THE CRIMINALIZATION OF MENTAL ILLNESS Thumbnail images: click-on image to read details ***************************************************** "Gigantic sums are now required to maintain prisons and insane asylums to protect the public againts gansters and lunatics. Why do we preserve these useless and harmful beings? Why should society not dispose of the criminal and the insane in a more economical manner?" Dr. Alexis Carrel, Nobel Prize Winner, Man the Unknown, 1935 ***************************************************** "Propaganda in favor of enlightened self-interest appeals to reason by means of logical arguments based upon the best available evidence fully and honestly set forth. Propaganda in favor of impulses that are below self-interest, offers false, garbled, or incomplete evidence, avoids logical argument, and seeks to influence its victims by the mere repetition of catchwords, by the furious denunciation of foreign or domestic scapegoats, and by cunningly associating the lowest passions with the highest ideals." (Aldous Huxley: Brave New World Revisited, Chapter IV, Propaganda in a Democracy) ***************************************************** In our enlightened society, the criminal is accorded more dignity than the mental patient - and once the criminal has paid his or her debt to society, his or her rights are fully restored, whereas once a person is labeled "mentally-ill", his or her rights will forever be subject to revocation. According to investigative journalist, Robert Whitaker, as far back as 1946 - "in the pecking order of social discards, asylum patients fell below criminals." (Mad in America). The criminalization of mental illness is the inevitable result of the return of biopsychiatry, which suggests that individuals guilty of criminal behavior are not responsible for any criminal acts they may engage in - because such behavior is biologically pre-determined - therefore they cannot be held accountable for engaging in behavior which is "beyond their control." This pseudo-scientific theory has been so widely accepted that psychiatrist Daniel Amen has been allowed to testify in criminal trials that violent defendants are not responsible for their actions because violent people "have different brains than people who don't act violently." (see: Biology of Violence, CBS News, 48 Hours, 6/10/99). In the opening comments of her impassioned editorial "A Shift in Care" Mary Zdanowicz skillfully points out that the TAC (Treatment Advocacy Center) which is located in Arlington, Virginia and is the leading organization championing the cause of forced treatment, tracks the consequences of "untreated mental illness" on its website in a section titled "Preventable Tragedies." Without even commenting on the obvious contradictions of the title "Preventable Tragedies", it is ostensibly patronizing that she would refer to the countless number of "EDP's" (police jargon for emotionally disturbed persons) who are killed annually, as tragedies (such as the 37 killed in 1998 and the 30 killed in 1999, according to her own figures). A tragedy by it's very definition is so, because it rarely happens. Incidents that happen regularly are accepted as commonplace and cannot, therefore, be defined as tragedies. The vigilante killings of "EDP's" happens so often that a more appropriate title for this compilation would be "Open Season." Would the TAC consider compiling statistics on "Preventable Tragedies of High School Students" or "Preventable Tragedies of Fired Postal Employees" (we could call them "FPE's") or how about, "Preventable Tragedies of Doctors Who Abuse "the Mentally-Ill." Probably not!!! Because most people would realize the obvious bias evident in such compilations. And what exactly does Ms. Zdanowicz mean by "untreated" mental illness? Is that like "untreated" police brutality? In this particular article, which is slightly over a page long, the term is used more than five times. Does she mean mental health recipients who don't take medication? Does she mean mental health recipients who don't have a therapist? Does she mean mental health recipients who don't take medication AND who don't have a therapist? Or does she mean people who don't know that they have a "mental illness"? Nine times out of ten people forced into treatment are forced into treatment for - to use the words of the Treatment Advocacy Center - "displaying disruptive symptoms of mental illness." Ironically forced sex (accurately called rape) is a crime. So why is forced "treatment" - which is also a violation of one's body and one's personal freedom - not a crime??? Ms. Zdanowicz then goes on to list several factors that "have contributed to the expansion of law enforcement responsibility for the untreated mentally-ill." Of all the factors she lists, she conveniently fails to mention the most significant factor for this "expansion of law enforcement responsibility." That factor being: newspaper headlines such as "Get the Violent Crazies off Our Streets"; movies and television shows such as "Wonderland" and "Halloween"; and "not-for-profit" organizations, such as her own, who promote the stereo-typical picture of mental health recipients as a danger to themselves and others. And in typical fashion, according to her article "more than one million people with schizophrenia and manic depressive illness are not being treated on any given day." Does she mean "more than one million people in New York City?" Does she mean "more than one million people in the United States?" Or does she mean "more than one million people worldwide?" And where are all the victims of these "untreated" EDP's? Because according to Ms. Zdanowicz's response to an online guest from Springfield, "those who are not being treated are significantly more likely to become dangerous." (Lawyer Bruce Ennis, in his book "Mental Patients, Psychiatry, and the Law" cites a well-known study concerning the accuracy of such allegations. The study involved 989 patients who were deemed to be so dangerous by psychiatrists that it was recommended that they be placed in maximum-security institutions. A review of the 989 patients 12 months later revealed that one-fifth had been discharged and over half had agreed to remain as voluntary patients. During the 12 months of incarceration, only 7 out of the 989 patients had either committed or threatened to commit any violent acts - which means that the overall accuracy of these psychiatrists in predicting dangerous behavior was less than 1%!) This is the height of hysteria!!! Not even the anti-communists of the McCarthy Era dared to make such outrageous allegations. The only event in history that I can think of that even comes close to this type of hysteria was the witch-craze of the Middle Ages. And yet she dares to point a finger at law enforcement? And besides that, where does she get this figure from anyway? Is this the type of blanket allegation that psychiatrists refer to as paranoia? In fact, according to Ms. Zdanowicz "at least ten" (???) law enforcement officers were killed in 1998 in altercations with mental health recipients. Yet, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report, not one officer was killed in 1998 by anyone identified as mentally-ill. (One officer was slain in 1997 by an individual identified as mentally deranged. Section 1, Page 3) Does Ms. Zdanowicz know something that the FBI doesn't know? Or is this what Aldous Huxley refers to as "false, garbled or incomplete evidence?" The following letter was sent last year by Harold A. Maio, Director of the Mental Health Clearing House, to the Orlando Sentinel, in response to the article written by E. Fuller Torrey and Ms. Zdanowicz, in which they allege that the 1,000 homicides committed each year by people who have "untreated mental illness" - "can be attributed to the insidious nature of these illnesses." Dear Letters Editor: "E. Fuller Torrey states that "1,000 homicides in the United States are committed each year by people who have untreated mental illness." According to recent statistics for murders in the U.S., about 20,000 people are murdered each year. That would mean that I, a person with severe depression, am 20 times more likely to be murdered by E. Fuller Torrey, than he is by me, and that I should fear him 20 times more than he should fear me. And I do fear him! I do for several reasons: First, it is his goal to instill fear in the public - with the help of the media - about people like myself. Second, he employs the term mental illness as a catch-all phrase for every mental illness. There are many mental illnesses, just like there are many physical illnesses; and I assure you that there are physical illnesses we fear, and many that we do not. Third, history has continually revealed the abuses that abound in the area of mental health treatment, and each state has fought ways to interdict this abuse without success. This pattern has persisted since the "Discovery of the Asylum" in the 1820's (a book by David Rothman which I highly recommend) to the present day... Florida like many other states, is beginning to step into the 21st Century and realize that for the vast majority of mental illnesses, the best treatment is in integrated settings. That does not mean that we, as the rest of the public, will all succeed, or even succeed to the same degree. But we will have a better chance in an integrated setting. For a real-life illustration, I have been married for 28 years. I have two children, a girl 21, and a son 15. I have taught throughout my life, from the university level, to public and private school. I have been treated in the worst institutions and in the best. And I am not the unusual success, but the general rule." The profit-driven hysteria generated by the "not-for-profits" like the Treatment Advocacy Center; headlines like "Get the Violent Crazies off Our Streets"; and television shows like Wonderland (and it's "investigative" spin-offs like, 60 Minutes Page II "Call for Help", and the 48 Hours re-run "Breaking Point") has reached such an all-time high that there are now more people labeled "mentally-ill" in jails and in prisons than in psychiatric wards. Mental health recipients have a 64% greater chance of being arrested for committing the same crime than those who are not and inmates who have a "mental illness" are charged, convicted and sentenced more severely than other offenders who have committed the same crime (Hochstedler, '87). An April 19th, 1991, ABC 20/20 Broadcast entitled "Jail for the Mentally-Ill - Why are they Here?" illustrates the situation. In California, 20/20 found more mental health recipients in the Los Angeles County Jail than in any mental health facility in the nation. So numerous are "the mentally-ill" in this jail that they are issued pale yellow uniforms to distinguish them from the other inmates. And in New York City judges are so reluctant to grant bail to anyone who has a "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!!! (New York Times 3/5/98) The Department of Corrections has now become the largest unlicensed psychiatric institution in the nation. Is this a twisted attempt to solve the need for housing, or is it an intentional desire to advance the proposition that anyone labeled mentally-ill is a danger to society? Ms. Zdanowicz continues: "Legal reforms in the 1970's also contributed significantly to the criminalization of people with mental illness. Treatment laws across the country were changed to require that an individual be a danger to self or others before they can be treated over objection." Once again Ms.Zdanowicz tries to pass the buck by conveniently failing to mention that the number one reason why - "treatment laws across the country were changed to require that an individual be a danger to self or others before they can be treated over objection" is because "advocates" like herself had engendered such fear and incited such hysteria amongst the populace that thousands (not hundreds) of people were being unjustly committed (see: The Tragedy of Sane People Who Get Put Away, Feb. 1962). With articles like "Violent Fantasies," "Madness in the Streets," and "Make Chris Take His Meds," psycho-movie producers would have a difficult time competing with the TAC's sensationalism. And finally, Ms. Zdanowicz points out that in 1974 Philadelphia's police chief "issued a directive permitting the arrest of the symptomatic mentally-ill on the grounds of disorderly conduct." Notes Ms. Zdanowicz "sometimes these are referred to as mercy bookings." I couldn't help but tremble and shudder as I read those words, recalling a time when the extermination of "the mentally-ill" in Nazi Germany under the guise of advocacy and treatment was referred to as "mercy killings." David @ mentalhealthstigma.com  ***************************************************** "The principles underlying this kind of propaganda are extremely simple. Find some common desire, some widespread unconscious fear or anxiety ["the untreated mentally-ill" are on a violent rampage]; think out some way to relate this wish or fear to the product you have to sell [involuntary outpatient commitment and forced treatment]; then build a bridge of verbal or pictorial symbols over which your customer can pass from fact to compensatory dream ["Get the Violent Crazies off OUR Streets", "Wonderland" and "Call for Help"]; and from the dream to the illusion that your product when purchased will make that dream come true [violence will disappear and we can all sleep well at night - thanks to the Treatment Advocacy Center]." (Aldous Huxley: Brave New World Revisited, Chapter VI, The Arts of Selling) ***************************************************** "The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men" - Plato ***************************************************** If the Treatment Advocacy Center had started their forced treatment campaign 60 years ago the man on the left would have been embraced as their most ardent supporter... the man on the right (who had a psychiatric diagnosis) would have been maligned as a potentially dangerous psychotic. ***************************************************** "THE VOLUNTARY CONSENT OF THE HUMAN SUBECT IS ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL: THIS MEANS THAT THE PERSON INVOLVED SHOULD HAVE LEGAL CAPACITY TO GIVE CONSENT; SHOULD BE SO SITUATED AS TO BE ABLE TO EXERCISE FREE POWER OF CHOICE, WITH-OUT THE INTERVENTION OF ANY ELEMENT OF FORCE, FRAUD, DECEIT, DURESS, OVER-REACHING OR OTHER ULTERIOR FORM OF CONSTRAINT OR COERCION." Nuremberg Code This International Code was established to prevent the types of abuses which led to the genocidal extermination of six million Jewish people and millons of other innocent victims. A more contemporary attempt at genocide, driven by an identical ideology, recently took place in Bosnia and Kosovo. And a similar ideology is taking place right here in America under the guise of "treatment" and "advocacy". Or is it merely a coincidence, that the majority of mental health recipients who are being mandated by involuntary outpatient commitment and forced treatment are so-called minorities? In fact, according to Support Coalition International: "people of color are far more likely to receive coerced psychiatric drug injections with far higher doses than whites." Is involuntary outpatient commitment driven by ulterior motives? While anyone who chooses to, has the right to believe that all men are - not - created equal, no one has the right to impose their will upon another human being based upon the premise that they can predict how such a person will behave or react at any given time. Unless, of course, he or she were God. David @ mentalhealthstigma.com ***************************************************** Turning "Mental Patients" into Criminals ***************************************************** Are these the birth-pangs of the Fourth Reich masquerading under the guise of science and psychiatry?  An investigative series of articles in Sunday's Portland Press Herald reveals that the state's funeral inspector harvested and shipped 99 brains - one third without informed consent - to the Stanley Foundation. The Stanley Foundation maintains a brain bank of about 560 brains of people diagnosed with schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder, many of whom committed suicide. In the UK a similar scandal led the government to pledge tightened legal protection. The Stanley Foundation is headed by E. Fuller Torrey, a psychiatrist whose controversial viral theory of schizophrenia has not been validated by any confirmatory evidence. The Stanley Foundation is the largest private funder of mental illness research: providing $40 million a year in grants for research in schizophrenia and manic-depression--whether the research meets ethical standards or not. For example, Stanley has funded symptom provocation experiments (a.k.a. "challenge studies") that deliberately exacerbated patients' disabling condition in order to take brain scans during a psychotic episode. Our complaints about such inhumane experiments on mentally disabled human beings aroused public condemnation, forcing the director of the National Institute of Mental Health to shut down 29 such experiments in 1998. But that has not changed the schizophrenia research culture. Until the Gagnon family filed a lawsuit against Mathew Cyr, the state's funeral inspector, the Stanley Foundation, and Torrey, charging them with taking their son's brain without their permission, the Stanley Foundation never disclosed how it acquired its brains. Private research foundations are accountable to no one except themselves. AHRP believes that invites abuse. According to the Portland Herald, the Stanley Foundation paid Cyr $150,000 for his services. The arrangement was approved by the state Chief Medical Officer who had been approached by Dr. Torrey. Of note: The Stanley Foundation is not accredited by the American Association of Tissue Banks, a national organization that sets ethical standards. The Herald Reports: "Some of the consent forms obtained by the newspaper indicate that phone calls between Cyr and the families were supposed to be tape-recorded. However, someone crossed out the word "recorded" on the form and wrote the word "witnessed." "Dow, of the Attorney General's Office, said the state does not have any recordings of the phone calls. Nor are state officials aware of any such recordings. Lorie Stevens of Bucksport was listed as the witness on 65 of the 68 forms. In any dispute with a donor family, the relationship between Cyr and Stevens could undermine efforts to show that the brains were obtained with the families' clear permission" Court documents reveal rather tawdry business transactions. For example, to increase the number of brains sent to the Foundation, Torrey offered greater and greater financial incentives to Cyr. Torrey put a higher price tag on the brains of people diagnosed with schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder ($2,000) compared to those diagnosed with depression ($1,500); and he paid Cyr an extra $500 for obtaining a donor's psychiatric records. In a March 2001 letter, the Herald reports: "Torrey also encouraged Cyr to take advantage of his state government connections. He suggested that Cyr offer a modest sum of money to a clerical employee in the Medical Examiner's Office to send the request letters on office stationery. "It is our experience with San Diego and Seattle that when a record request is sent out on (medical examiner's office) stationery at the time of death, the response is excellent and very rapid," Torrey wrote. No employee of the Medical Examiner's Office sent such letters, according to Dow, spokesman for the attorney general. Greenwald, through the spokesman, said she is not aware that any employee in her office was asked to do such work. In his March 2001 letter to Cyr Torrey wrote: "Given your energy and track record in obtaining specimens, it seems reasonable that you could average about two normal controls and one case per month, which if you also obtained records, would gross $5,000-$5,500 per month although we can cover whatever you can obtain. Obviously some months might be better and some worse." In the US, a 1987 Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, prohibits the trafficking of organs for  transplants, there is no federal law prohibiting the sale of human organs for research. Given the lucrative financial incentives, and the absence of regulatory restraints, a cottage industry in brain harvesting is thriving in the US and the UK: many of the brains are acquired by academic research institutions were acquired without the knowledge or informed consent of surviving relatives. One might question the validity of the legal double standard applied to organ harvesting for transplantation compared to research--inasmuch as organ transplants save lives, while one is hard pressed to point at any clinically significant diagnostic or therapeutic improvements as a result of these brain studies. Of further note: The Stanley Foundation also bankrolls the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC) a lobbying organization that exploits the perception that mentally ill patients are violent, in order to promote state involuntary commitment laws for mental patients to allow them to be "treated." The tactic says much about ruthless prophets whose arrogant certainty about what's good for others leads them to justify any means toward achieving those ends. (source: Alliance for Human Research Protection, Promoting Openness and Full Disclosure, 10/19/04) ***************************************************** Josh Koerner A Voice of Sanity: Now They're Stealing Our Brains, by Josh Koerner The Halloween Episode of Law & Order (2004): Criminal Intent had the following plot synposis: "It's heads up when detectives go underground. When the bodies of several murdered homeless men are sold to medical labs, detectives Goren and Eames descend into abandoned subway tunnels..." Even if you didn't catch the show, you may have seen the teaser, in which Goren, in the midst of interrogating a lab technician, says, "Cat got your tongue? Because I have one right here," motioning to a tray containing the aforementioned body part. The ease with which dead bodies are dragged in, cut up and then resold to tissue banks defies credibility. In fact, it's ripped from the headlines, if you live in Maine and read the Portland Press Herald. Their investigation found that the brains of 99 deceased residents of Maine had been harvested at the medical examiners office, for profit, and, in nearly a third of the cases, without any written proof of family consent. The Stanley Medical Research Center in Bethesda, Maryland had a price list for brains: $1,500 a pop for brains diagnosed with severe depression and two grand if the donor had either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. They would throw in an extra $500 for the donor's psychiatric records. This lucrative cash incentive was set up by the center's founder, E. Fuller Torrey, MD. Torrey paid the Maine state funeral inspector, and he in turn would call the medical examiner's office every day to see if they had any suitable brains. But that wasn't enough for Torrey: he suggested his barin snatcher "might also increase the number of cases of schizophrenia and manic depressive illness by obtaining the list of large group homes from the Department of Mental Health," and leaving them a number they could call if a suitable resident croaked. Torrey also suggested paying off an employee of the ME's office so that their official stationary could be used in making the request for the confidential psych records. Torrey's head shop was ethically compromised from top to bottom. The Stanley Center is not accredited by the American Association of Tissue Banks. The consent forms used in Maine did not make clear that the center was seeking the entire brain and not just a sample. In those instances where consent was obtained, in virtually every case it was verbal, witnessed by the live-in girlfriend, of Torrey'ds hired hand, a ghoul who was shameless about calling grieving families on the day of a loved one's passing. Contrast this with the practice of the Harvard Brain Tisue Resource Center, which encourages donations prior to death and waits to hear from family members, never vice-versa. Of course, Torrey's pay-per-brain scheme is ethically questionable for the very reason that it leads to such abuses. And just who is E. Fuller Torrey? Cue the spooky music: Whooeeeoo! In addition to founding the Stanley Medical Research Center, Torrey, a psychiatrist is also the founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center; in his role as president he advocates nationally for the use of coercion and involuntary mental health techniques. In a briefing paper on stigma, Torrey argues that "the public's association of mental illness with violence is a major cause of stigma." That's a reasonable position. He goes on to state "the association of mental illness with violence is very strong and has increased in recent years." OK! Here's the ooga-booga-Holy-Christ-he's-a-madman moment: Torrey's position is that "the most likely reason for this increase for this increasing stigma is an increasing number of violent crimes committed by individuals with severe psychiatric disorders," and that the only way to reduce this stigma is to reduce the number of violent crimes committed by them. Torrey says stigma will be reduced when, to quote the Daily News (11/19/99) we, get the violent crazies off our streets. Never once does Torrey indict sensationalistic and distorted news coverage or exploitative Hollywood productions as the source of stigma. It's us! We bring it on ourselves because we avoid treatment! So of course, to stop stigma, you need to treat us - by force. He isn't the only one who thinks so. Sally Satel, MD, sits on the National Advisory Council to the Center for Mental Health Services and is charged with transforming the national mental health care system to ensure that it actively supports and facilitates recovery. According to the minutes of the 2004 meeting, Dr. Satel "noted that stigma regarding severe mental illness may be addressed by early coercive care that then migrates into other, less coercive systems. She asserted that some people need intrusive, highly paternalistic, life-saving care. The final report of the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, stated as its second of six major goals that "consumers, along with service providers, will actively participate in the designing of care in which they are involved." Yet extreme right-wing physicians like Sally Satel are attempting to influence, and even defund the Center for Mental Health Services; E. Fuller Torrey is flying around the country telling anyone who will listen that "1,000 homicides per year in the United States are committed by individuals with severe mental illness;" and the Stanley Center is paying cash for stolen brains. All together now: Whooeeoo! (Josh Koerner is the Executive Director of CHOICE in New Rochelle, New York) ***************************************************** MentalHealthStigma.com Update (9/21/01) The TAC's "Biologically Brain-Damaged" Crusade: A New Millenium Twist on the Age-old Philosophy of Racial Superiority In the wake of the Twin Towers disaster, as more and more people enter the mental health system and join the ranks of "the mentally-ill," the TAC has now launched a new initiative aimed at finding supporting legal theories for involuntary commitment and forced treatment. This profit-driven campaign will be paying law students $1,500 and $750 to devise legal arguments and write essays which will provide additional ammunition to further erode the rights of people labeled mentally-ill. And since enacting U.S. law is based on precedent, the TAC has also conveniently provided prior Supreme Court Cases which have set the groundwork for involuntary commitment for the contestants to build upon. But because the U.S. Constitution is their biggest stumbling block, any essay submitted which does not address constitutional law, due process and civil rights will be disqualified. What they are in effect looking for, are "legal loopholes" which will strengthen their own position on forced treatment. That a "not-for-profit" organization would pay law students to research and refine legal precedents that would assist in further undermining the rights of people labeled "mentally-ill" obviously indicates that they're profitting enormously off of the stigma attached to the label "mentally-ill." And having successfully lobbied to hold all mental health recipients responsible for the acts of one New Yorker, which culminated in "Kendra's Law," the TAC is now lobbying in Michigan for the passage of "Kevin's Law." If this were not so serious, it would almost be laughable. Their fury so incited New Yorkers that when Nicole Barrett was savagely struck in the head with a brick shortly following the passage of Kendra's Law, all the local papers insisted that a "mentally-ill" homeless person was responsible and demanded that we "Get the Violent Crazies off OUR streets." Yet no apology was offered, nor was a retraction made, when the assailant turned out to be neither homeless nor a mental health recipient. What will they lobby for next on their biologically brain-damaged crusade? Mandatory registering at all state and local police departments for every person labeled "mentally-ill", called - "Freddy's Law" - with a nationwide website posting all our names. And is it merely a co-incidence that the majority of people committed by this crusade will be so-called minorities? This is actually a unique and clever twist on the practice of racial profiling because the initial observation which is normally made in such cases is now diverted away from the racial, national and cultural identity of the "brain-damaged" individual. This person is not being detained because he or she is racially inferior... he or she is now biologically inferior! Anyone who takes the time to study the 20th Century philosophy of racial superiority will discover that these are opposite sides of the same coin. As early as 1851, a prominent Louisiana physician named Samuel A. Cartwright, claimed to have discovered a mental illness "peculiar to blacks." This illness called "drapetomania" derived from the words "drapetes" meaning a runaway slave and mania. Dr. Cartwright claimed that "this illness caused blacks to have an uncontrollable urge to run away from their masters." A similarly discovered mental illness "peculiar to blacks" was "dysathesia aethiopica" which manifested symptoms as diverse as "destroying plantation property, disobedience, fighting with their masters and refusing to work." ("To oppress a race, and then label its reactions as a mental illness is not only wrong, it is criminal and a fraud." Dr. William Tutman/African American Coalition for Justice in Social Policy). As late as 1994, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's book The Bell Curve "empirically" claimed that African Americans do worse than whites in intelligence tests, are genetically disabled and therefore cannot cope with the demands of contemporary American society. Is it merely a coincidence that the state of Virginia, which is where the offices of the TAC are located, was recently cited for eugenics based sterilizations? How much longer before they start chipping away at the Constitution? When will cinemaniastigma.com be banned from the internet because it's founder is "severely mentally-ill" and "biologically brain-damaged?" Before resigning in 1998, Dr. Loren Mosher a 30-year member of the APA stated: "Biologically based brain diseases are convenient for families and practitioners alike. It is no fault insurance against responsibility... The fact that there is no evidence confirming brain disease is, at this point, irrelevant." As I listened to President Bush utter these words in response to the attack on America, I wondered if they applied to all of us: "Tonight we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom... this is the world's fight. This is civilization's fight. This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom." How many Americans labeled "mentally-ill" have died in defense of this country and in defense of those words? How many of our veteran heroes languish today in psychiatric institutions - only to be re-traumatized by the self-serving propaganda of the Treatment Advocacy Center? And how many of our veterans who served in "Operation: Iraqi Freedom" will be denied the very rights for which they faithfully served our country? Oppression and discrimination wear many masks, but the mask of virtue is the most deceptive. "Oh what a tangled web we weave..." *****************************************************  MENTALHEALTHSTIGMA/AHEAD OF THE NEWS (10/9/01): "FORCED TREATMENT ADVOCATES TARGET OF LAWSUIT" Two of the nation’s most vocal supporters of involuntary outpatient commitment now find themselves staring at a $12.7 million lawsuit filed by the lawyer hired two years ago to direct their Law and Psychiatry Center at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia late last month, includes allegations of breach of contract and fraud. Named as defendants in the lawsuit are the Theodore and Vada Stanley Foundation, doing business as the Stanley Foundation Research Programs; NAMI Research Institute; E. Fuller Torrey, M.D.; the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC); and TAC’s executive director, Mary Zdanowicz. They were served notice of the suit beginning Sept. 27. The suit is being brought by Paul Stavis, who in 1999 became director of the newly formed Law and Psychiatry Center at George Mason. The public university received funding for the center from the Stanley Foundation, which also finances the Treatment Advocacy Center and the NAMI Research Institute. The center was established to examine the social and legal implications of deinstitutionalization and to seek ways to address problems associated with untreated illness. But Stavis alleges that once his academic work ran afoul of the pro-commitment stance of the center’s funders, the suit’s defendants did everything in their power to ruin his reputation and force the university to fire him. On Sept. 21, the university informed Stavis that his position at the center would be terminated, effective at the end of the fall semester. He filed suit shortly thereafter. "Basically, they wanted him to be a shill," Rodney R. Sweetland III, lead counsel for the plaintiff, said. According to the complaint, Torrey told Stavis in a written correspondence prior to the termination that "the creation of the Law and Psychiatry Center at GMU was done specifically to generate articles for law reviews which could be cited in support of assisted treatment in general and outpatient commitment, conditional release in particular." The precipitating event, Sweetland said, was a scholarly article Stavis wrote that appeared in Catholic University’s Journal of Contemporary Health Law & Policy in 2000. The article examined the use of advance directives for people with serious mental illness. Shortly after its appearance, Torrey and Zdanowicz began putting pressure on Stavis, Sweetland claims. "Apparently they didn’t like his impartiality." Prior to taking the position at the law center, Stavis served as counsel to the New York State Commission on the Quality of Care for the Mentally Disabled. In that role he created a first-of-its-kind process that gave an administrative panel the power to make medical care decisions for mentally incompetent patients, removing the process from the courtroom. In order to entice Stavis to take the law center position, Sweetland said, Torrey agreed that if the GMU Law School did not continue his employment for the full five-year term, that Stavis would be employed by TAC for the remainder of that term. But once the article appeared, he said, Zdanowicz and Torrey began treating Stavis as "a traitor amongst them" and began working to undermine his position at the university. Referring to Stavis’s allegations, Zdanowicz said last week that the defendants were "still trying to figure out what he’s talking about." TAC had been served notice of the lawsuit on Oct. 1st and had not yet retained a lawyer, she said. The defendants have 20 days to respond. The suit comprises five counts: Interference with contractual relationship; conspiracy to interfere with business and profession; breach of contract; fraud; and civil conspiracy. The lawsuit is a tort suit seeking punitive damages, and under Virginia law, those damages can be tripled. "These were intentional acts," Sweetland said. "This is not merely breach of contract." Included in the lawsuit is the charge that Torrey and Zdanowicz entered into an illegal kickback arrangement designed to maintain the Treatment Advocacy Center’s 501(c)3 status. According to the complaint, the Stanley Foundation provided money to George Mason University that the school then paid to TAC in order to maintain the appearance that TAC received financial support from multiple sources. In order to achieve 501(c)3 status, an organization must have more than one donor. And TAC doesn’t fit that bill, Sweetland said. "They’re a lobbying organization. That’s what they do." If TAC loses that designation, it will have to revert to private foundation status, he said. And that would have serious consequences on tax deductions that have been taken by TAC donors. According to Sweetland, the Stanley Foundation gives the university hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Unsure of the exact figure, he has subpoenaed the defendants’ budgetary documents. George Mason University hasn’t been included in the lawsuit for tactical reasons, namely not to get the Commonwealth of Virginia involved, Sweetland said. However, the two deans named in the complaint will have to answer to their own faculty about issues of academic freedom. The Eastern District of Virginia has a reputation for quick justice, and Sweetland predicts that "this will go in front of a jury in less than a year." (©2001 Manisses Communications Group, Inc.) ***************************************************** "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 ***************************************************** "In our Enlightened Era it has become acceptable to question the sanity of those who claim to be God, but unacceptable to question the sanity of those who wanna play God!" Anonymous ***************************************************** Criminalization Links: British Counterparts - Freedom of Thought  Against Their Will - Racial Psycho-Babble - Ethnic Schizophrenia - The Bell Curve and Eugenics Copyright © 2007 MentalHealthStigma.com, All Rights Reserved Fair Use Notice: Please note that MentalHealthStigma.com contains copyrighted (©) material, the use of which has not necessarily been authorized by the copyright owner. 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