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Scientific Panel Clashes with American Psychiatric Association
Other Doctors & Scientists add their names to panel's conclusions
Fast for Freedom Hunger Strikers meet the President of the APA
Fast for Freedom 3rd Lectures Series Presents Dr. Loren Mosher
***************************************************** Day 15: the Washington Post Reports
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The Debate:
FAST FOR FREEDOM IN MENTAL HEALTH
Provided by the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights in support of the Freedom Fast
Text of cover letter sent from hunger strikers to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) & Office of Surgeon General. This letter challenges the organizations that assert there is a scientific basis behind the treatments they advocate forcing on people to produce any evidence for their assertions.
The official request for evidence of biopsychiatry by hunger strikers.
Correspondence with Rick Birkel, Director of NAMI. Dr. Birkel refers to our fast as ideological, totally ignoring the scientific literature supporting our challenge. He invites us to join him in seeking better access to treatment for "people with mental illness" (i.e. forced treatment), but does not seem at all concerned about better treatment for "people with mental illness." Doesn't Dr. Birkel realize that forced treatment is what created these deplorable conditions in the first place? Would Dr. Birkel join us in seeking better treatment for "people with mental illness"?
The APA's response by Dr. James Scully. This response alleges that the evidence we're requesting is "widely available in the scientific literature," but refuses to provide us with that evidence and suggests that we look for it ourselves.
The 14-member Fast for Freedom panel reponds to Dr, Scully's letter (see below).
Richard Shulman, Ph.D., Licensed Psychologist response to James Scully. This is a detailed refutation of Scully's assertion that the Surgeon General's Report (cited by Scully) supports the APA's position.
Ruth Ehrenberg's e-mail correspondence with Tom Lane, Director, Office of Consumer Affairs, NAMI. Mr. Lane lashes out at the Fast for Freedom hunger strikers as "those who have no record of constructive activities, services or advocacy." Ehrenberg, a psychiatric victim's grandmother, responds with scientific evidence provided with the help of Jim Gottstein of the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights.
Fred Baughman, M.D., June 5, 2003, letter to Sandra F. Olson, MD, President J American Academy of Neurology. Dr. Baughman is board certified in neurology and child neurology. This letter has a lot of citations debunking the biological basis of psychiatric symptoms, with a focus on ADHD.
Fred Baughman, M.D., May 22, 2003 letter to Daniel R Weinberger, MD, Chief of the Clinical Brain Disorders Branch, challenging him to provide evidence for the unsupported claims made in Neurology Today about the biologic basis of mental illness.
Fred Baughman, M.D., June 24, 2003 letter to to Daniel R Weinberger, MD explaining that saying mental illness is a brain disease does not make it so.
The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights has a series of web pages presenting actual papers involved at Scientific Research by Topic.
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Internal Warning-System or Biologically-Flawed Brain
"Denying that so-called mental illnesses are diseases, and denying the legitimacy of psychiatry as a branch of medicine, is not to deny the usefulness of psychotropic drugs to certain people, or the value of experts on those drugs to those who might want to take them. This is an extremely important point. A common response to one's rejection of biopsychiatry is to accuse one of being cruel and wanting people to suffer, of wanting to deny helpful drugs to people who wish to take them, of believing that extreme psychic distress does not exist, and so on. This is an awful misinterpretation of what is being said. Nothing of the kind has been said or implied in this essay. The principal reason for rejecting biopsychiatry (aside from the fact that intellectual honesty demands its rejection) is that it locates the cause of psychic suffering in people's "bad brains," and excludes the conditions of modern life, or anything else, from consideration as the cause of such pain. That is, it acts to deflect attention from the fact that modern life has seen the number of people suffering extreme psychic distress skyrocket – we have "epidemics" of "ADHD," and "depression," and "generalized anxiety," as though those things were communicable diseases – and forecloses any discussion of the inhuman conditions under which people live today. If someone finds taking Prozac® helpful, nothing in this essay implies that he or she should not be allowed to take Prozac®. If someone sees such an implication, it is because the division of drugs into "medicines" and "drugs of abuse" leaves no room for any other uses for drugs – if one wishes to procure and consume a psychotropic drug, one must have a disease, have the disease certified by a state-licensed physician, and obtain a permission slip, called a "prescription," before one can legally purchase that drug." (Eaton T. Fores Research Center)
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It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong... Voltaire
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Solidarity Hunger Strikers across the nation and around the globe. Here is a list of supporters who have publicly affirmed their participation in the Fast for Freedom in Mental Health Hunger Strike:
Cara: solidarity hunger striker from the Philippines
Oryx Cohen, co-founder of the Freedom Center, Northampton, MA.
Marc Cowhill, PhD of Blacksburg, Virginia - Empowerment For Healthy Minds, peer-directed advocacy website.
Marcia Donovan, solidarity hunger striker from Santa Clara, California.
Ricky Jaffe Fowler, solidarity hunger striker from Orange County, N.Y.
Will Hall, one of the founders of the Freedom Center, Northhampton, Massachusetts.
Jonathan Harte, solidarity hunger striker from Brockville, Canada.
David Hilton, solidarity hunger striker from Concord, New Hampshire
Jerri Lynn, Roseville, Minnesota - MN Independent Psychiatric Abuse Watchdog/Whistleblower.
Cathy Marston, PhD, solidarity hunger striker from Iowa City, Iowa.
Debra Nunez, solidarity hunger striker from Eugene, Oregon.
Ria Fey, solidarity hunger striker from Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Shantel Rodriguez, solidarity hunger striker from Brooklyn, New York.
Rev. B. Simpson, solidarity hunger striker from New York, N.Y.
Clover Smith from Ignacio, Colorado - Director/Welcome World, Inc., and author of Escape From Psychiatry.
Ann Blake Tracy, PhD of West Jordan, Utah - International Coalition for Drug Awareness - author of Prozac: Panacea or Pandora?
Greg White, solidarity hunger striker from Cork, Ireland.
David Zupan from the Northwest Media Project, Eugene, Oregon.
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Worldwide support of Fast for Freedom in Mental Health
Ontario, Canada American Iatrogenics Association
Houston, IndyMedia Wire from the United Kingdom
Fitchburg, Wisconsin MindFreedom Fast Blog
Auckland, New Zealand Milwaukee, Wisconsin
IndyMedia from Calfornia Memphis, Tennessee
Health Freedom, World Wide Oikos.org from Italy
Santa Cruz County, California Welcome to ASPIRE
North Hampton, Massachusetts Sydney, Australia
IndyMedia from Sydney, Australia Eugene, Oregon
Wonderland/SAFE, Springfield, Oregon - Alaska, MHCW
The SAFE, Inc., Board drafted a letter agreeing to black out everything on their website except the Fast for Freedom in Mental Health as a sign of solidarity and support.
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Alliance for Human Research Protection
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Day 18: Solidarity hunger striker Ria Fey, from Massachusetts, is interviewed by the Boston, Phoenix news: "I believe the psychiatric system dehumanizes people," Fey explains. The psychiatric-drug industry, she says, reduces those who suffer from mental illnesses to labels while mystifying everyday emotions like sadness, fear, and anger. As she puts it, "Psychiatry represents to me hierarchy in its purest form, control of actions, attempted regulation of thought and feeling."
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Day 17: The Eugene Weekly prints a report on day 17 of the hunger strike: "Oaks says he's gotten good news from home while he's been on the road. "After more than a decade of complaining," he says, "Sacred Heart has quietly changed their informed consent sheet for electroshock in a way we requested. Meanwhile, the state of Oregon's new director has made it a point to gather statistics on Oregon State Hospital's use of electroshock — also a breakthrough. Given that the Eugene and state breakthrough happened within a week of each other, maybe 'something's happening here.'"
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Day 15: the Washington Post reports on the hunger strike: "When someone has cancer, they don't lock the door behind them, and they show them the tests," Gonzalez said. "But when someone has a mental illness, they lock the door behind them and show them no tests. When they lock that door behind me, I want to know why."
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Day 14: the Seattle Post-Intelligencer posts an article about the Fast for Freedom: "The media routinely refer to NAMI as advocates for the mentally ill, although its membership consists almost entirely of family members and not the mentally ill themselves. NAMI ascribes to the "biological basis of mental illness," and endorses forced treatment of the mentally ill. The movement's major source of funding is the highly profitable pharmaceutical industry, which funds the drug research..."
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Day 12: the hunger strike coverage continues: "The issue, as I have explored in previous columns in this series, is mainly about the dominant psychiatric agenda in play these days: biopsychiatry. The MindFreedom hunger strikers are asking the APA and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and the U.S. Surgeon General to provide solid scientific evidence for the "biological basis of mental illness." One reason, aside from the obvious, for their demand is that there is an increasing pattern of forced drugging across the U.S." (7th in a series)
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Day 12: Solidarity hunger strikers Oryx Cohen and Will hall organize a candlelight vigil in support of the Fast for Freedom in Mental Health at the steps of City Hall in downtown Northampton, Massachusetts.
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Day 11: the Register-Guard prints article about Executive Director of MindFreedom.org David Oaks and the Fast for Freedom in Mental Health: "Oaks became an activist after his own experiences with the mental health system. When he was a student at Harvard, he became depressed and overwhelmed. He said he was locked into a cell in a psychiatric unit and forcibly injected with psychiatric drugs."
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Day 10: the hunger strike coverage continues: "The Mind Freedom hunger strikers are greatly concerned that the highly questionable and dominant biopsychiatric agenda, which includes forced drugging of patients, strongly deprives huge numbers of people of community-based treatments that are not drug oriented." (6th in a series)
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Day 9: Editor Nicholas Regush continues his on-going coverage: "Thus far, I’ve tried to chronicle the day-in, day-out major highlights of the hunger strike. From the standpoint of a journalist who has covered health for more than 25 years, it doesn’t surprise me in the least that the three groups cited by MindFreedom have turned a deaf ear. And it doesn’t surprise me that the mass media have not indicated much interest — thus far, in covering the hunger strike." (5th in a series)
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Day 8: Latest installment of the Nicholas Regush coverage of the Hunger Strike. "If anyone seriously launched an investigation in Congress to determine how much money flows down the drain each year in mental health because of bad science and how much conflict of interest is at play, I’m betting that the results would reveal one of the biggest rip-offs ever in American medicine." (4th in a series)
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Day 7: the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights, Inc., sends out the following Press Release: "On August 20th, 2003, the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights.org), formally announced it had joined the growing list of supporters in solidarity with the hunger strikers in their Fast for Freedom in Mental Health."
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IMPORTANT: the Fast for Freedom hunger strikers are all asking the supporters of the Hunger Strike to please forward the following press release to their local media stations. (Download Press Release here)
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Day 7: editor Nicholas Regush of Redflagsdaily.com continues his on-going coverage of the hunger strike: "MindFreedom wants the APA, the National Alliance For the Mentally Ill (NAMI) and the Office of the Surgeon General of the United States to defend their biopsychiatric approach to mental illness by pointing to clear-cut evidence - and not speculation... this is not a lot to ask, considering that today’s dominant psychiatric agenda is to put people it designates as "mentally ill" on powerful drugs — and by force if necessary." (3rd in a series)
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