Occupied
^
WHY OCCUPY WALL STREET SHOULD SUPPORT
OCCUPY THE AMERICAN
PSYCHIATRIC ASSOCIATION
On May 5, 2012, people who care about human rights gathered in Philadelphia for an event called Occupy the American Psychiatric Association (Occupy the APA). They gathered to protest the approval of the latest version of psychiatry's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM-5, which will label many more, often normal, human experiences and emotions as a "mental illness." They also protested the way in which these labels are the springboard for human rights violations.
The Occupy movement seeks to help people regain control of their lives, which have been undermined by corporate domination. In the framework of conditions that make corporate abuse possible, the alliance between the psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries (PsychoPharmaceutical Complex) plays a key role.
As a participant in Occupy Sacramento said, “Why is this important to the 99%? The inordinate influence of Big Pharma in orchestrating decades of campaigns to expand force and coercion in mental health care is a high-profile example of how corporations continue to undermine democracy, human rights and dignity in their pursuit of ever-increasing profits.”
Since the mid-20th century, in order to increase psychiatric and pharmaceutical profits, there has been a growing trend to medicalize and pathologize an ever wider range of human experience through ever more expansive editions of the DSM, and using these diagnoses to justify prescribing very harmful drugs. The result has been that people in the public mental health system are now dying 25 years earlier on average than the rest of the population. Put simply, the psychiatric industry, led by the American Psychiatric Association, has teamed up with the pharmaceutical industry to sacrifice people’s lives on the altar of profits. As reported by Fortune magazine, in one recent year 12 pharmaceutical companies made almost 64 billion dollars! Psychiatric drugs are leading these profits. This is done through pharmaceutical industry-funded, dishonest research that is accepted by the American Psychiatric Association to further its own agenda to increase its members’ wealth and power.
If medications are not effective, or if a person does not want to take medications, more restrictive, invasive, and expensive measures may be taken, often against the will of the person supposedly being treated. At the same time, there are many individuals who find psychiatric medications helpful and make an informed choice to take them. We support everyone’s right to make their own treatment choices.
The criteria for mental illness are detailed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and, with the 5th Edition about to be rubber-stamped by the American Psychiatric Association, many people who thought that they were just “having a hard time” may now be told that they have a serious mental disorder and will need to be medicated – like it or not. Everyone in the 99% is a potential victim because anyone can have experiences that get labeled as a mental illness.
The 1% have the money to resist; the 99% do not.
Heritage Foundation Presents Perjury Proponent
http://psychrights.org/PR/120714OccupyEFullerTorreyRelease.pdf
PROBLEM; NOT THE SOLUTION
The story the American Psychiatric Association and
individual psychiatrists, such as E. Fuller Torrey have been
telling their patients and the public is not true.
There are no proven chemical imbalances or other known
brain defects that result in what gets diagnosed as mental
illnesses.
Most of the drugs given to treat people diagnosed with
mental illness are no better than placebo and many cause
tremendous physical problems.
The second generation of so-called "anti-psychotics" (neuroleptics) are effective for few
and harmful to all. Contrary to drug company hype, they are not more effective than first
generation neuroleptics and far more harmful.
Largely as a result, the disability rate of people diagnosed with serious mental illness has
increased 6-fold on a per capita basis since the introduction of the supposed miracle drug
Thorazine in 1954.
Largely due to the use of these drugs, the life expectancy of people diagnosed with serious
mental illness is 25 years less than the general population.
The stimulants used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and the so-called
antidepressants have dramatically increased the incidence of people diagnosed with bipolar
disorder and converted it from a good prognosis diagnosis to one that is quite poor.
The ubiquitous use of psychiatric drugs is at least halving the percentage of people who
recover after being diagnosed with a serious mental illness; it appears about 80% of the
people presenting with an initial psychosis can recover if they are not given and
maintained on psychiatric drugs.
The American Psychiatric Association and individual psychiatrists are either fooled or
complicit to the extent they do not publicly acknowledge and act on these facts.
Sources: Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, by Robert Whitaker; and Scientific Research by Topic on PsychRights' website.
*The Lucy "Fooled or Complicit" transformation of the Peanuts® "the Dr. is In" cartoon is used without permission under the Fair Use provisions of the copyright laws, 17 U.S.C. Section 107.
PROBLEM; NOT THE SOLUTION
The story the American Psychiatric Association and
individual psychiatrists, such as E. Fuller Torrey have been
telling their patients and the public is not true.
There are no proven chemical imbalances or other known
brain defects that result in what gets diagnosed as mental
illnesses.
Most of the drugs given to treat people diagnosed with
mental illness are no better than placebo and many cause
tremendous physical problems.
The second generation of so-called "anti-psychotics" (neuroleptics) are effective for few
and harmful to all. Contrary to drug company hype, they are not more effective than first
generation neuroleptics and far more harmful.
Largely as a result, the disability rate of people diagnosed with serious mental illness has
increased 6-fold on a per capita basis since the introduction of the supposed miracle drug
Thorazine in 1954.
Largely due to the use of these drugs, the life expectancy of people diagnosed with serious
mental illness is 25 years less than the general population.
The stimulants used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and the so-called
antidepressants have dramatically increased the incidence of people diagnosed with bipolar
disorder and converted it from a good prognosis diagnosis to one that is quite poor.
The ubiquitous use of psychiatric drugs is at least halving the percentage of people who
recover after being diagnosed with a serious mental illness; it appears about 80% of the
people presenting with an initial psychosis can recover if they are not given and
maintained on psychiatric drugs.
The American Psychiatric Association and individual psychiatrists are either fooled or
complicit to the extent they do not publicly acknowledge and act on these facts.
Sources: Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, by Robert Whitaker; and Scientific Research by Topic on PsychRights' website.
*The Lucy "Fooled or Complicit" transformation of the Peanuts® "the Dr. is In" cartoon is used without permission under the Fair Use provisions of the copyright laws, 17 U.S.C. Section 107.
July 14, 2012
Bastille
Day is here, but some organizations think locking people up on the
basis of uninvestigated charges and secret trials is okay—even that our
laws don’t go far enough in doing so. On Wednesday, July 18th, the
Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C., is hosting a talk by E. Fuller Torrey, M.D., America's most notorious proponent of violating psychiatric rights.
Torrey is promoting his book, The Insanity Offense: How America’s Failure to Treat the Seriously Mentally Ill Endangers Its Citizens,
which advocates making it even easier to lock citizens up, label and
stigmatize them without legal justification, and forcibly drug them
against their will ("forced treatment"). In a
prior book, Torrey explicitly advocates committing perjury to
accomplish these aims, noting with approval, “It would probably be
difficult to find any American psychiatrist working with the mentally
ill who has not, at a minimum, exaggerated the dangerousness of a
mentally ill person's behavior to obtain a judicial order for
commitment.”
Award winning author of Anatomy of An Epidemic, Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, Robert Whitaker, recently had occasion to expose Dr. Torrey's deliberate use of falsehoods to advance his agenda in, E. Fuller Torrey’s Review of Anatomy of an Epidemic: What Does It Reveal About the Rationale for Forced Treatment?
Occupy Psychiatry, a new joint project by the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights®) and MindFreedom, International, will be at the presentation to counter Torrey's falsehoods. See, the informational flyer
for this event. James B. (Jim) Gottstein, Esq., president of
PsychRights, said, "The paid henchmen of the pharmaceutical companies,
such as E. Fuller Torrey, must be challenged when they spin their web of
lies." Mr. Gottstein is hoping to attend.
People are gathering at 11:30 a.m. at 214 Massachusetts Avenue, N.E. For more information go to the Occupy Torrey Tirade Facebook Event Page.
The
Law Project for Psychiatric Rights is a public interest law firm
devoted to the defense of people facing the horrors of forced
psychiatric drugging and electroshock. PsychRights is further dedicated
to exposing the truth about psychiatric interventions and the courts
being misled into ordering people subjected to these brain and body
damaging drugs against their will. Extensive information about these
dangers, and about the tragic damage caused by electroshock, is
available on the PsychRights web site: http://psychrights.org/.
# # #
James B. (Jim) Gottstein, Esq.
President/CEO
Law Project for Psychiatric Rights
406 G Street, Suite 206
Anchorage, Alaska 99501
USA
Phone: (907) 274-7686 Fax: (907) 274-9493
jim.gottstein@psychrights.org
http://psychrights.org/
PsychRights®
Law Project for
Psychiatric Rights
The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights is a public interest law firm devoted to the defense of people facing the horrors of forced psychiatric drugging and electroshock. We are further dedicated to exposing the truth about these drugs and the courts being misled into ordering people to be drugged and subjected to other brain and body damaging interventions against their will. Currently, due to massive growth in psychiatric drugging of children and youth and the current targeting of them for even more psychiatric drugging, PsychRights has made attacking this problem a priority. Children are virtually always forced to take these drugs because it is the adults in their lives who are making the decision. This is an unfolding national tragedy of immense proportions. Extensive information about all of this is available on our web site, http://psychrights.org/. Please donate generously. Our work is fueled with your IRS 501(c) tax deductible donations. Thank you for your ongoing help and support.
President/CEO
Law Project for Psychiatric Rights
406 G Street, Suite 206
Anchorage, Alaska 99501
USA
Phone: (907) 274-7686 Fax: (907) 274-9493
jim.gottstein@psychrights.org
http://psychrights.org/
PsychRights®
Law Project for
Psychiatric Rights
The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights is a public interest law firm devoted to the defense of people facing the horrors of forced psychiatric drugging and electroshock. We are further dedicated to exposing the truth about these drugs and the courts being misled into ordering people to be drugged and subjected to other brain and body damaging interventions against their will. Currently, due to massive growth in psychiatric drugging of children and youth and the current targeting of them for even more psychiatric drugging, PsychRights has made attacking this problem a priority. Children are virtually always forced to take these drugs because it is the adults in their lives who are making the decision. This is an unfolding national tragedy of immense proportions. Extensive information about all of this is available on our web site, http://psychrights.org/. Please donate generously. Our work is fueled with your IRS 501(c) tax deductible donations. Thank you for your ongoing help and support.
