From: unk...@googlegroups.com   
      
   Jim Gottstein, JD writes on mental health rights, pharma, and the election   
      
   September 20, 2012   
   9:27 AM MST	   
      
      
   Jim Gottstein, JD from the Law Project on Psychiatric Rights, has written an   
   op-ed on September 18 for Pharmalot about developments in the mental health   
   rights field, how pharma has contributed, and how it appears the upcoming   
   election may influence that    
   environment. Jim, who received his legal education at Harvard Law School, has   
   proven to be acutely sensitive to issues dealing with mental health care human   
   rights, while consistently conveying a legal aptitude to deal with these   
   issues that is    
   unsurpassed in the legal community. Jim is a legal scholar, a humanist, and   
   psychiatric survivor who, as reported by MindFreedom, has dedicated a large   
   part of his career towards initiatives to stop forced psychiatric drugging,   
   challenge psychiatric drug    
   company fraud, and create humane alternatives in the mental health system.   
      
      
   Jim has pointed out that there is a prevailing public attitude that society   
   needs to lock up people who are diagnosed with mental illness and make certain   
   they take their "medications" to keep them from going on killing rampages.   
   However, the truth is    
   both of these approaches increase rather than decrease violence. People who   
   are hit with labels of serious mental illness are no more likely to be violent   
   than those in the general population. In fact these people are far more likely   
   to be victims of    
   violence than to be perpetrators. Furthermore, there has been an association   
   found between violence and taking neuroleptics and other psychiatric drugs.   
      
   Jim goes on to quote award-winning science journalist and author Robert   
   Whitaker in noting that the logic which is often used for outpatient   
   commitment, or court ordered psychiatric drugging in the community, laws is   
   that people labelled with diagnoses    
   of severe mental illness need antipsychotic drugs. It is claimed by the the   
   psychiatrists and their supporters that these medications are good for people   
   with severe mental illness and that because they lack insight into their   
   supposed illness they    
   reject the medication. However, it has been found that antipsychotics over the   
   long term worsen outcomes overall. People refusing antipsychotic medications   
   may therefore have good medical reasons for doing so, therefore undermining   
   the logic for forced    
   treatment.   
      
   Jim has written, "If we look closely at ... a long list of other research,   
   there is good reason to believe that these medications increase psychotic   
   symptoms over the long-term, increase feelings of anxiety, impair cognitive   
   function, cause tardive    
   dyskinesia with some frequency, and dramatically reduce the likelihood that   
   people will fully recover and be able to work. If this is so, how can we, as a   
   society, defend our increasing embrace of forced treatment laws?"   
      
   Jim has gone on to share that not just the judges hearing these cases, but   
   also the attorneys representing such people, have the "if the defendant wasn't   
   crazy the patient would know this was good for him/her", to such an extent   
   they are known as "Public    
   Pretenders," which means they only provide pretend legal representation.   
   Professor Michael Perlin, a preeminent legal scholar on mental health law, has   
   been quoted as saying that mental health law as it exists "deprives   
   individuals of liberty    
   disingenuously and upon bases that have no relationship to case law or to   
   statutes." Perlin has also said in these cases "dishonest testimony is often   
   regularly (and unthinkingly) accepted, statutory and case law standards are   
   frequently subverted, and    
   insurmountable barriers are raised to insure that the allegedly    
   therapeutically correct" social end is met."   
      
   Furthermore, Jim has pointed out that a direct action approach to dealing with   
   these issues has been meeting with some results. The Occupy Psychiatry   
   movement has become a reality. On October 6 in New York City there will be a   
   Human Rights Rally and    
   March from the United Nations to an American Psychiatric Association meeting   
   to protest human rights violations by psychiatry. And there have been some   
   important developments at the United Nations. The Convention on the Rights of   
   Persons With    
   Disabilities (CRPD) is a groundbreaking treaty which guarantees "persons with   
   disabilities including psychiatric disabilities, enjoy legal capacity on an   
   equal basis with others in all aspects of life, and that they be provided   
   access to to the support    
   they may require in exercising their legal capacity." At this time this treaty   
   is awaiting Senate ratification in the United States. Another important   
   development has been the United Nations Interim report of the Special   
   Rapporteur on torture and other    
   cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. This report has   
   determined that psychiatric imprisonment, which is called involuntary   
   commitment, and forced psychiatric drugging, can constitute torture.   
      
   Many mental health activists are hit hard with further abuses by the   
   psychiatrists and others who work with them for saying the United States   
   stands in the forefront of mental health human rights abuser nations. In fact   
   the American psychiatrists often    
   insist these people must be psychotic and paranoid to think and say such   
   things about the United States of all countries. And yet, as pointed out by   
   Jim, there are many violations of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in   
   the United States.    
   Violations of International Human Rights do in fact often occur across the   
   United States daily. Another serious problem in the psychiatric system, as   
   highlighted by Jim, is the serious harm which is caused by unsci   
   ntifically-based psychiatric diagnoses.    
   Paula J. Caplan, Ph.D, who has attacked the unscientific way in which   
   psychiatric diagnoses are invented, has spearheaded eight ethics complaints   
   against people in the American Psychiatric Association on the grounds that   
   this violates the ethical    
   principles of the medical profession.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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