XPost: alt.society.mental-health, alt.psychology.personality   
   From: nospam@all.com   
      
   "Honest Abe"  wrote in message   
   news:ONAVl.48312$d36.25916@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...   
   > "Thetaworks"  wrote in message   
   > news:hdj8v4lvjrv3pb9hk1690298dsinfqikvv@4ax.com...   
   >> Psychiatry: An Industry of Death Documentary DVD with Booklet   
   >>   
   >> Through rare historical and contemporary footage and interviews with   
   >> more than 160 doctors, attorneys, educators, survivors and experts on   
   >> the mental health industry and its abuses, this riveting documentary   
   >> blazes the bright light of truth on the brutal pseudoscience and the   
   >> multi-billion dollar fraud that is psychiatry.   
   >>   
   >> The DVD companion brochure contains over 150 photos and graphics that   
   >> track the history of psychiatry from it's macabre 18th century origins   
   >> to today, where 100,000 patients die each year in psychiatric   
   >> institutions and 20 million children have been put on potentially   
   >> lethal, mind-altering drugs.   
   >>   
   >> We think you have the right to know the cold, hard facts about   
   >> psychiatry, its practitioners and the threat they pose to our   
   >> children.   
   >>   
   >> Order Psychiatry: An Industry of Death documentary and companion   
   >> brochure. Distribute it to others (associates, family and friends).   
   >>   
   >> Warn them about psychiatry's damaging treatments. When you watch the   
   >> DVD you will be outraged and will want to act to end these abuses.   
   >   
   >   
   > This appears to have been posted by a shill for the cult of $cientology.   
      
   That's entirely an assumption on your part.  So the rest of your post   
   attacking Scientology is irrelevant.   
      
      
   >He seems ignorant of the fact that psychiatry, unlike $cientology, is based   
   >on medical science. Thus it improves and evolves over time, and   
   >professional organizations and government agencies exist through which   
   >abuses and grievances can be addressed and corrected. For whatever   
   >shortcomings may exist, psychiatry does help most patients, even if only   
   >symptomatically.   
      
   Psychiatry has unfortunately become mainly a money-making industry in   
   partnership with hospitals.   
      
   UNJUSTIFIED PSYCHIATRIC   
   COMMITMENT in the U.S.A.   
   by Lawrence Stevens, J.D.   
      
   U.S. Representative Patricia Schroeder of Colorado held hearings   
   investigating the practices of psychiatric hospitals in the United States.   
   Rep. Schroeder summarized her committee's findings as follows: "Our   
   investigation has found that thousands of adolescents, children, and adults   
   have been hospitalized for psychiatric treatment they didn't need; that   
   hospitals hire bounty hunters to kidnap patients with mental health   
   insurance; that patients are kept against their will until their insurance   
   benefits run out; that psychiatrists are being pressured by the hospitals to   
   increase profit; that hospitals 'infiltrate' schools by paying kickbacks to   
   school counselors who deliver students; that bonuses are paid to hospital   
   employees, including psychiatrists, for keeping the hospital beds filled;   
   and that military dependents are being targeted for their generous mental   
   health benefits.  I could go on, but you get the picture" (quoted in: Lynn   
   Payer, Disease- Mongers: How Doctors, Drug Companies, and Insurers Are   
   Making You Feel Sick, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1992, pp. 234-235).   
   ...   
      
               Unjustified involuntary commitment to psychiatric hospitals has   
   become so blatant Reader's Digest published an article in the July 1992   
   issue exposing the unethical practice:   
      
              "Similar storm clouds are appearing over the mental - health   
   field.  Alarmed by exploding costs, insurance companies began scrutinizing   
   payments more carefully - and ultimately trimmed the average patient's   
   length of hospital stay.  As a result, 'private hospitals that once made a   
   great deal of money are now desperate for patients,' says Dr. Alan Stone,   
   former president of the American Psychiatric Association.   
      
               "That desperation has opened the door for fraud.  Among the   
   alleged abuses: patients abducted by 'bounty hunters'; others hospitalized   
   against their will until their insurance runs out; diagnoses and treatments   
   tailored to maximize insurance reimbursement; kickbacks for recruiting   
   patients; unnecessary treatments; gross overbilling.   
      
                  [A]n administrator at a psychiatric "hospital"   
   told me competition between psychiatric hospitals is what she called "cut   
   throat".  Combine this intense competition with America's poorly written   
   involuntary commitment laws and judges who refuse to impose protection from   
   unwarranted commitment that bona-fide due process requires, and the result   
   is a lot of people being deprived of liberty and suffering psychiatric   
   stigma unjustifiably.  In the field of so-called mental health where large   
   amounts of money can be made, in large part because of health insurance, and   
   where there is a competitive environment where there are too few psychiatric   
   "patients" to fill psychiatric beds, self-interest biases the supposed   
   psychiatric or psychological experts in favor of a "diagnosis" which   
   justifies commitment, including involuntary commitment where necessary.  As   
   Harvard Law professor Alan M. Dershowitz has said, psychiatry "is not a   
   scientific discipline" ("Clash of Testimony in Hinkley Trial Has   
   Psychiatrists Worried Over Image", The New York Times May 24, 1982, p. 11).   
   The opinion of many legislators and judges that impartiality, objectivity,   
   and scientific expertise of mental health professionals makes the kind of   
   due process needed elsewhere unnecessary in psychiatric commitment is   
   mistaken.   
      
               As was noted in the above quoted Reader's Digest article, much   
   of this unjustified involuntary psychiatric commitment of normal and   
   law-abiding people to the prisons called psychiatric hospitals is motivated   
   by the financial needs of psychiatric hospitals and the people who work in   
   them.  Although it has been reaching newspaper headlines in only the last   
   several years, unwarranted psychiatric commitment has been going on for over   
   a century, including in the USA where freedom is supposedly a cherished   
   value and where human rights are supposedly respected. Recent inventions   
   such as health care insurance have made the abuses more frequent, but the   
   willingness of mental health "professionals" to violate the sacred right of   
   each law-abiding person to liberty isn't new.   
        ...   
      
           "Two of the country's largest insurance   
   companies filed suit yesterday against a national chain of private   
   psychiatric and substance abuse hospitals, charging it with illegally   
   admitting patients who did not need treatment and then not releasing them   
   until their insurance benefits ran out" Michael Unger, "Hospitals Called   
   Cheats  Insurers say health-care chain pulled off nationwide scam", New York   
   Newsday, Thursday, September 15, 1992, Business section, page 33).   
      
               Insurance fraud involving psychiatrists treating people who do   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)