How to Spot a Mental Patient

How to Spot a "Mental Patient!"

*****************************************************

Did you know that according to Mary Zdanowicz, the Executive Director of the Treatment Advocacy Center, "more than one million people with schizophrenia and manic depressive illness are not being treated on any given day." (Community Links: "A Shift in Care", June 2001)

And did you know that this article also alleges that at least ten law enforcement officers were killed by people identified as mentally-ill in 1998. And yet according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report, not one law enforcement officer was killed by anyone identified as mentally-ill in 1998. (One officer was slain in 1997 by an individual identified as mentally deranged. Section 1, Page 3)

And did you know that according to Sally Satel "numerous studies confirm that people with unmedicated psychotic illnesses are three to six times more likely than the general population to be convicted of violent crime." (Seattle Post-Intelligencer) Yet she conveniently fails to identify any of these numerous studies or to mention that she is one of the nations leading advocates of forced treatment.

And did you know that according to E. Fuller Torrey, the leading advocate for "the mentally-ill" championing the cause of forced treatment in the United States, that "these folks are responsible for 20 murders a week, 1,000 a year." (Mental Health Weekly - 2/19/01).

And did you know that although none of these allegations are substantiated by any stats or figures from the U. S.Department of Justice, that they are regularly reported by the media as fact. Are these the type of blanket allegations that psychiatrists refer to as paranoia?

The Arrival of the Secular Inquisition

To allay the paranoia of these experts, the editors of "How to Spot a Communist" caught up with the U.S. Witch-Finder General, He Fulla Story, M.D., who was gracious enough to point out that you can easily spot a "mental patient" by remembering that:

1). They will be "carrying on conversations with invisible companions, wearing filthy, tattered clothing, urinating and defecating on sidewalks." (TAC Press Release Statement 8/3/99)

2). They are "people who are hallucinating, incoherent, clinically paranoid or unable to concentrate... [and] are deranged beyond reason." (PC, M.D. �2000 by Sally Satel)

3). They are "individuals who think they can fly... [and] who believe that the voice they hear is God telling them to eat from garbage cans." (E. Fuller Torrey 4/02)

4). And you can spot them because "they are too paranoid, oblivious, or lost in madness..." (Sally Satel & Mary Zdanowicz, Commission's Omission 7/29/03)

Does anybody remember what happened to the worlds' very first Witch-Finder General, Matthew Hopkins? In May of 1647 an ecclesiastical court found him guilty of exhibiting the very same questionable behavior for which he had sent thousands of others to the stake. He was a law unto himself and his victims invariably confessed to anything that he suggested in the faint hope that he would set them free. His diagnostic methods, which were designed to elicit desired responses, left a trail of misery, suffering and death wherever he went. In his determination to rid the world of this epidemic, everyone was fair game. The young. The old. The rich. The poor. Male. Female. Even the clergy themselves were fair game. Of course, there are bound to be those who would sneer at the comparison between this modern day witch-hunt and the witch-craze of the Middle Ages. If they are capable, however, of thinking with an open-mind, I would ask them to momentarily set aside any pre-conceived notions they may have and to consider the following:

During the witch-craze of the Middle Ages, there was a judicial court of law in which the defendent was granted the right to defend him or herself against any charges brought against them. Then there was an ecclesiastical court in which the defendent had no right to defend him or herself against any charges brought against them and were coerced (to put it mildly) into signing a confession. Today, there is also a judicial court of law in which the defendent is granted the right to defend him or herself against any charges brought against them. Then there is the mental health court in which the defendent has no right to defend him or herself against forced treatment. And should the defendant choose to opt out to any of the alternatives this court may be authorized to impose, he or she must plead guilty to the charges pending against them (New York Times 10/1/02). It is a shameful fact that thousands, if not tens of thousands, of those people who were chained in dungeons and burnt at the stake by the ecclesiatical courts were people whom our society labels "mentally-ill". Today those dungeons have been replaced by the psychiatric ward and the stake and the rack have been replaced by the hypodermic needle and ECT.

SHCHAMBERS '99

For anyone who naively believes that "the mentally-ill" have rights (like I did), allow me to cite my own personal experience. When I voluntarily chose to pursue mental health services for depression I was regularly threatened with forced treatment for being non-compliant and treatment-resistent even though I have never been court mandated to undergo treatment. In fact, I was consistently accused of being non-compliant or treatment resistent whenever I attempted to invoke what I thought were my constitutionally guaranteed rights. I had naively failed to realize that I had unknowingly forfeited my rights by default when I sought mental health services because I had joined the ranks of "the mentally-ill." For every "mental patient" who is allegedly saved by forced treatment, there are dozens of victims whose lives are destroyed as a result of forced treatment. Nothing can rationally justify such a trade-off other than the lucrative profits reaped by its advocates. I used to struggle with the concept of one individual being forced to sacrifice his or her life for the sake of the many, but I am totally puzzled by the concept of the many being forced to sacrifice their lives for the sake of one? Mental Patients are not resistent to treatment, they are resistent to the routine abuses that regularly take place under the guise of treatment.

An equally disturbing confirmation is that, in New York City judges are so reluctant to grant bail to anyone who has a so-called "mental illness", that while the average stay for an inmate on Riker's Island is 42 days, the average stay for an inmate labeled "mentally-ill" is 215 days, regardless of the charges pending against them (New York Times 3/5/98). And, in typical fashion, just as the ecclesiastical courts were established to protect society from the evil one, so too, mental health courts have been established to protect society from mental patients. Is it merely a coincidence, therefore, that the TAC conveniently refers to mental patients as plagued by demons? And finally, consider the following deadly consequences of this modern day witch-hunt: "in the 14-year period between 1950 and 1964, more American deaths occurred in state and county mental institutions than in all of the nation's armed conflicts beginning with the Revolutionary War and ending with the Persian Gulf War. Between 1965 and 1990, the total number of mental-hospital inpatient deaths exceeded the number of battle deaths in the same wars by 70 percent. Inpatient deaths topped out at 1,103,000 during this 25-year period, compared with 650,563 recorded deaths in battles." (Forgotten Dead of St. Elizabeth's)

*****************************************************

"Among medical practitioners, only psychiatrists have the legal authority to incarcerate their patients and force treatments on them. Force is routinely used in the administration of shock treatment... many of them are coerced into the hospital by being told that, if they do not sign in voluntarily, they will be detained under the local emergency commitment law. In other cases, patients go to the hospital freely, assuming that they have the fundamental right every other medical patient has to leave at will. But the psychiatric patient soon learns that the psychiatrist may at any time place them on an involuntary status." (Dr. Coleman, Introduction to The History of Shock Treatment)

*****************************************************

"The appearance of law must be upheld... especially when it's being broken."

*****************************************************

Excerpt from a National Council on Disability Report

"People with psychiatric disabilities are the only Americans who can have their freedom taken away and be institutionalized or incarcerated without being convicted of a crime and with minimal or no respect for their due process rights. They are the only Americans who can routinely be forced to submit to medical treatments against their will. When people with psychiatric disabilities die in facilities that are supposed to serve and protect them, their deaths are rarely investigated, and even when they are, criminal charges are rarely filed. This is not happening in some Third World country. This is happening every day in the United States, and such practices are generally ignored or defended by mental health professionals, political leadership, and the media." (1/20/2000)

*****************************************************

the Philosophical Mystery of Good & Evil is Finally Solved: God Diagnosed as Manic Depressive!

*****************************************************

Did you know that during the witch-craze of the Middle Ages it was widely believed that "the mentally-ill" were possessed by demons and evil spirits and that with the publication of the infamous witchfinders manual, the Malleus Maleficarum in 1489, various symptoms of "mental illness" were ascribed to possession. This conveniently opened the door for society to criminalize it's "mentally-ill" and to rid itself of it's undesirables. Most people do not know that the clinical term "mania" is actually the name of an ancient Roman goddess of hell. This belief led to a misogynist witch hunt of unprecedented proportions that is indeed one of the darkest pages in the history of humankind. Authors Dr. Franz Alexander and Dr. Sheldon Selesnick, in their widely acclaimed "The History of Psychiatry" point out that, "The Malleus details the destruction of dissenters, schismatics, and the mentally-ill, all of whom fell under the term witch. The book is divided into three parts. The first section attempts to prove the existence of devils and witches; if the reader is not convinced by the authors' arguments, it is only because he himself is a victim of witchcraft or heresy [similar to the present-day belief that "mental patients" don't know they're sick because they are victims of their illness]. The second part tells how to identify witchcraft [see above: How to spot a Mental Patient]; the third part describes how witches are to be tried in civil courts and punished [similar to today's mental health courts]." Dr. Alexander and Dr. Selesnick continue: "The authors of the Malleus justified their attack upon women by stating that they came from an inferior rib of Adam and were thus imperfect in their physical structure and soul [similar to the present-day belief that the mentally-ill are biologically brain-damaged and are thus mentally imperfect and inferior]." (The History of Psychiatry, Chapter 5, The Medieval World). The "Summis Desiderantes Affectibus" set the groundwork for laws legalizing the confinement and forced treatment of "witches." Forced treatment back then consisted of the dungeons, the rack and the stake. These laws foreshadowed present-day laws like Kendra's Law and Laura's Law. Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of those people who were chained in dungeons and burnt at the stake by the Inquisition were people whom our society labels "mentally-ill". Today those dungeons have been replaced by the psychiatric ward, and the stake and the rack have been replaced by the hypodermic needle and ECT. As late as 1946, the Reverend Montague Summers wrote of the Malleus Maleficarum: "Certain it is that the Malleus Maleficarum is the most solid, the most important work in the whole vast library of witchcraft. One turns to it again and again with edification and interest. From the point of psychology, from the point of jurisprudence, from the point of history, it is supreme. It is hardly too much to say that later writers, great as they are, have done little more than draw from the seemingly inexhaustible wells of wisdom which the two Dominicans, Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger have given us in the Malleus Maleficarum." (Oct. 7th, 1946).

*****************************************************

A Kinder and Friendlier Torture Rack

"The Shock Shop Mr. McMurphy is jargon for the EST machine, the electro-shock therapy. A device that might be said to do the work of the sleeping pill, the electric chair, and the torture rack. It's a clever little procedure, simple, quick, nearly painless it happens so fast, but no one ever wants another one. Ever!"

"What's this thing do?"

"You are strapped to a table, shaped, ironically, like a cross, with a crown of electric sparks in place of thorns. You are touched on each side of the head with wires. Zap! Fives cents worth of electricity through the brain and you are jointly administered therapy and a punishment for your hostile go-to-hell behavior, on top of being put out of everyone's way for six hours to three days, depending on the individual. Even when you do regain consciousness you are in a state of disorientation for days. You are unable to think coherently. You can't recall things. Enough of those treatments and a man could turn out like Mr. Ellis you see over there against the wall. A drooling pants-wetting idiot at thirty-five." (Ken Kesey, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", 1962)

*****************************************************

"The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men" - Plato

*****************************************************

Satan and Beelzebub

Did you know that the forerunner of ECT was a Swiss physician from the mid 1700's named Michael Shuppach, who came to be known as Der Emmenthaler Wunderdoktor - the miracle doctor from Emmenthal. A report of one of his cases concerns a rich farmer who consulted him about seven devils which, he thought, possessed him. Dr. Shuppach was able to determine that there were in fact eight devils which possessed him, but assured the farmer that he could be cured. He placed the farmer against a wooden screen through which a wire protruded and instructed him to hold the wire. Behind the screen, unknown to the farmer, Dr. Shuppach operated an electric machine. Suddenly there was a loud shriek, though the shock, had in fact, been only a mild one. "That" remarked the doctor, "has gotten rid of your first devil." This treatment continued for seven days and after the seven days only one devil remained, but he proved to be the toughest of them all. "Your remaining devil" said the doctor, "is Beelzebub himself." Thereupon he administered a shock so severe that it threw his patient onto the floor. It is reported that a complete cure was effected. (L.M. Shirlaw, M.D., "A cure for devils" Med. World, 1961: The History of Shock Treatment)

*****************************************************

Smith, Kline and French Pharmaceuticals

This warning is the intro on a 1962 promotional ad by SK&F pharmaceuticals to sell liquid Thorazine. According to the ad: Many mental patients "cheek" or hide their tablets and then dispose of them. Unless this practice is stopped, they deprive themselves of opportunities for improvement or remission..."

*****************************************************

THE UNSTOPPABLE RISE IN MENTAL ILLNESSES: IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD!!!

Mental Illness is presently classified and diagnosed according to the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (the DSM). It is interesting to note that in 1840 there was only one classification of mental illness, and that was "idiocy/insanity." Four decades after the formation of the APA (the American Psychiatric Association), the number of categories had risen to seven. Those being: mania; melancholia; monomania (irrationality on one subject); paresis; dementia; dipsomania (alcoholism); and epilepsy. In 1933, psychiatrists organized the first standard manual for catergorizing mental illness. This manual was called the "Standard Classified Nomenclature of Disease". It was in 1952 that the first "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" was published by the APA (usually referred to as "the psychiatrists' bible). The number of "mental disorders" had now grown to 112. In 1968, a revised edition, the DSM-II was released. This edition contained 163 "mental disorders. Commentary in the manual reveals that the "disorders" were established by a committee who voted as to whether or not the "disorders" existed. The DSM-III was released in 1980 and a further 61 new disorders had been "discovered." Thus the new total of "mental disorders" was now 224. In 1987, the manual was revised again (DSM-III-R). And now this time the total number of mental disorders had increased to 253. When the DSM-IV was released in 1994, the total number of "mental disorders" had reached 374. (Nexus Magazine, Vol. 7, No. 1, December 1999 - January 2000).

Dr. Sydney Walker III, a neurologist, psychiatrist, and the author of "A Dose of Sanity" says that the DSM has "led to the unnecessary drugging of millions of Americans who could be diagnosed, treated and cured without the use of toxic and potentially lethal medications." In an interesting and ironic footnote, a 1969 book titled "Pictorial History of Psychology and Psychiatry" points out that following the release of the infamous witchfinders manual the Malleus Maleficarum: "It was not long before the behavior of ordinary people began to be scrutinized by their neighbors and reported as bearing out the symptomatology of the handbook. As in the case of authoritarian governments in our own time, to be accused sealed the fate of the suspect. Those who nursed grievances found an easy way to square themselves with their enemies!" (page 167) Has the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual become the modern-day "Malleus Maleficarum"? Has the Holy Inquisition been replaced by the American Psychiatric Association? And have the media superstars who promote the stigma (s) of "mental illness" become the new clergymen of this modern-day witch-hunt? Were we to accept the notion that the DSM is a legitimate science, we would have to acknowledge that the whole world has indeed gone mad! David @ mentalhealthstigma.com

*****************************************************

UNKNOWN DISORDER DISCOVERED BY FORMER MENTAL PATIENT

Diodiagnostomania: "the obsessive, compulsive need to diagnose any and all behaviors exhibited by others as an incurable mental illness, thereby elevating oneself to the status of God."

*****************************************************

"If you believe the statistics, 77% of America's adult population is a mess. And we haven't even thrown in alien abductees, road ragers or internet addicts. But give the experts a little time. With another new quantifiable disorder or two, everybody in the country will be officially nuts." (Jim Windolf, Exec. Ed. of the New York Observer, "A Nation of Nuts," reprinted in the Wall Street Journal, Oct. 22nd, 1997)

*****************************************************

"In practice we are generally forced to choose between an unduly brief exposition and no exposition at all. Abbreviation is a necessary evil and the abbreviator's business is to make the best of a job which, though intrinsically bad, is still better than nothing. He must learn to simplify, but not to the point of falsification. He must learn to concentrate upon the essentials of a situation, but without ignoring too many of reality's qualifying side issues. In this way he may be able to tell, not indeed the whole truth (for the whole truth about almost any important subject is incompatible with brevity), but considerably more than the dangerous quarter-truths and half-truths which have always been the current coin of thought. The subject of freedom and its enemies is enormous, and what I have written is certainly too short to do it full justice; but at least I have touched on many aspects of the problem. Each aspect may have been somewhat over-simplified in the exposition; but these successive over-simplifications add up to a picture that, I hope, gives some hint of the vastness and complexity of the original." A. Huxley

*****************************************************

Fair Use Notice: Please note that MentalHealthStigma.com contains copyrighted (©) material, the use of which has not necessarily been authorized by the copyright owner. These materials are presented strictly for educational purposes only and therefore constitute a fair use of copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. MentalHealthStigma.com does not sell any products of any kind and does not profit in any way from the use of these copyrighted materials. If you wish to use any copyrighted materials for purposes that exceed the confines of fair use as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law, you must first obtain permission from the copyright owner. MentalHealthStigma.com authorizes the use of any information unique to MentalHealthStigma.com, so long as www.mentalhealthstigma.com is acknowledged as the source of that information.