agencies of the United States government that govern confidentiality of patient information.

(1985, c. 87, § 37.1-98.2; 1999, c. 764; 2005, c. 716.)

Let’s Not Let Facts Get In The Way Of Our Emotional Reactions, Or The Real Problem With The Database On Who Can Buy Guns In The U.S.

http://community-2.webtv.net/@HH!80!A2!2134BF518044/stigmanet/NATIONALSTIGMA/index.html#12jul07

It seems the database is missing the records of millions of convicted criminals and people under restraining orders and yet all we hear about in Virginia are a few folks who were outpatient committed at some time in their lives who were unlikely to have been dangerous to anyone else and the lack of reporting of people who have ever been committed to a psychiatric unit no matter how long ago nor how much they have recovered in other states.  Read the article in the link above and don’t let the knee jerk scapegoating of people with mental illness infect your own thinking.

New York Times Editorial Board Believes in Privacy For Everyone But People With Psychiatric Labels

http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntget=2007/10/01/opinion/01mon3.html&tntemail0=y&oref=slogin

The New York Times trivializes privacy concerns of people with psychiatric labels and their allies as if they are completely unaware of the extreme prejudice and discrimination in our country against anyone who has been labelled mentally ill past, present or future.  Virginia has reported more names to the federal database than any other state in the country, with no apparent benefit in preventing tragedies, yet the Times uses the tragedy at Virginia Tech. as a rationale for taking away the confidentiality of everyone in this country who has ever been committed to a psychiatric unit.  They use the word “danger” as if it really meant that in this context.  It does not.  Danger to self or others or substantially unable to care for self to the point of being a danger to self in the commitment context, and particularly in Virginia, does not mean someone has been found to be dangerous to other people.  Most of the time it means the person is ill and is considered to be too ill to be left on his or her own while not being a danger of any violent act, even to self.  It is a tiny minority of folks who are actually committed in this state and the other 49 states for actually being considered a possible danger (note “possible”, not “proven”) danger to others.  Yet the New York Times thinks people who have never broken a law, never hurt anyone, and even never hurt themselves, should be put on a federal database along with convicted felons, spousal abusers and people who have restraining orders against them.  And we are all supposed to feel safer if this occurs.  Well I don’t.  I think there will be more acts of prejudice and discrimination against innocent people with psychiatric labels, that there is every chance that this database will be shared with other government agencies in ways that will hurt people with mental illness and that none of us will be any safer at all.  This is an obvious case of giving up civil liberties for the illusion of more public safety and yet the New York Times doesn’t see it that way because it is about the civil rights of people with mental illness, people for whom they use the word “deranged”, people they obviously do not consider to be full people and full citizens. 

Providers Speak Out For Common Sense and Hope in Virginia’s Mental Health System

Lisa Moore is also Vice President for Adult Services of the Virginia Mental Health Planning Council. It is wonderful and heartening to see providers speaking out against the backlash of fear and prejudice towards all people living with mental illness in Virginia that has been encouraged by those who know better in our state after the Virginia Tech. tragedy.  We can not and must not destroy the progress we have begun to make towards a recovery and choice based public mental health system because of mass hysteria and a lack of political courage and will to speak up for those who have no real political voice in this state, people with psychiatric labels.  Our Governor and our Attorney General and all our state legislators need to show the state what leadership really is, and scapegoating a group that is already scapegoated is not what leadership is. 

http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/133187

Strengthen mental health recovery systems
Cynthia McClaskey and Lisa Moore
McClaskey is chairwoman and Moore is vice chairwoman of the Southwest Virginia Behavioral Health Board.
The Southwest Virginia Behavioral Health Board recognizes and acknowledges that the events of April 16 were tragic and had a tremendous impact of loss and hurt not only for the families and friends of the victims killed and injured, and all Virginia Tech students and employees, but the region and nation. The board would like to offer its deepest condolences to the families and friends of the victims in this tragedy.
Doubtless, this incident may potentially lead to far-reaching changes in Virginia’s public mental health system. We need to be aware of an increase in the false belief by some of the public that all people with mental illnesses are violent, and therefore need to be closely monitored and even institutionalized.
Study after study shows that people with mental illness are no more violent or potentially violent than anyone else. More often than not, they are the victims rather than the perpetrators of violence. As a result of the media focus on this tragedy, there seems to be a greater sense of depression, fear and anxiety among people with mental illness. There is fear of a backlash that could lead to legislation that may criminalize and discriminate against people with mental illness.
Two federal groups have proposed recommendations for the treatment of mental illnesses — the federal government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and President Bush’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. The commission states: “Recovery refers to the process in which people are able to live, work, learn and participate fully in their communities. For some individuals, recovery is the ability to live a fulfilling and productive life despite a disability. For others, recovery implies the reduction or complete remission of symptoms. Science has shown that having hope plays an integral role in an individual’s recovery.”
In the past two years in Virginia, the mental health system has started moving forward by including new recovery-oriented approaches that have been positively received by mental health consumers and service providers. These recovery processes give people with mental illness a sense of choice in their treatment and the understanding that recovery is happening now for others and can happen for them.
The recovery movement that is taking place in the Virginia mental health system is the single greatest process that can empower consumers. For example, Southwest Virginia has implemented the Wellness Recovery Action Plan, Leadership Education and Advocacy Program, local and regional consumer empowerment and recovery councils, Program of Assertive Community Treatment teams, crisis stabilization programs and the employment of consumers as peer support providers.
These programs, with traditional counseling and medication management, are excellent tools for people with mental illness in their recovery. The Southwest Virginia Behavioral Health Board, mental health care providers, family members and consumers recognize that a major challenge facing people with mental illness is the risk of social isolation. The process of recovering from mental illness centers on breaking down social isolation and restoring a person’s social connectedness. This process can work only when we all come together as consumers, family members, mental health care providers and the community.
Any new legislation that may come as a result of the April 16 tragedy should enhance the options for voluntary participation in mental health treatment. New legislation that focuses only on coercive interventions can result in people with mental illness becoming even more isolated to avoid these consequences, and thus not receiving effective treatment. Through expanded partnerships, resources and thoughtful leadership, the public mental health system in Virginia can strengthen its mission to embrace people with mental illness in a recovery environment of support and hope.

Some Other Health Databases I Want The Maryland State Police To Have

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/17/AR2007091701805.html

Reports that Maryland’s governor has signed an order requiring anyone purchasing a gun who has ever been in a psychiatric hospital for 30 days or more or has ever been ordered into psychiatric treatment, even if it was 40 years ago, sign a waiver releasing their psychiatric records to the Maryland State Police.  Well if we’re going to invade the privacy of so many people with psychiatric labels, past and present, I have a few suggestions of other records I want the Maryland state police to have access to in performing background checks for gun purchases and the myriad unauthorized purposes they will no doubt put these records to.

1.  If you have ever been diagnosed with high blood pressure, you should have to sign a waiver to prove you are taking medication to prevent a stroke.  Guns in the hands of people prone to strokes are a bad idea.

2.  If you have diabetes you must sign a release and prove you are taking your blood sugar levels every day, guns in the hands of someone who is heading towards sugar or insulin shock are a very bad idea.

3.  If you have ever been diagnosed with poor fine motor skills (raises hand), you must sign a waiver so the state police can find out just how bad your fine motor skills are.  (Mine are in the 1st percentile due to neuralgia, I wouldn’t consider buying a gun because I drop things, dropping guns=bad idea.)

4.  If you are in the process of divorcing your spouse, you should not be allowed to buy a gun.  People get angry in divorce proceedings, murder can be easier than divorce, people who are getting divorced shouldn’t have guns.

5. If you ever had a temper tantrum past the age of 4, the Maryland State Police needs to know about it.  You must sign  a release for them to talk to your parents or your siblings if your parents have passed on to see just how bad your anger problem is.

6. If you have ever had a DUI, you should not own a gun. Drinking and guns don’t mix.

7. If you have ever spoken out against our Government, you should not own a gun, people who criticize the Government are obviously misguided and have poor judgment and should not own a gun.  You must submit all letters to the editor and blog entries and comments to the Maryland state police.

There, now I feel safer, don’t you?

Read This and Ignore The Rest: Psychcentral on Tech. Panel Report

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2007/09/01/thoughts-upon-cho-and-the-va-tech-recommendations/

Hymes in print :)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/06/AR2007090602527_pf.html

Need Inpatient Psychiatric Treatment and Live in Virginia? Have Someone Drive You to Maryland

With the current backlash and scapegoating of everyone with a psychiatric disability, a scapegoating led by Governor Kaine and continued by many others, it is not a good idea to seek inpatient psychiatric care in  the state of Virginia.  There are reports of folks seeking voluntary admission who were taken in handcuffs to a police station and strip searched by police, reports of people seeking voluntary care being detained on the spot, there is the very real possibility that even your voluntary admission to a psychiatric unit in Virginia will in the near future put you on a federal database along with convicted felons and wife beaters.  

So if you are in crisis, don’t seek help in Virginia if you can possibly help it.  Get a family member or good friend to drive you to Maryland.  Check out John Hopkins, one of the best psychiatric units in the country, much better than any we have in this state.  Check out Sheppard Pratt, one of the oldest non-profits hospitals still in existence.  If you have a lot of money, check into a “boutique” hospital unit in Maryland, Massachusetts or Rhode Island. 

Let’s be careful of our civil rights out there. 

Let’s Take Away Every College and High School Student’s Right to Privacy in All Matters

Because Governor Kaine’s panel thinks that’s a good idea.  In a long report that misses some of the key issues in the tragedy at Virginia Tech., most especially the availability of automatic weapons, the Governor’s panel recommends violating the confidentiality and Americans With Disabilities Act rights of every high school student in the state and just to top it off, wants to violate their medical privacy around sexually transmitted diseases too, because that will do wonders for public health. 

The Governor of course praised the panel for giving him the report he wanted, the report that scapegoats everyone with a psychiatric label for the actions of one person with a very rare disorder that even more rarely is connected to violence rather than focus on what the University could have done differently in regards to responding to stalking behavior, insolence to professors and locking down the campus as they did when their was an escaped prisoner earlier that same academic year. 

Instead we have the Governor and his panel suggesting that perhaps there should be a permanent record for everyone who seeks treatment for psychiatric or psychological issues as a child and that people who enter psychiatric hospitals voluntarily should be added to a federal database of people who can not purchase guns.

Ignore the fact that the vast majority of violent crimes are perpetrated by people with no history of psychiatric treatment, ignore the fact that people with psychiatric labels are 23 times more likely than others to be victims of violent crime, ignore the fact that prejudice and legal discrimination against people with psychiatric labels is already rampant in this state and this country and pretend that the changes the panel and the Governor are suggesting will not put us back in the dark ages of the not so distant past when college and high school students did not seek counseling for fear of being expelled.  Because it’s really going to make us all safer and prevent suicide if every college and high school student and their parents are afraid to seek help for fear of ruining their future prospects and enduring a lifetime of prejudice and discrimination. 

And throwing in communicable diseases, e.g. STD’s as something that should be reported to parents of college students?  That’s just so special, using a tragedy to advance a puritanical agenda. 

Shame On Every Psychiatrist and Psychologist Who Gave An Opinion on Cho’s Diagnosis Without Knowing Him

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/26/AR2007082601410.html?nav=rss_email/components

Seems Cho, the shooter at Virginia Tech., was diagnosed with selective mutism, an aspect of social anxiety disorder, way back in school and did okay with accomodations which he did not seek when he went to college.

Shame on each and every so called expert psychiatrist and psychologist who could not resist getting in the media and getting attention by guessing at a diagnosis that they all got wrong for someone they had never met, a diagnosis that in some cases was very convenient for their agenda of forcing more treatment on people with severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and their agenda of ending the confidentiality protections that people with severe mental illnesses so desparately need to have a chance in life, school, employment and socially. 

I hope we will see apologies from each and every psychiatrist and psychologist who off handedly declared that Cho must have been schizophrenic and from the Treatment Advocacy Center which pushed that error as well.  But I won’t hold my breath because the narcissism of these individuals is such that admitting a mistake might push them into a mental breakdown. 

So are we going to force treat folks with social anxiety disorder now?

29 Exceptions to Confidentiality in Virginia, But Tech. Panel and UVA Counseling Director Want More

Virginia has the laxest confidentiality laws in the country.  There are 29 exceptions to confidentiality in Virginia, including “for reasons of treatment”, which means your psychiatrist or other doctor can share your protected (sic) health information with any other doctor or treatment provider if is related to providing you with further treatment.  Your PHI can also be shared if you are the victim of a crime (with the defendant’s attorney), if you are suspected of a crime (with the police and the commonwealth’s attorney) and if you file a civil lawsuit of any kind (with the entity or person you are suing). 

The New River Valley CSB could have shared information with the Virginia Tech. Counseling Center under existing Virginia law, so could St. Alban’s Hospital for reasons of treatment. 

But Tom Ridge wants to know if his children in college have a mental health problem. Well of course he does.  He probably would also like to know if his children have an abortion or are treated for an STD, but that doesn’t mean he has a right to know, because his kids, unless they are exceptions, are over 18 and old enough to join the army and therefore adults, and adults have rights, and going to college doesn’t take away those rights. 

The panel is continuing down the dangerous and shameful path of tarring every young person with mental illness with the same brush as a rampage killer when they know or ought to know that young people with mental health problems are no more dangerous to others than young people without mental health problems.  But blaming people with mental illness is convenient (because it lets the University and thus the state off the hook for liability) and easy (because no one will stand up for people with mental illness, not even those paid to do so such as the Virginia Organization for Protection and Advocacy). 

They propose screening for mental illness of all college students, as if the ADA had never passed and as if screening were evidence based or reliable or had anything to do with the true commonality among all all school and university rampage killers–being young and male and having access to a gun.

Why not raise the age for possession of a gun to 25 for men who are not in the army or police force? Why not stop allowing men to go to college before the age of 25? Much more chance of preventing rampage killings on campus that way. And if that isn’t quite practicable, let’s go back to separate colleges for men and women so at least young women won’t get killed when young men can’t get a date and need to prove their “manhood” through violence. 

http://www.dailyprogress.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=CDP/MGArticle/CDP_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1173352168400&path=

Media Continues To Focus on MH System in Tragedy Despite Lack of Evidence of Correlation/Remind Anyone of Iraq and 9/11?

From the Washington Post today:

“…Although there is no way to know whether proper treatment in 2005 would have prevented the April 16 attack that left 33 dead,…”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/21/AR2007072101295.html?nav=rss_email/components

But the rest of the article goes on to act as if some correlation has been proven and therefore focus almost exclusively on one characteristic of the shooter, his psychiatric history and ignore any issues such as the access to automatic weapons for anyone, the lack of training of non-urban police in response to these types of emergencies despite the billions spent on ”homeland security”, etc. 

It sure is easy to blame folks with psychiatric diagnoses but it sure isn’t good journalism.  

Governor Kaine Continues to Provide No Leadership in Countering Hate Filled Backlash Against People With Psychiatric Disabilities

It has been 3 months since the tragedy at Virginia Tech., 3 months filled with hate speech and hysteria from the media and bloggers and so called advocacy groups directed at everyone who ever had a psychiatric hospitalization or serious diagnosis, and still not one word of reassurance, reality checking, no leadership at all from our Governor to try and put a stop to it.  Instead he is enjoying the upswing in his political popularity for joining in the hatefest while criticizing others for trying to make political gains out of a tragedy.  Governor Kaine is the chief offender in making political hay out of a tragedy and failing to look at all the issues raised by it and instead allowing one group to be scapegoated, a group that was already hated and that he apparently, despite his claims to be a disability rights politician, could  not care less about. 

I want my vote back. 

G-d Bless Peter LeViness–Finally a Mental Health Professional Willing to Say What Everyone Knows About Involuntary Counseling

 http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2007-07-12-0173.html

“…Peter LeViness, director of Counseling and Psychological Services at the University of Richmond, said the article seemed to chide Virginia Tech for not having a mandatory counseling policy.

“In fact, that is not that unusual, in that mandatory counseling is seen as not particularly effective,” LeViness said. “Counseling is a collaborative process. If there is someone else saying you have to fix that person and that person does not want to be fixed, it sets up an adversarial relationship.”…”

Satel Wants the Federal Government to Run State Commitment Systems

And given the bang up job they do handling natural disasters and protecting our privacy and civil rights, I’m sure she’s right that this is a good idea.  Because the federal government is so good at protecting people’s rights and at ensuring folks’ safety, just look at the great job the FDA is doing these days! 

 Is this the same woman who wrote and complained about the therapeutic state? The same psychiatrist who believes that veterans with PTSD should mostly just suck it up and go to work and stop mooching off the VA?  But somehow when it comes to her best friend’s siblings and folks like them, all bets are off and the federal government should step in and dictate every facet of their lives. 

The author of “I’m a racially profiling doctor” who also believes that race has no bearing on poorer health outcomes in the U.S. for African-Americans and who works with drug addicts while advocating for less restrictions on the prescription of powerful narcotics is in the New York Times again.  What I can’t figure out is why the Times, which has a high standard for publication of opinion pieces in general, prints this absurdly contradictory and flip-flopping doctor time and again.  It reflects badly on the New York Times not on Satel, because she is who she is and will not change, but the Times knows better. 

http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?emc=tnt&tntget=2007/07/12/opinion/12satel.html&tntemail0=y

Associated Press Gets It Wrong, Slanders Innocent CSB Director

Les Saltzberg was not even hired as executive director of New River Valley when the Virginia Tech. shooter was TDO’d.  He has been at New River Valley for less than a year.  New River Valley spent 18 months searching for a director after their long time director retired. 

 

  

Exec Linked to Va. Tech Shooter Quits -
Associated Press

The executive director of a mental health agency that had a role in treatment for the Virginia Tech student who killed 32 people and himself has quit after a year in the position.

Les Saltzberg resigned from New River Valley Community Services following a board meeting, agency officials confirmed Monday. The board was expected to consider renewing his one-year contract.

Board members said the resignation on Thursday was unrelated to the April 16 killings committed on the Virginia Tech campus by Seung-Hui Cho.

Saltzberg declined to comment.

At a commitment hearing for Cho in December 2005, a special justice determined he was a danger to himself and ordered him to undergo outpatient treatment. The community services board was required by law to recommend a treatment plan for him, but did not do so.

Saltzberg has said the agency did not know treatment had been ordered for Cho because budget constraints had prompted it to stop sending representatives to all commitment hearings. Since the shootings, the agency has resumed sending representatives to hearings.

PBS Does Free Commerical for TeenScreen, Big Pharma and PACT, and Here I Thought PBS Was Commerical Free

This evening PBS’s News Hour With Jim Lehrer did a commerical for the profit-making TeenScreen Program.  They swallowed whole-hog Laurie Flynn’s claim that TeenScreen can prevent suicide and might have prevented the tragedy at Virginia Tech.  PBS asked no real questions, did not ask for any evidence (luckily for TeenScreen since there isn’t any) and then proceeded to do a free commercial for PACT and Kendra’s Law in New York State, using an African-American young man on injectable anti-psychotics with clear symptoms of tardive dyskenesia from the forced drugging as evidence of forced drugging’s success!  No alternative points of view were aired.  One would think the whole country agreed with Laurie Flynn and TAC and NAMI national that TeenScreen and PACT and forced outpatient drugging are the cure to all our problems in the non-existent mental health system.   The director of Mental Health America got a little air time, but was pretty obviously edited out of context as if he supported outpatient commitment, which the MHA does not. 

This was the most one-sided reporting on an issue I have seen on mainstream media since the pro-war coverage before the Iraq war.  It is beyond disappointing to suspicious given how much money Eli Lilly gives to PBS in sponsoring programs. 

For shame.

To contact the Ombudsman at PBS: 

Submit Your Comments

Have a comment related to the journalistic integrity of PBS content? Send an E-mail to Michael Getler or contact him at 703-739-5290.

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Why Only 1 Person With Mental Health Experience on the Virginia Tech. Governor’s Panel?

http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2007-06-30-0142.html

Apparently the shooter at Virginia Tech. did go for his mandated outpatient counseling at the University Counseling Center but the head of the panel is not someone with any mental health background so he clearly does not know what to make of counseling records, saying it’s not clear what the “interactions” were–hmm, counseling IS interaction, but you can’t blame him, he isn’t a mental health professional, he isn’t a mental health consumer and he has no reason to understand any of this.  But why, if the Governor is so intent on making his panel all about mental health and nothing about gun control or automatic weapons nor police response, did he only put one person on his panel who has a mental health background and that member is a child and adolescent psychiatrist, not a college counselor or psychologist who would have front line experience counseling college students in psychological trouble? 

So let’s review, the shooter was given outpatient commitment and he showed up for it and went on to shoot people in a tragic massacre.  And this is an argument for more outpatient commitment in the state of Virginia?!  I’d say it’s a very good argument for getting rid of the option of outpatient commitment entirely in our state.  But let’s not let the facts get in the way of the agendas of politicians, family members and special interest groups. 

Family of Virginia Tech. Killer Has Given His Mental Health Records to the Governor’s Panel

It is just me, or if there are mental health records from Virginia Tech’s counseling center for the family to give, wouldn’t that seem to imply Cho DID receive treatment? 

 VT gunman’s family gives records to panel
By DENA POTTER
Associated Press Writer
June 14, 2007, 1:06 PM EDT
 RICHMOND, Va. — Relatives of the student gunman who killed 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus turned over his mental health records to a gubernatorial panel investigating the shootings, the panel’s chairman said Thursday.

Federal privacy laws governing health and student information had prevented the panel from reviewing Seung-Hui Cho’s records. Panel Chairman W. Gerald Massengill had said he would go to court if necessary to obtain them.

“This is not all the records that we will need,” Massengill told The Associated Press on Thursday, “but this is certainly some that we felt a strong need to take a look at.”

University spokesman Larry Hincker said the family agreed to turn over Cho’s mental health records late last week. Massengill said they were delivered to the panel on Wednesday, but that he had not yet examined them.

Virginia Tech officials had been in negotiations with the family since the panel met in Blacksburg in May through a liaison that was “some law enforcement organization,” Hincker said. Panel members have expressed frustration at state and school officials, who have said they couldn’t turn over Cho’s medical, mental health or scholastic records because federal privacy laws protect people even after death.

Cho killed himself on April 16 shortly after a shooting rampage in which he killed two students at a Virginia Tech dormitory and 30 other students and staff inside a classroom building. It was the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

At the panel’s third of four scheduled public meetings on Monday, members were continuously rebuffed when trying to get even the most basic information into Cho’s mental health history.

Cho was referred to Virginia Tech’s Cook Counseling Center in December 2005, but the center is not required by state law to report to the courts whether the patients receive treatment. Hincker said the family gave permission for the university to release the counseling center’s records.

“I think these records should show a number of things, but certainly some of the questions that we had as to any counseling, any encounters he had had with the mental health community,” Massengill said.

Massengill said the family turned over the records, which he called “absolutely essential” to the panel’s work and strictly for its use. He commended the family for its cooperation with the university, law enforcement and the panel.

While pleased that the panel will not have to fight for the mental health records, Massengill said he still wants access to medical and school records.

“I think it’s important that we learn as much about Cho as we can from his childhood on up,” Massengill said. “Any record or any interview or any process that will allow us to do that, we’re certainly interested in.

“His high school years are of particular importance to us.”

Classmates have said Cho, a South Korean immigrant, was teased at affluent Westfield High School in Chantilly, Va., apparently because of shyness and his strange, mumbly way of speaking. In a video diatribe Cho mailed to NBC News before his second round of shootings, he ranted against rich “brats” with Mercedes-Benzes, gold necklaces, cognac and trust funds.

Two of his victims–Virginia Tech freshmen Reema Samaha and Erin Peterson–went to Cho’s high school, although it didn’t seem they knew the outcast.

Massengill said the panel may have to meet several more times. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine appointed the panel and asked that it finish its work before school started again in the fall.

Associated Press Writer Sue Lindsey contributed to this report from Blacksburg, Va.

Canadian Government’s Common Sense Response and Analysis of a College Shooting

 http://www.brooksbulletin.com/news/national_news.asp?itemid=61654

Federal documents look at mental health system role in Mtl college shooting

DENE MOORE
Sunday, April 01, 2007

MONTREAL (CP) – Provinces don’t have the mental health resources to prevent tragedies like the shooting spree at a Montreal college last fall, say internal federal briefing documents.

A draft report prepared for Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day after the shootings at Dawson College last September questions whether the mental health system could be tapped to detect and prevent violence involving mental illness.

The discussion and any conclusions have been purged from the heavily edited documents, obtained by The Canadian Press using access to information laws.

But the briefing notes do say there are not enough mental health resources to provide preventive treatment.

“Each province has mental health legislation designed to protect the mentally ill and ensure they receive appropriate care and treatment,” says the draft report prepared a couple of weeks after Kimveer Gill stormed the downtown Montreal school on Sept. 13, 2006.

“However, provincial mental health legislation is not designed to protect public safety.”

Gill’s family has blamed mental illness for the shooting spree, which left 18-year-old Anastasia De Sousa dead and 20 others wounded.

The federal report says federal jurisdiction is limited when it comes to preventing of harm or identifying risks before an offence occurs.

“The (Criminal) Code has no preventative provisions for the mentally ill,” it says, other than a rarely used provision that allows courts to detain people proven an imminent risk to commit violent crime.

Dr. Renee Fugere, president of the Canadian Academy of Psychiatry and the Law and a board member of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, says the assessment is accurate: the mental health system is under-funded and short-staffed.

But she says linking that to the college shooting or other violent crimes is not accurate.

Such killers don’t often suffer recognizable mental illnesses that would bring them in contact with the mental health system prior to their crimes, said Fugere, a psychiatrist at Montreal’s Pinel Institute.

Murderers like Gill are more likely to suffer antisocial disorders, she said.

“These people want the public to know they exist,” Fugere said. “One day, based on a various circumstances, they will act out.”

She said victims are usually unknown.

“Essentially, you’re not able to prevent this kind of offence. . . because these individuals don’t draw the attention of anybody.”

When it comes to random violence like the college shooting, Fugere says restricting access to weapons may be the only means of prevention.

“In order to have victims, you need a perpetrator and you need a motive… but you also need weapons. If the access to weapons is easy, then you increase your risk,” she says.

“The other things you’re not able to control that much.”

The federal report also documents the kind of media coverage the college shooting generated.

“The shootings, as expected, also brought up the issue of gun control,” media monitors noted.

The documents note that Bill C-21, the Conservative law abolishing the long-gun registry, had not been scheduled for second reading and “it’s unclear when this legislation will go forward.”

“This government’s proposal to eliminate the requirement to register non-restricted firearms has come under renewed criticism,” says the document.

© The Canadian Press, 2007

Chair of Commission on Mental Health Law Reform Has Already Decided What Commission Should Decide

The Chief Justice’s Commission on Mental Health Law Reform is supposed to continue meeting through 2008 and is not supposed to come out with a report until either the original date of November 2007 after state legislative elections or the possible new date of September of 2007.   It is a 30 member commission with 5 taskforces (on one of which I sit) which have been working hard since October of 2006 with the idea that their work mattered for something and that the decisions had not already been made.  In fact we were all told that this was not a Commission in which the “report was already written” by Richard Bonnie in October of 2006.

Nevertheless, Richard Bonnie, the Chair of the Commission, is quoted in today’s Psychiatric News in a manner that says the decisions on several important issues have already been made.  So why is the state DOJ paying all this money out for all these meetings and why are so many people putting in so many hours of their own time for no good reason? 

“… Last summer, the state’s chief justice appointed a 30-member commission (including Bonnie) to study mental health law reform in Virginia. To record at least some data on outpatient commitment, the month of May was arbitrarily chosen as the time in which every case in the state was to be documented. Bonnie hopes that information gleaned from the documentation will inform the commission’s discussions on improving the state’s outpatient commitment system. Whatever the details, said Bonnie, services must be available, protocols must be arranged with willing providers, and the law must be modified regarding the criteria for and expectations of commitment…”

http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/42/11/1-a

If Kendra’s Law is Passed in Virginia, Who Will Protect Patients from Dying With Their Rights Off?

February 27, 2007
Personal Health
A Mix of Medicines That Can Be Lethal
By JANE E. BRODY

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/health/27brody.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

The death of Libby Zion, an 18-year-old college student, in a New York
hospital on March 5, 1984, led to a highly publicized court battle and
created a cause célèbre over the lack of supervision of inexperienced and
overworked young doctors. But only much later did experts zero in on the
preventable disorder that apparently led to Ms. Zion’s death: a form of drug
poisoning called serotonin syndrome.

Ms. Zion, who went to the hospital with a fever of 103.5, had been taking a
prescribed antidepressant, phenelzine (Nardil). The combination of
phenelzine and the narcotic painkiller meperidine (Demerol) given to her at
the hospital could raise the level of circulating serotonin to dangerous
levels. When she became agitated, a symptom of serotonin toxicity, and tried
to pull out her intravenous tubes, she was restrained, and the resulting
muscular tension is believed to have sent her fever soaring to lethal
heights.

Now, with the enormous rise in the use of serotonin-enhancing
antidepressants, often taken in combination with other drugs that also raise
serotonin levels, emergency medicine specialists are trying to educate
doctors and patients about this not-so-rare and potentially life-threatening
disorder. In March 2005, two such specialists, Dr. Edward W. Boyer and Dr.
Michael Shannon of Children’s Hospital Boston, noted that more than 85
percent of doctors were “unaware of the serotonin syndrome as a clinical
diagnosis.”

Satel Misinformed About Taskforce on Commitment

http://sallysatelmd.com/html/a-ws8.html  Satel says: “The task force proceedings are bitterly contentious. On one side are civil liberties lawyers and disgruntled patients who insist that lowering the “imminent” danger threshold would threaten individual rights. On the other side are psychiatrists caring for people with schizophrenia and bipolar illness and their relatives who have lived through the nightmare of not being able to get timely treatment for desperately ill loved ones.”

The Taskforce on Commitment of the Chief Justice’s Commission on Mental Health Law Reform has exactly 2 people who could be described with the quaint term disgruntled patients and exactly 2 psychiatrists out of 22 members. There is one person who could be described as a civil rights lawyer.  The rest of the taskforce is made up of family members, special justices, CSB employees and directors, a law professor, a Chief Magistrate, a Sheriff and a Deputy Commissioner. 

If it is contentious, it is because certain members in favor of more outpatient commitment and looser standards for inpatient commitment have not conducted themselves with the everyday courtesy one would expect of members of such a taskforce and have done things such as continually interrupt other members  when they are trying to speak, called other members “obstructionist” over and over while they are trying to speak, gone red in the face with anger that someone disagrees with them, and generally made it unpleasant for everyone.  It is not however the case that 2 “disgruntled”  (what an unpleasant word for a doctorto use about members of the group of patients she treats, you would never hear an oncologist call his patients “disgruntled”), patients have any say whatsoever on this taskforce nor that one civil rights attorney can have much say either. 

But since this is coming from the same person who claimed in a talk at UVA (available still on AEI’s website) that people with cognitive disabilities were required to be members of all Local Human Rights Committees in Virginia, I’m not too surprised.

I’m a lot more worried about “disgruntled” psychiatrists myself since they actually are in the business of helping people and with an attitude like this, it’s hard to see how they could.  But then again, someone who argues against full benefits for returning Iraqi veterans with PTSD may not really be in the business of helping people after all.  See http://www.vawatchdog.org/07/nf07/nfMAY07/nf051807-1.htm for link to podcast of Satel dissing veterans with PTSD. 

Roman Catholic Veterans Must Be Listed on the Federal Gun Registry

Timothy McVeigh, responsible for the tragic Oklahoma City Bombings, was raised a devout Roman Catholic by his father and was a veteran.  It clearly follows, as the night the day, that all Roman Catholic Veterans should be listed on the Federal Gun Registry as too dangerous to be allowed to purchase a gun.  Some will say this is an over reaction, that it was only one Roman Catholic veteran who acted so monstrously and dangerously and caused so much grief.  But in these dangerous times, we can not let political correctness, nor the risk of stigmatizing a whole group for the actions of one member nor spurious claims of constitutional rights to equal protection stop us from putting public safety and the ensuring of a  sense of security in the general population first above all other considerations.

Comparing People with Psychiatric Labels to Terrorists is Hate Speech

No matter how well or softly spoken, no matter how much the person thinks they are being helpful, comparing people with psychiatric labels to terrorists is the definition of hate speech.  It is hard to reconcile with the seeming lack of hostility on the surface and the well known caring about some members of the group of people with psychiatric labels, but nonethelesss, there it is: hate speech that will harm the quality of life and add to the prejudice, fear and discrimination in society towards people with mental illness, right there in a video.  Don’t watch if you have high blood pressure or are feeling a little overwhelmed. 

http://www.podtech.net/home/2844/mental-illness-and-homeland-security

The Ignorance is Astonishing–What is “Voluntary Commitment to Outpatient Treatment”? Tom Rust Believes There is Such a Thing

More even than pointing out how much hatred and fear of people with psychiatric illness is in the general population, the reaction to the Virginia Tech. shootings has shown how much sheer ignorance there even among state legislators.  A case in point is Tom Rust’s answers to Connection Newspapers’ Julia O’Donoghue,  http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/article.asp?article=81196&paper=61&cat=109

in which he says that people who are “voluntarily committed to outpatient care” should be looked at in regards to whether they can purchase guns.  The problem is there is no such thing as voluntary commitment to outpatient care.  Apparently Tom Rust believes that anyone who has a psychiatric illness and receives psychiatric treatment signs a commitment form in order to see their doctor.  Apparently he can not grasp the concept that the vast majority of folks seek treatment for psychiatric illness voluntarily just like anyone else who sees a doctor and that just as he does not sign commitment papers to see his internist, no one signs commitment papers to see their psychiatrist.

How can we be in the 21st century and still be at this level of ignorance?  And why is this Republican delegate and so many other politicians so eager to grasp at the lazy answer to the inexplicable tragedy and evil acts at Virginia Tech?  Do they really believe what they are saying or do they just lack the courage to say there is evil in the world, there are people who do evil things and no, your government can not keep you safe from all evil.  That’s what God is for, not state legislatures and not Governors. 

In the meantime, the scapegoating and silencing of people living with psychiatric illness continues in Virginia and the toll of retraumatization and fear and and shaming is showing.  But no one will blame the hysterical hate speech and scapegoating for this toll, no, they will blame people with psychiatric labels, because that is the easy and cowardly thing to do. 

Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius Closes Loophole That Allows Dangerous Wind to Take Lives

Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius issued an executive order today to close the loophole in the state’s tornado reporting to the Federal Weather Service.  She was quoted as saying that she had not been aware that Kansas only reported actual verified tornadoes to the National Weather Service while high winds and breezes were allowed to go unreported in a very unfortunate loophole which may have led to last week’s tragic deaths of a number of people in one Kansas town. 

President Bush announced that he was assigning Karl Rove, Vice President Dick Cheney and former CIA director George Tenet to investigate twisters as threats to National Security and possibly a Democrat (sic) plot to undermine the American people’s confidence in his administration. 

Both the Governor of Kansas and President Bush agreed that Wind had been given too much freedom since 1939 when it was glorified in the _Wizard of Oz_ and that it was time to choose public safety over freedom.  Again. 

NewSpeak: Imminent Worked, Let’s Change Imminent, Outpatient Didn’t Work, Let’s Do it More

TAC and others are all over the mainstream media using the shootings at Virginia Tech. as a reason to change the “imminent” standard in Virginia.  A logical person would deduce from this that Cho wasn’t committed under the current imminent standard.  But logic has nothing to do with the agenda of TAC and others who want what they want when they want it–which is more power over the lives of people labeled with serious mental illness.  The fact is that Cho was committed under the current imminent standard.  We have no idea what would have happened if the standard were changed to something vaguer that special justices across the state might interpret in very different ways, he might not have been committed at all, even to the foolish option of outpatient commitment. 

So Cho was committed under the imminent standard, outpatient commitment was used (and even TAC admits to being surprised that it was used instead of inpatient in his case), and this is an argument for changing the imminent standard and using more outpatient commitment?  It’s about as convincing an argument as the argument that we should re-elect the President under whose watch 9/11 happened in order to prevent another 9/11 which got us the tragedies which are the Iraq war and the failure to help and rebuild in New Orleans.

Washington Post Misses the Obvious Conclusion, Follows the Wrong Lead in Cho Case

See below for the Washington Post article in which they chase after enforcement of outpatient commitment as the problem rather than the obvious, which is that if outpatient commitment had not been an option in Virginia in 2005, Cho would have been committed to an inpatient unit and had much more of a chance of someone noticing how much was going wrong with him than in a 10 minute evaluation, 10 minute hearing and one night stay in a hospital. 

The obvious response to a horrible crime perpetrated by someone who was outpatient committed after a hearing finding of dangerousness is to abolish outpatient commitment as an option, not to make it more common!  Cho is a clear argument against the very existence of outpatient commitment in Virginia and elsewhere and yet somehow entities such as the Post who have been long time supporters of more outpatient commitment are using it to push for, guess what, more outpatient commitment?

And of course they are going after the “imminent” standard despite the fact that Cho was found to be dangerous under the “imminent” standard in existence.  This is nothing more than the Post and others pushing their pre-existing agenda and ignoring the facts of the case to do so.  This isn’t journalism, it’s propaganda. 

//Cho Never Received Treatment Ordered by Judge//

By Brigid Schulte and Chris L. Jenkins

(c) 2007, The Washington Post

Seung-Hui Cho never received the treatment ordered by a judge who declared him dangerously mentally ill less than two years before his rampage at Virginia Tech, law enforcement officials said, exposing flaws in Virginia’s labyrinthine mental health system, including confusion about the law, spotty enforcement and inadequate funding.

Neither the court, the university nor community services officials followed up on the judge’s order, according to dozens of interviews. Cho never got the treatment, according to authorities who have seen his medical files. And although state law says the community services board should have made sure Cho got help, a board official said that was “news to us.”

It is impossible to know if the treatment, ordered in December 2005, would have prevented the massacre last month, which left 32 students and faculty dead before Cho killed himself. But interviews with state and university officials, lawmakers, special justices, attorneys, advocates and mental health agencies across the state made clear that what happened with Cho is not unusual in cases of “involuntary outpatient commitment” — Virginia’s name for the kind of order issued by Cho’s judge.

Cho, they said, slipped through a porous mental health system that suffers from muddled, seldom-enforced laws and inconsistent practices. Special justices who oversee hearings such as the one for Cho said they know that people they have ordered into treatment have not gotten it. They find out when the person “does something crazy again,” in the words of one justice — when they are brought back into court because they are considered in imminent danger of harming themselves or others.

“The system doesn’t work well,” said Tom Diggs, executive director of the Commission on Mental Health Law Reform, which has been studying the state mental health system and will report to the General Assembly next year.

Involuntary outpatient commitments are relatively uncommon in Virginia, officials said, because those in the system know they are not enforced. They are almost an act of faith.

“When I let the person go outpatient, I always put on the record, ‘I hope I don’t read about you tomorrow in the paper. . . . Don’t make me look like the foolish judge that could have stopped you,’ ” said Lori Rallison, a special justice in Prince William County. “And knock wood, that hasn’t happened. But it can.”

Cho’s case is a classic example of some of the flaws in the outpatient treatment system.

By 2005, Cho, an English major at Virginia Tech, had frightened teachers and classmates with his macabre and violent writings. He referred to himself as Question Mark, never made eye contact and rarely spoke. But it wasn’t until two undergraduate women complained that Cho sent instant messages and left cryptic lines from Romeo and Juliet on their dry erase boards that Cho came to the attention of police. Although the girls decided not to press charges, police met with Cho on Dec. 13 and warned him to leave the women alone.

That night, Cho e-mailed a roommate saying he might as well kill himself. The roommate contacted police, who brought Cho to the New River Valley Community Services Board, the government mental health agency that serves Blacksburg, Va.

There, Kathy Godbey examined Cho and found he was “mentally ill and in need of hospitalization,” according to court papers. That was enough to have Cho temporarily detained at Carilion St. Albans Behavioral Health Clinic in Christiansburg, a few miles from campus, until a special justice could review his case in a commitment hearing.

New River Valley’s Mike Wade maintained that the community services board’s responsibility ended there.

“Unless, out of the commitment hearing, the judge issued outpatient treatment specific to our agency, that’s where it ends with us,” said Wade, the board’s community liaison. “Since we weren’t named the provider of that outpatient treatment, we weren’t involved in the case.”

A day later, on Dec. 14, 2005, Paul M. Barnett, the special judge, decided Cho was an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness and ordered him into involuntary outpatient treatment. It is a practice that Terry Teel, Cho’s court-appointed lawyer and a special judge himself, said they use “all the time” in Blacksburg. Special justices such as Barnett are lawyers with some expertise and training who are appointed by the jurisdiction’s chief judge.

Teel said he does not remember Cho or the details of his case. But he said Cho most likely would have been ordered to seek treatment at Virginia Tech’s Cook Counseling Center. “I don’t remember 100 percent if that’s where he was directed,” Teel said. “But nine times out of 10, that’s where he would be.”

And there, he said, ended the court’s responsibility. The court doesn’t follow up, he said; “We have no authority.”

Virginia Tech officials declined to discuss Cho’s case because of privacy laws. But they said they are never informed when a person is referred to them by the court.

“When a court gives a mandatory order that someone get outpatient treatment, that order is to the individual, not an agency,” said Christopher Flynn, director of the Cook Counseling Center. The one responsible for ensuring that the mentally ill person receives help in these sorts of cases, he said, is the mentally ill person. “I’ve never seen someone delivered to me with an order that says, ‘This person has been discharged; he’s now your responsibility.’ That doesn’t happen.”

Virginia law says that community services boards — the local agencies responsible for a range of mental health services — “shall recommend a specific course of treatment and programs” for people like Cho who are ordered to receive outpatient treatment. The law also says these boards “shall monitor the person’s compliance.”

When read those portions of the statute, Wade said: “That’s news to us.”

The law also says that when a dangerously mentally ill person ordered into treatment doesn’t show up, as was the case with Cho, he or she can be brought back before the special judge, and if found still in crisis, can be committed to a psychiatric institution for up to 180 days.

None of that happened in Cho’s case.

(Optional add end)

Community service boards saw 115,000 mentally ill people in Virginia in 2005, at a cost of $127 million.

Virginia is one of eight states in the country to require that people be an “imminent” danger to themselves or others before they can be brought before a judge. Advocates argue that is such a high standard that only the most seriously dangerous cases are considered and involuntary hospitalization is usually required.

Mary Ann Bergeron, head of the Virginia Association of Community Services Boards, which represents the 40 agencies around the state, said the boards are only responsible for a person committed to outpatient care “if he seeks treatment. But we can’t give him treatment if he refuses it.”

But advocates and some special justices disagree.

“The services board job is not to say, ‘We tried and they don’t want treatment.’ Their job is to report back to the court,” said Mark Bodner, a special justice in Fairfax County. And so far, in his six-year tenure, that has happened only once.

AP-NY-05-06-07 2107EDT

More Hysteria, More Hate Speech

A journalist makes the ignorant statement that all people with mental illness are at best unpredictable.  Hm, and she has taken a poll, studied the subject or just absorbed the cultural stereotype and regurgitated it into her column?

Another journalist states that the fact that people who enter psychiatric units voluntarily are not entered into the federal database of people who can not buy guns is a “loophole”.  Um, no, it’s a reflection of the reality that there is no correlation between voluntarily seeking psychiatric treatment and violence.

Well if we want to get into reality, which journalists seem loath to do, there is on correlation between having a severe mental illness and committing a serious violent act.  If these journalists are so concerned about preventing violence, they should be starting a campaign to have anyone arrested for drug possession or DUI put in a federal database, because there IS a correlation between substance abuse and violence.  But that would not suit their agenda of scapegoating a group that is such an easy target and it might offend people they think matter who have recovered from substance or alcohol abuse just as people recover from mental illness. 

If we really want to prevent gun violence directed at groups of strangers, we should be profiling middle aged white men who are unemployed or have just been fired, because this is the group that actually is most likely to kill a stranger.  But let’s not let the facts get in the way of the fun game of scapegoating people with psychiatric illness. 

Sometimes I wonder whether these writers were ever taught basic deceny by their parents, like you don’t make fun of people with disabilities and you don’t pick on the little guy.  Somehow I think their mothers would not be proud. 

Extreme Hate Speech–Let’s Find “Loners” ‘ DNA and Kill Them Before They Kill Us

From the Daily Progress letter section: http://www.dailyprogress.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=CDP%2FMGArticle%2FCDP_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1173351017051&path=!news

May 1, 2007

In view of the recent tragic events, it seems appropriate that, as a lasting memorial, funding be established to initiate or further research projects for DNA-biochemistry in order give a handle to the “loner syndrome.”

As a member of a maroon-orange-blue family, I suggest that the combined efforts of the two schools might put Virginia in a special position to advance the use of these important diagnostic tools to help prevent future such problems. Certainly, since we have the capability for its use, DNA-biochemistry should routinely be added to X-ray, MRI, etc. in digging more deeply, to the molecular level, for the answer to “why?”.

Genetic counseling would be better than grief counseling.

Elizabeth C. Gathright

Albemarle County

60 Minutes Doesn’t Know Right From Wrong

60 Minutes is at it again, spreading slander and dangerous lies about people living with psychiatric illness.  Steve Kroft ignorantly states when interviewing the director of MHA that people with serious mental illness don’t know right from wrong and it’s only common sense to put their name on a federal list.  Where did he get his degree in mental health from and how many people with mental illness has he actually met?  Oh, that’s right, he knows Mike Wallace who suffered by self report from serious depression, so I guess Steve thinks Mike Wallace doesn’t know right from wrong and should have his name on a federal list. 

The suicide rate of people living with serious mental illness is going to go up due to the continual, non-stop hate speech spewed on our airwaves, but who gives a damn?  No one, that’s who. 

Why is the State of Virginia Supressing Cho’s Toxicology Results?

They’ve already told us that he had no brain tumor but now they say they won’t release his toxicology report when it comes back.  Hmm. What are they trying to suppress?  Maybe the fact that he was on the psychiatric drugs that were prescribed to him at the time of his horrible acts and therefore certain people’s agenda to push more forced drugs down the throat of Virginia citizens will be revealed as the incredibly stupid and opportunistic idea that it really is?

Failure to Accept the Existence of Evil Leads to Psychophobia and More Evil

Failing to accept the existence of evil leads to psychophobia and more evil
I do not believe that it is given to any living person to truly grasp or comprehend evil or evil behavior. I understand that the existence of evil and of people who do evil things is upsetting, threatening, confusing and scary to almost all of us. One choice is to accept that we can never truly understand why evil exists and why some people behave in evil ways but not to pretend that evil does not exist or resort to easy explanations of evil behavior.
In fact, I would propose that if anyone tries to convince you they have an easy explanation of evil behavior, you should immediately look to see what agenda they are trying to push on you, because there is no easy explanation nor solution for evil and evil behavior.

One of the most common and laziest modern explanations for evil and evil behavior is to equate evil with insanity. He or she wasn’t evil, he was a lunatic, that’s the ticket. Well, no. Millions and millions of “crazy” folks in this country and around the world, and in the main they are less likely to do evil things than their “normal” fellow citizens. Lots of “normal” folks doing very evil things in this country and around the world.

As soon as you fall for the lazy explanation of evil behavior, equating it with insanity, you have joined into society’s scapegoating of a large group of citizens, and you have become part of society’s evil behavior towards a very vulnerable group.

You don’t have to figure out evil, you can’t. You should, if you can, try and accept that it exists and always has so that you don’t need to protect yourself from that awful truth by seeking out a scapegoat.

Virginia Currents Airs One Sided Segment on Commitment Laws

Virginia Currents on PBS apparently believes there is only one side to the question of whether commitment laws should be loosened and more people should lose 6 months of their lives in dangerous state facilities and more people should be subjected to outpatient commitment which did not work to prevent the tragedy at Virginia Tech and may indeed have made it more likely.  If Outpatient Commitment had not been on the books in Virginia in 12/05, the person in question would have been committed to an inpatient facility for up to 180 days, during which time it is a lot more likely his mutism and other strange behaviors would have come to light than in a short outpatient evaluation.

 In fact, I am having trouble wrapping my head around the logic that a tragedy perpetrated by someone who was outpatient committed is an argument for MORE outpatient commitment in Virginia.  It would be far more logical to make the argument that outpatient commitment should be removed as an option in our state and leave inpatient commitment as the only option for those like the person in question deemed a danger to self or others. 

But we didn’t hear anything as logical as that on Virginia Currents, we heard the host join in making her guest’s argument for more and easier commitment with her and we heard the host ask “what about mentally ill people and violence?.”  Thanks PBS.  The donation check is not in the mail. 

No Medical Protections under Kendra’s Law

Kendra’s Law as passed in New York and as proposed by our Virginia Attorney General, not only explicitly overrides advance health directives, it has absolutely no medical protections written into it.  There is no requirement that people subject to forced/assisted “treatment” be monitored for the many possible serious medical side effects of psychotropic drugs nor any mechanism to remove the court order for forced drugging when medical side effects occur.

People are going to die, people are going to have permanent medical disabilites if this bill is passed as written.

Kendra’s Law Attorney General is Proposing Has No Religious Exemptions

I have now read the full text of Kendra’s Law which our Virginia Attorney General is proposing be passed by our legislature in January.  There is no protection or exception for religious beliefs in Kendra’s Law as written.  Under this law, Christian Scientists and members of other religions that oppose the use of traditional medicine as against their deeply held religious beliefs can still be forced to take medication and undergo blood tests and urine tests. 

But who cares about freedom of religion these days anyway, right?

CNN Silences People with Psychiatric Labels/Our Leaders Let Hate Reign

CNN sent a camera man and an anchorman to the Taskforce on Commitment of the Chief Justice’s Commission on Mental Health Law Reform yesterday.  There were 3 people at that table who had experienced psychiatric treatment, all 3 spoke while CNN was taping, but not even one got their voice on the air.  The piece CNN did was an advertisement for the Treatment Advocacy Center with lots of time given to their director and only sound bites to anyone else.  This goes along with CNN’s gun control “debate” last night on Paula Zahn in which the guests called each other “nutjobs” and she did nothing to intervene and instead spent her time pushing her own agenda that “people like that” should never own guns.  More prejudice, more hate speech.  Lovely.  Who will speak up for people with psychiatric labels?  Who has the courage?  Not our President, not our Governor, and not even our Virginia Protection and Advocacy. 

  Let the hate crimes against people with psychiatric labels begin, don’t worry, even if you are arrested you won’t be convicted, because Virginia law gives your defense attorney access to your victim’s psychiatric records and no jury will convict you after you use that against your victim. 

How Many Will Die if the Attorney General Succeeds in Getting Kendra’s Law in VA?

Not that much of anyone gives a darn about the death and medical disability of people with mental illness labels, but the fact is that more forced drugging, which is what Kendra’s Law is, will lead to more deaths and medical disability from drugs that the NIMH has found to have dangerous effects on the heart, endocrine system and overall health.  And let’t not forget lithium which injures kidneys and depakote which can cause Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, hair falling out and liver damage and Tegretol which can in rare cases cause the fatal disease of aplastic anemia. 

Kendra’s law has no medical protections for those subjected to it and we know Virginia isn’t going to pay out good money for medical care of people with mental illness when it won’t even fund an adequate community mental health system-49th in the country in funding. 

So more of us will die and it won’t be in the newspapers or on CNN and people who should know better, family members of people with psychiatric illness who advocate for forced treatment, will tell themselves they have done a good thing for people with mental illness.  Makes me wonder who really has a problem with lack of insight. 

What the CATIE study ACTUALLY said about Violence Prediction

TAC’s blog says this: Fact: The CATIE violence study found that patients with schizophrenia were 10 times more likely to engage in violent behavior than the general public (19.1% vs. 2% in the general population).

This is what the study actually said about predicting violence in people with schizophrenia, which of course no one knows the person in question had unless they are a soothsayer of some sort:

“…The odds were only about one-fourth as high in patients with symptoms of reduced emotions and behaviors, such as flat facial expression, social withdrawal, and infrequent speaking…”  So if one used the CATIE study to predict the person in question’s behavior, one would have been very likely to make a big mistake. 

And the violence they were studying included minor violence which could be throwing something across a room. 

But we shouldn’t let truth get in the way of pushing the agenda one is paid to lobby for all over the country, should we?  Nor should we worry about the quality of life of 13 million people with severe mental illness in this country who are affected by pushing the untreated mental illness equals violence agenda.  I mean scapegoating has a long and glorious history in this country, let’s keep going in that direction.  Maybe we can get Homeland Security to open up the Japanese internment camps  for the 13 million people with mental illness diagnoses in this country. 

Let’s Take Away the Civil Rights Protections of a Whole Group Because of the Actions of One

Because that always works so well and never results in collateral damage or unintended consequences. 

The same federal Department of Justice that has announced they are investigating Georgia’s state hospitals due to the high number of patient deaths due to neglect and abuse is now under Bush’s orders going to investigate the very people who are most likely to be committed to these dangerous institutions because of the action of one person.  It took 115 suspicious deaths of state hospital patients for the DOJ to finally start an investigation in Georgia.  Of course this does not include all the folks whose health has been permanently ruined by negligent prescribing of psychiatric drugs without medical screening or through polypharmacy nor all the folks in the future who will have their lives shortened if more people are forced to take psychiatric drugs against their will by judges with no medical knowledge and with no protections against medical harm through required medical screenings for risk factors. 

As far as I know, and please correct me if you know otherwise, no state in the U.S. requires that people court ordered to take psychiatric medication inpatient or outpatient be monitored for medical side effects for the duration of their commitment.  People with psychiatric illness who take psychiatric medication are dying younger and younger from the side effects of psychotropic drugs. 

But who cares?  I mean it’s just mental patients, people who should be in the “laughing academy” as one C’ville blog commenter so charmingly phrased it, who cares if the collateral damage of blaming an entire group for the actions of one is more death and disease for people society could give a damn about in the first place? 

Except, if statistics are correct, one in 5 Americans will suffer a mental illness in their lifetime.  That’s our sisters, our fathers, our daughters, our uncles, our nieces, our friends and our neighbors.   

If Bush Agrees With You, Doesn’t It Make You Want to Rethink Your Position?

April 20, 2007

Bush Orders Probe Into The Mentally Ill

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 11:50 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) — Responding to the Virginia Tech shootings, President Bush says he has directed federal officials to conduct a national inquiry into how to prevent violence by dangerously unstable people.

The White House said Friday that the departments of Education, Justice and Health and Human Services will travel around the country to meet with educators, mental health experts and state and local officials, reporting back with recommendations.

They also will work with the Virginia Tech community to better understand what might have led a troubled student to kill 32 people on the campus and then commit suicide.

This was to be the topic of Bush’s weekly radio address, taped on Friday and set to air on Saturday. The White House took the rare step of making the text of the address available for publication before its Saturday delivery.

”We can never fully understand what would cause a student to take the lives of 32 innocent people,” Bush says in the address. ”What we do know is that this was a deeply troubled young man, and there were many warning signs. Our society continues to wrestle with the question of how to handle individuals whose mental health problems can make them a danger to themselves and to others.”

The president wore a maroon-and-orange tie Friday in honor of the school colors on a statewide day of mourning. In the days since, writings and other evidence have emerged to paint a disturbing psychological portrait of Cho Seung-Hui, the 23-year-old gunman.

Some of the warning signs in Cho’s past include two stalking complaints against him and a psychiatric hospital visit in which he was found to be a danger to himself. Videos mailed to NBC the morning of the killings revealed a man angry at rich kids, snobs and people who had wronged him.

”This week at Virginia Tech, we saw a glimpse of humanity at its worst, and we also saw humanity at its best,” Bush said. ”This week we reflect on what has been lost and comfort those enduring a profound grief. And somehow we know that a brighter morning will come.”

Virginia Tech Professor Hero Buried in Israel

By AP/BEN WINOGRAD

(RAANANA, Israel) — A Holocaust survivor gunned down trying to save his students from the Virginia Tech shooting rampage was buried in Israel Friday to the sobs of his grieving family.

Engineering Professor Liviu Librescu’s body was wrapped in a prayer shawl according to Jewish tradition, and his two sons intoned the Kaddish, the Hebrew prayer for the dead.

A representative of the Romanian government posthumously awarded the Romanian-born Librescu the country’s highest medal for his scientific accomplishments and heroism. Romanian officials laid a wreath at the grave.

“I walked through the streets today with my head held high because I have such a father,” his elder son, Joe, said.

Librescu, a 76-year-old aeronautics engineer and lecturer at the school for 20 years, died trying to barricade the door of his Virginia Tech classroom to keep the gunman, Cho Seung-Hui, away from his students.

“It’s so painful for me to think of your last moments, in which you suffered. I’ll never know what went through your mind, but I hope very much that wherever you are, you will watch over your family,” Librescu’s weeping wife, Marlena, said.

Librescu’s family said his last moments were recounted in numerous e-mails from students after the attack.

“My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee,” Joe Librescu told The Associated Press after the massacre. “Students started opening windows and jumping out.”

As the students jumped, Librescu was shot dead, one of the 32 victims in the worst shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.

A child in Nazi-allied Romania during World War II, Librescu was deported along with his family to a labor camp in Transnistria and then to a central ghetto in the city of Focsani, his son said. According to a report compiled by the Romanian government in 2004, between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews were killed by the Romanian regime during the war.

Librescu worked as an engineer at Romania’s aerospace agency under the postwar Communist government, his son recounted, but his career was stymied in the 1970s because he refused to swear allegiance to the regime. He was later fired when he requested permission to move to Israel.

After years of government refusal, according to his son, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin personally intervened to get the family emigration permits. They moved to Israel in 1978.

Shmulik Moyal, 60, a friend and former neighbor of Librescu, described Librescu as a serious, scholarly man.

The family left in 1985 for Virginia, where Librescu took a position teaching mathematics and engineering at Virginia Tech.

Holocaust Survivor A Hero in Virginia Tech. Shootings

We don’t know his story, but one of the professors killed at Virginia Tech. died saving the lives of students in his class by staying in the room holding the door closed so some students could get out the window.   The ones who didn’t get out the window were shot, as was he.  He was a survivor of the Holocaust.