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If You Really Don't Want to Stigmatize Me, Then Stop Calling Me "Mentally Ill".
Terms like "mentally ill", "mental illness", "brain disorder" "schizophrenic", "schizophrenia", and
"neurobiological" are forms of hate speech. They are pejorative terms designed to lower the self-esteem of frightened,
vulnerable people.
These terms are also a signal that it's okay to scapegoat those who are so labeled.
Many (most or all, actually) people who become labeled in this way have been severely abused or
traumatized. They have experienced unthinkable, unimaginable realities---all alone, with no witness except themselves.
But, who will listen, because they're "mentally ill".
Their normal, healthy adaptation to severe trauma may be labeled as a "symptom." Therefore, there will
never be healing.
Terms like "mental illness", "mentally ill", "brain disorder" or "condition" take our stories away
from us. These terms give our stories to somebody else, as if our stories can be told without us. These terms
erase our humanity.
Click this link for an exciting new book:
Be Sure to Read This Paragraph
You may see ads promoting biomedical psychiatry above, or below. We have nothing to do with those ads. This
Web space is free, from Lycos and Tripod. We are grateful for that. Those ads help to make it and keep it free. We are,
however, fully aware of the irony.
Colin A. Ross Institute
[Any underlined text you see on any page of this site is probably a hotlink.]
Break the Silence About
Psychiatric Oppression in the Dane County Mental "Health" System.
We are the only actively anti-force organization in Wisconsin for
people who have been labeled with psychiatric diagnoses. (At least, we're the only one we know of. If you know
of another organization in this state that is actively and openly opposing forced "treatment" for mental "illness", please
tell us.)
The influence of drug money in laws mandating forced "treatment" for mental "illness" is one of the most censored stories
of 2001. Click here to read more.
Click here to read an article about NAMI's drug-company sponsors.
Click here to learn how a wealthy, powerful organization uses the media to stir up a "lynch mob" mentality, in order to gain
acceptance for repressive forced "treatment" laws like Wisconsin Chapter 51.
Click here to email us. (For those with Web-based email---or, if you just can't click on this link for any reason----write
to repeal51@yahoo.com, or click on "Contact Us," in the left column. This is a link, so it may be a little difficult to copy
and paste from here.)
We need statistics and stories on Chapter 51 commitments anywhere
in Wisconsin. Let us know about your experiences. You don't have to use names.
We're also interested in finding out more about how to get petitions for
forced treatment dismissed by the courts.
In Milwaukee County, Attorney Tom Zander did an excellent job of keeping
citizens from being committed. Unfortunately, he's retired now. Dr. Toby Tyler Watson of Sheboygan has obtained dismissals, as well.
Email us at repeal 51 at yahoo dot com.
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Friends & Families of Psychiatric Survivors started in Madison, Wisconsin, in 2000. We want to work toward dignified,
humane alternatives to Wisconsin's forced drugging laws for people with psychiatric disabilites. We want to reclaim our public
mental health system from the biomedical industry.
We feel that the executive directors of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill - Dane County and the National Alliance
of the Mentally Ill of Wisconsin should be barred from employment in our public mental health system. The National Alliance
of the Mentally Ill is supported primarily by money from the biomedical industry. Therefore, the employment of NAMI's executive
directors in our publicly-funded mental health system represents a serious threat to democracy.
The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) started in Madison, Wisconsin, in the 1970's.
We here in Madison have a special responsibility to ensure that everyone, especially the people of Wisconsin, learn the
truth about NAMI.
These drug companies manufacture neuroleptic drugs which are prescribed by psychiatrists for people
accused of "mental illness".
Neuroleptic drugs are dangerous, painful and debilitating. They may also be fatal. Many
or most of the people who die during heat waves were on neuroleptics. Extremes of temperature can trigger neuroleptic
malignant syndrome, or NMS, which can be fatal, unless prompt and appropriate medical treatment is obtained. Unfortunately,
few doctors know how to diagnose or treat NMS. For more information on neuroleptic malignant syndrome, click here.
But, other than NMS, there are many other serious, life-threatening and debilitating side effects.
Neuroleptics are almost certain to shorten the lifespan.
For example, the Website of the National Alliance for the Mentally "Ill" (quotes are mine)
claims that the brains of people with a diagnosis of "schizophrenia" are different from the brains of "normal" people.
As Dr. Peter Breggin writes, in Toxic Psychiatry:
Dozens of studies have . . . come out indicating that neuroleptic-treated patients have such severe
brain damage that it can be detected as shrinkage of the brain on the new radiology techniques . . . Often the shrinkage is
associated with degrees of mental deterioration. My 1990 review in the Journal of Mind and Behavior provides the
dozens of citations on which the following analysis is based.
Many---but not all----of my psychiatric colleagues view these findings as the long-sought proof
that schizophrenia is a brain disease. But the brain shrinkage cannot be due to schizophrenia. For decades schizophrenia has
been called a "functional disorder" precisely because it typically occurs in the absence of any signs of organic brain didsease.
The recent finding that these individuals have gross organic brain disease flies in the face of this long-standing clinical
experience. Confirming this clinical knowledge, autopsy studies in the predrug era failed to find any consistent gross pathology
in the brains of schizophrenics. Furthermore, we have animal autopsy studies confirming that the neuroleptic drugs do indeed
damage the brain, even in small, short-term doses. And finally, we have studies of additional groups, such as adult patients
with other diagnoses and mentally retarded children, who are developing mental deterioration on the same drugs.
In a footnote to the above paragraph, Dr. Breggin writes:
Before the neuroleptic drugs came into use in 1954, hundreds of autopsy studies attempted to prove
that schizophrenics have brain disease. Then, as now, it was an obsession in psychiatry, every researcher's hope for a Nobel
Prize. The methods used were far more sensitive than CT scans. The heads of thousands of recently deceased patients were opened
on autopsy and their brains examined under microscopes with special staining techniques. They were, of course, inspected,
weighed, and measured most carefully. In Nazy Germany the search for a brain disease in schizophrenia was carried to the ultimate
with made-to-order dead patients----hapless individuals specifically and officially murdered so that their "fresh" brains could
be studied by avid biopsychiatrists. In the 1959 American Handbook of Psychiatry , Sylvano Arieti states under "Neuropatholoy
of Schizophrenia" that, despite an intensive search, no consistent abnormalities of the brain have been found and all such
hopes "have remained unfulfilled."
--From, Toxic Psychiatry, Chapter 4: The "Miracle Drugs" Cause the Worst Plague of Brain Damage in Medical
History
NAMI lobbies for forced drugging laws. As a result of these laws, peaceful, law-abiding citizens
in many states are forced to submit to "treatment" which may be sadistic, violent, debilitating, painful, brain-damaging,
and even fatal.
In 1972, the United Stated Supreme Court said that
such a "massive loss of civil liberties" could not take place unless the defendant was
a danger to self or others. Lessard v. Schmidt, 379
F.Supp. 1376, 1381 (E.D. Wis. 1974), vacated and remanded on other grounds,
421 U.S. 957 (1975), reinstated 413
F.Supp.1318 (E.D. Wis. 1976)
Since then, the "mental health" system here in Dane County has dedicated itself to degrading
the meanings of the words, "danger to self or others". They even have workshops on obtaining a "finding of dangerousness"
from the court.
(In the unlikely event that any trial court here in Dane County would ever refuse to
grant an order under 51.20.)
Now, thirty years after the decision in Lessard, there have been so many enlargements
and so much broadening of the standard, that it's as if we were right back to where we were in 1972.
Wisconsin's new "Fifth Standard" for commitment is, in fact, little more than a recapitulation
of the pre-Lessard standard---if a psychiatrist says you need "treatment", then you must really need it. Psychiatrists know
more than courts, and they certainly know more than citizens themselves.
Except that, back in the pre-Lessard days, commitment was to a hospital. Now, it's called "outpatient". People are supposedly " out in the community". This is one of the things the county is so proud of ----- "keeping people out of the hospital" is how they put it.
Well, that may sound good. But . .
Two things.
First, there are no hospitals that keep long-term patients anymore. That's not because of the
Dane County mental "health" system. It's because of changes in insurance and funding. Dane County quickly became very adept
at exploiting these changes.
Second, there's no meaningful way in which these people can be thought of as being "in" any
"community". They are isolated and alienated from all around them and from each other. The county system that "cares" for them makes sure they stay isolated, alienated, desperate and helpless. The county controls their finances, their homes, their food, their clothes, their transportation, their minds, their thoughts and their bodies.
In short, the county controls all that they have, and all that they are.
Sound familiar?
Yes, it is slavery.
It isn't called slavery anymore, because human slavery is illegal except in punishment
for a crime, and these people have not committed a crime. Also, calling it slavery wouldn't be good for public relations.
The truth is, forced "treatment" is a de facto form of slavery. For more about this, click here.
Forced "treatment" is also a form of capital punishment. Capital punishment was outlawed
in Wisconsin back in 1851.
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| Here's something beautiful and relaxing to look at |
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| if you click this you will go to mindfreedom.org |
Mindfreedom.org is a non-Scientology page on the Web that reveals the connections between
drug industry money and laws forcing peaceful, law-abiding citizens to submit to "treatment". Such "treatment" may be painful,
degrading, debilitating, and even fatal. "Treatment" may even include torture.
We do not use the terms, "mentally ill" or "mental illness". Here's a page on Mindfreedom explaining more.
Here in Dane County, there is supposed
to be a grievance procedure, but it's meaningless. The county just tells families or other advocates that a particular
form of torture was "a part of the treatment". In the meantime, though, under the guise of "investigating" the grievance,
they require that the client/victim actually meet with the perpetrator and his or her colleagues.
Or, the county tells the families that
their relative or loved one has to "grieve it her/himself". What about clients who have died while in treatment? Are
they supposed to file a grievance on their own?
Or, what about clients who are unconscious
or in a coma? How could they file a grievance?
The "grievance procedure" ensures that any client who files
a grievance will be singled out for (more) abuse, in retaliation.
We highly recommend Blaming the Brain, by Dr. Eliot Valenstein.
It delineates the history of psychiatric treatment, and the influence of drug companies.
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We also recommend Mad in America:
Moral treatment had represented a profound change in America's attitude toward the mentaly ill. For a brief shining
moment, the mentally ill were welcomed into the human family. The mad, the insane, the manic-depressive---those with mental
disorders were perceived as suffering from great distress, yet still fully human. This was an attitude consonant with the
noblest impulses of democracy, and with the spirit of the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal." Even
the mad were worthy of being treated with respect and decency.
------from Mad in America, by Robert Whitaker, Chapter 3, "Unfit to Breed"
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