THE 10TH BLOG FOR THE OUTLAW OF PSYCHIATRY NOW !

2008-03-22T12:13:00.000-07:00

BEWARE : A NEW "MENTAL ILLNESS" INVENTED BY THE SHRINKS. HAS BIG PHARMA THE "MEDICATIONS" FOR IT ? WOULD THEY BE "ANTIPSYCHOTICS" OR "ANTIDEPRESSANTS" ?
by Justice Lover

Let us leave aside the internet for now , although it is apparently a major headache for the rulers (BIG BUSINESS) as it keeps spreading the truth and exposing their crimes against humanity, including those of psychiatry itself !

What about the excessive nonstop lies by the rulers and by their stooges (like the shrinks, for example) ?

What about the excessive nonstop lies by the rulers' trusted zionist allies who cannot survive without their horrendous lies ?

What about the excessive greed and obsession with power of all those crooks, and their ambitions to rule the entire world at any cost, even if it means the destruction of life on our planet ?

Surely, if merely surfing and communicating via the internet is a "mental illness", then the rulers and their allies and stooges are all psychotics who should be locked up in loony bins immediately TO SAVE HUMANITY, as their greed and obsessions are infinitely more
dangerous !

The following is the official news from the bosses' media :

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23414957-2,00.html

"Excessive emails and text are a mental illness

March 23, 2008 01:03am

Article from:

PEOPLE who send excessive texts and emails may have a mental illness, according to an article in a leading psychiatric journal.

As more people leave the office computer, only to log on as soon as they get home, the American Journal of Psychiatry has found addiction to text messaging and emailing could be another form of mental illness.

The article, by Dr Jerald Block, said there were four symptoms: suffering from feelings of withdrawal when a computer cannot be accessed; an increased need for better equipment; need for more time to use it; and experiencing the negative repercussions of their addiction.

Dr Block said that although text messaging was not directly linked to the Internet, it was a form of instant messaging and needed to be included among the criteria.

"The chief reasons I see to consider it are motor vehicle accidents that are caused by cell phone instant messaging, stalking and harassment via instant messaging, and instant messaging at social, educational, (and) work functions where it creates problems," he said.

"It should be a pervasive and problematic pattern, though, not isolated incidents."
Leanne Battaglia, 21, said she would not classify herself as being clinically addicted to online communication, but could see how quickly the problem could develop.

"It's become a way of life now, but I don't think it's at that stage yet," Ms Battaglia said.
Despite sitting at a computer all day, the sales consultant admits she will often log on again when she gets home.

"I use it almost every night and during the day. I'm pretty much always on Facebook, eBay, ninemsn and gossip sites."

Ms Battaglia also sends about 20 text messages a day.

"I swear by my mobile, it's like a security blanket. I just feel really bare without it," she said.

Dr Robert Kaplan, a forensic psychiatrist at the Graduate School of Medicine, University of Wollongong, said he first saw a case of internet addiction in 1998.
Since that time, he has noticed a steady increase in the disorder among Australians.

According to a report titled Media And Communications In Australian Families 2007, the average child spends about one hour and 17 minutes on the internet each day, with teenagers aged 15 to 17 spending an average of 30 minutes sending text messages and another 25 minutes playing online games.

"I think in general it's escalating," Dr Kaplan said. "We now all live in an internet world, and it brings with it a range of problems."

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

2008-03-21T04:11:00.000-07:00

MORE ON THE IRRATIONAL,SADISTIC CRUELTY OF SOME STATE PSYCHIATRISTS IN VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA -
IS IT IN EXPECTATION OF HIGHER BRIBES FROM BIG PHARMA ?
IS IT BECAUSE OF THE FASCIST IDEOLOGY/TERRORISM INHERENT IN COERCIVE PSYCHIATRY ?
IS IT BECAUSE OF THE SHRINKS PEERS’ PRESSURE AND TO GET PROMOTED ?
OR IS IT, PERHAPS, BECAUSE OF ALL THE THREE REASONS ?
by Justice Lover

The extraordinary brutality of the psychiatric torture - under the cover of psychiatric “treatment” - which Miss Rebecca Merhav had to endure here in Melbourne, Australia, for over 30 years now must be considered a world scandal ! It certainly proves once more that psychiatry has nothing to do with science, much less with medicine, and least of all with any kind of therapy to anybody!

Rebecca has lost 30 of the best years of her life (including her child bearing age), her life expectancy for the future is now reduced by 25 years ( as a result of Antipsychotic drugs consumption), and the local state shrinks still insist that her torture by forced Antipsychotics should continue while she is incarcerated in the psychiatric ward of the Alfred Hospital, here in Melbourne, no matter what, and despite the strong objections by herself and strong protests by her father on her behalf !

Rebecca has been punished by the local shrinks for no offence commited. She is completely innocent ! She has been and she still is a normal person who has been wrongly labelled as “mentally ill” and as “psychotic”. Her “psychotic symptoms”, like hallucinations, delusions and confusion are the direct results of the Antipsychotics she has been forced to consume, and abrupt termination of them whenever she tried to abscond, to save her life. Even the local shrinks admit that she has never been any danger to anyone, including herself. There is absolutely no justification for her continued torture under the CTO, and for forcing her to risk sudden death, which the Antipsychotic cause. This is a case of completely irrational psychiatric torture, even according to psychiatric standards !

Please release her now !

Please cancel the CTO over her now !

Please begin now reducing the psychiatric drugs she is forced to consume until completely eliminated, without replacing them with any other psychiatric poisons !

Please save her life and allow her the full return to normal life now !

The following is the synopsis of Rebecca’s case prepared by her father in late 2006. It is part of the protest letter her father emailed to the “treating” psychiatrist . It concerns the recent imposition of Seroquel and Risperdal - two very dangerous Antipsychotics ! - on her. These deadly poisons have got daily adverse effects, on top of their long term dangers, adverse effects which turn the consumer’s daily life into misery and sufferings. Here, for example, is the testimony of one survivor of psychiatry who was forced to consume them too :
http://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=38134

“And the psychiatrist is doing what psychiatrists do: Trial and Error. I have tried the antipsychotic Seroquel (an evil poison - gives a feeling of dread and panic) and then Risperdone (robs me of any zest for life).”

Here is the letter to the shrink, including the Synopsis :

"To the treating psychiatrist,

On sunday morning, 9th March, I got a phone call from a Junction Clinic psychiatric nurse. She said that Rebecca, my daughter, had asked her to phone me and let me know she has been that morning once more incarcerated in the psychiatric ward of Alfred Hospital. When I asked the nurse for the reason, she replied that it is because Rebecca has been confused and "lost".

There are several irrational decisions and actions you recently have taken to the detriment of Rebecca. First, as you have wrongly insisted that forcing Rebecca to daily consume 400mg of Seroquel is "improving" her situation, you have misled your superior into changing his mind regarding the complete withdrawal of the Seroquel, a decision he conveyed to me by phone two weeks ago. Now, all of a sudden, you have made exactly the opposite decision, namely, that not only has the Seroquel not improved Rebecca situation but actually made it worse, so much so, that you have ordered her incarceration (as an involuntary patient) in the Alfred psychiatric ward !

It is no good saying in reply that "it is not the Seroquel to blame but Rebecca's "mental illness", which is an old worn out psychiatric cliche, and certainly not true in the case of Rebecca, and doubly wrong as an excuse for her incarceration. It is simply not rational to give the Seroquel imposition on the patient the credit for her "improvement", but to deny any adverse effects of the Seroquel when it is causing in reality the patient's confusion and disorientation - all within the space of a few days - and then have her incarcerated for that !

The second set of irrational decisions and actions by yourself, is in regrad to the incarceration itself. We all happen to be confused (and/or disoriented) from time to time, particularly following a sleepless night - should we expect to be incarcerated for that ? In the case of Rebecca, not only was she suffering from the adverse effects of the Seroquel and of the Risperdal which you forced her to take, but she has not had even a single restful full night sleep for over 2 years now as a result of the Clozapine first, and now as a result of the Seroquel and of the Risperdal, and her incarceration would certainly make her situation worse !

The third set of irrational decisions/actions by yourself also concerns Rebecca's incarceration, and it is as follows. On Saturday, March 8 ,I went with Rebecca to Carnegie to shop for food according to her wish. She did seem to be confused and at times even disoriented, and I mentioned that to the nurse when he phoned me in the afternoon. He wanted to know why Rebecca was not at home when he went to visit her ( and Rebecca mentioned to me this intended visit but said that no specific time was set for the visit, therefore I said to her that there was no point to delay Rebecca's need to buy the food she needed urgently), and I did ask him to point out to you that the Seroquel is causing her confusion and disorientation, therefore should be withdrawn completely (and gradually,of course). However, Rebecca, who is a resilient person, returned home safely late that afternoon, and I had absolutely no reason to be conerned, and nobody else should have. Then, the next morning, out of the blue, came that phone call to let me know that Rebecca has been incarcerated on your orders.

Don't you consider her an adult who has some basic human rights to be respected ?The synopsis below mentions the "treatment" of Rebecca by her previous "treating" psychiatrists . This synopsis was emailed to you early last year, but you choose to ignore it, and it is not rational to do so. However, your "treatment" of Rebecca is as irrational as theirs had been, and so have been the results ! Please read it to draw the logical conclusions for once !

All there is to be done to identify each of the 3 "treatments", namely, yours and your two predecessors is change the name of the doctor and change the name of the neuroleptic ("Antipsychotic") drug, and all the rest is almost identical , namely : use the CTO to incarcerate Rebecca for a few weeks in the psychiatric ward ,where she would be forced to consume a high level dose of the poison,then following her release supervise that she continues to swallow it daily, and as the "psychotic symptoms" get worse, incarcerate her again to experiment with another "Antipsychotic" drug, blaming the failure on the patient's "chronic illness" rather than on the shrink's bungle and on the fraudulent drug !

Please release Rebecca immediately, begin the reduction of the two neuroleptics immediately, and cancel immediately the CTO, to save her life now ! Please give her now a chance to return to normal life, and please respect her basic human rights now !

Looking forward to your early reply,

Benjamin Merhav

Here is the synopsis :

"1. The first wrong diagnosis and unnecessary treatment that followed

Christmas 1977 was the worst day in my daughter's life. It was shortly after she turned 15 that she was caught up in a domestic tangle, not of her making, to be referred wrongly to a psychiatric ward for "observation", following her mother's complaints. Those complaints were based on Rebecca's refusal to do the house chores as required by the mother. There was absolutely nothing wrong with Rebecca, but the mere referral by the psychiatrist was taken,apparently, to be a positive diagnosis of mental illness.

Upon her arrival she was immediately required to consume a psychiatric drug, and when she refused it was injected to her by force. Her refusal , by itself, was considered as a "worsening of her mental illness",therefore more injections followed with higher dosage of neuroleptics.

She then absconded, but only to get herself into worse trouble, because the abrupt termination of the neuroleptics played havoc on her brain (see Dr. Breggin below who says on page 16 "All psychiatric drugs can cause problems during withdrawal" ), and when returned to the ward her treating doctor considered her crisis as a "deterioration of her psychotic illness".

An Australian government website, of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, on the 21st of April ,2006, published a report: http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/health/HealthRepublish_1620772.htmtitled, Psychiatry Manual Linked to Drug Money , which proves that the diagnosis manual for psychiatrists was financed by the drug corporations. Could it be that the first wrong diagnosis of my daughter was due to the guidlines by such a manual ?

Furthermore, the financial interests of drug corporations require that compulsory drug treatment be entrenched and widespread so as to maximise their profits. It is well known that the level of drug corporations' profits is so high at present, that it is second only to the armament industry level of profits !

In any case, 29 years of compulsory "treatment" have not produced any beneficial results for my daughter, and therefore proved to be completely unnecessary. Moreover, most of the neuroleptic drugs she was forced to take have since been declared harmful by the psychiatric profession itself, and are not in use any longer, leaving my daughter with the pain, the trauma, and possibly damaged vital organs (like her liver and her kidneys, but hopefully not her brain) as a result of so much intake of potent and harmful synthetic chemicals.

The experience and research done by the USA veteran psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Breggin, http://www.breggin.com/ ,proves that most neuroleptics given to psychiatric patients are harmful rather than helpful (to some people more than to others, of course). However, the drug corporations have produced misleading advertising to sell their harmful drugs. In his book, Your Drug May Be Your Problem: How and Why to Stop Taking Psychiatric Drugs, (Perseus Books- Reading, Massachusetts - 1999),Dr. Breggin says that "Precisely because there is so little scientific backing for the use of psychiatric drugs, mystification and slogans are often communicated to doctors by drug advertising, and then to patients by doctors" (p. 112-123).

On page 37 he says that "Despite a hugely successful promotional campaign by drug companies and biological psychiatry, the effectiveness of most or all psychiatric drugs remains difficult to demonstrate. The drugs often prove no more effective than sugar pills, or placebos - and to accomplish even these limited positive results, the clinical trials and data that they generate typically have to be statistically manipulated" .

The question then begs itself : why force a patient to consume a drug which does no good, when the patient is not dangerous - not to herself and not to others ! - and therefore with no public interest in the matter, even if the patient is mentally ill, let alone in a case of wrong diagnosis like the case of my daughter ?

On page 77 Dr. Breggin says that even when a patient is diagnosed as psychotic then neuroleptic drugs do not eliminate the psychotic symptoms : "Contrary to claims, neuroleptics have no specific effects on irrational ideas (delusions) or perceptions (hallucinations). Like all other psychiatric drugs, they have the same impact on healthy animals, healthy volunteers, and patients - namely, the production of apathy and indifference" .

Moreover, the neuroleptics do have harmful effects. Here are some of harmful effects mentioned by Dr. Breggin in his above book :"Neuroleptic drugs cause brain damage evidenced by a movement disorder called tardive dyskinesia, but "Neuroleptics actually suppress the symptoms of tardive dyskinesia while the disease is developing. ... The rates of TD [tardive dyskinesia] are extremely high. Many standard textbooks estimate a rate of 5% - 7% per year in healthy young adults [who are taking neuroleptic drugs]. The rate is cumulative so that 25% - 35% of patients [taking neuroleptics]will develop the disorder in 5 years of treatment. Among the elderly [taking neuroleptics], rates of TD reach 20% or more per year. For a variety of reasons, including the failure to include tardive akathisia in estimates, the actual rates are probably much higher for all patients" (p. 78).On page 79 :"So-called antipsychotic or neuroleptic drugs cause a fatal disease called neuroleptic malignant syndrome in up to 2.4% of people taking them. "Using a low-end rate of 1 percent, Maxmen and Ward (1995, p. 33) estimate that 1,000 - 4,000 deaths occur in America each year as a result of neuroleptic malignant syndrome. The actual number is probably much greater" .

On page 81 :"Neuroleptic, also known as antipsychotic or major tranquilizer drugs subject almost every system in the body to impairment. Research, including a recent study, indicates that these drugs are toxic to cells in general".The most dangerous of all the neuroleptics is, of course, the Clozapine (Clozaril), the drug which Rebecca has been forced to take for more than a year now.

Here is what Dr. Breggin says at page 82 :"Clozaril ... was banned in some European countries because it caused so many fatalities; but the escalating power of drug companies subsequently led to its approval by the FDA" in the United States.There are ,of course, many more deadly risks that any consumer of Clozapine takes, such as diabetes, heart attacks, epilepsy, severe constipation etc. but in the case of Rebecca her immeidate and daily sufferings ( chronic insomnia,back pain, pain in bones and joints etc) make her daily life unbearable, and this is tantamount to torture !

It certainly cannot be considered as a medical treatment ! So this is her situation now, under the Clozapine, but she has been suffering for 29 years now ! Twenty nine years of trauma, torture, humiliation,degradation and loss of the 29 best years of her life ! Now it is already too late for her, for example, to have children and create her own family ! Under such circumstances no one can function better than a human wreck ! Why punish her for the rest of her life too ? Why force on her the risks of death ?

2. The only way to help Rebecca

Knowing my daughter I am hopeful that she is still a very capable and talented person. It is the compulsory drug treatment, the traumatic incarcerations, and her betrayal by her own mother that turned her disabled, a psychiatrically disabled person. Yet, despite her sufferings, despite the limitations imposed on her by the Clozapine, she never lost her hope and her will to return to normal life. She has been looking for a job, any work which would be available to her. She has been interested in various courses to study and improve her qualifications, and she has made many enquiries regarding her possible participation in such courses.She wants to live a normal life ! Why deny her any chance to live a normal life ?

Obviously, the only way to help her - indeed the only way to save her life ! - is to gradually reduce her intake of Clozapine, revoke the CTO, and eventually allow her to take up drug-free alternative treatment ( which was offered to her in Adelaide), to detoxfy her body, to return to society as an active member, to make friends and to live a normal life, the life she wants to live !

She badly needs physical activities ( which she likes very much, like swimming, tennis, netball) ;she badly needs friends to break through her isolation, but the Clozapine makes these important needs impossible for her to achieve. She has all the needs of any normal adult and there is no rational reason to deny fulfilment of her needs to her !
Why torture her instead for the rest of her life ?

The answer to the argument that she needs drug treatment because "she is sick" - and without debating the validity of this argument ! - is that OK, having been been taken off the drugs and then - in the worst case - facing a crisis again, it would never be too late to return to the psychiatric ward anywhere, and to resume the drug treatment, if there is no realistic alternative !

To close my appeal I would add this very important piece of informatiom :Around 1995, when Rebecca was getting treatment at Southen Clinic, in Moorabbin, her neuroleptic intake was on the minimum level. That followed her past demands, at the previous clinic at Albert Park, demands which I strongly supported, to start reducing her dose of neuroleptics intake. At first the treating doctors refused to even consider our demands, but then they decided to give it a try, and lo and behold the experiment did work ! With each reduction Rebecca felt better and her performance improved too !

So when she was moved to the Southern Clinic ( because of changing her residence) she was on the lowest level of the neuroleptic.We then asked the treating woman psychiatrist in the Southern clinic to take her off the drug altogether, and she arranged for a meeting with us so that she could consider our request. It was about an hour long meeting at the end of which the treating psychiatrist turned to me and said :

"I do not see any reason why she should be on any (psychiatric) drug !"

Upon hearing the good news Rebecca became very happy, and I could hardly catch up with her, as she was dancing (rather than walking) all the way back to her home. However, her happiness did not last long, because she tried to share it with her mother. The mother, who befriended an Israeli psychiatrist in Waiora Clinic ,followed his instructions.

That psychiatrist turned out to be a bad man as well as a bad doctor. He told Rebecca's mother that Rebecca should not be allowed to stop taking psychiatric drugs, and he offered his "help" by instructing the mother to get Rebecca moved immediately to Waiora Clinic under his "care".Rebecca, hardly a couple of weeks in Waiora Clinic, was told to take the Clozapine as the new "medication" for her, or else. She refused, of course, and that bad doctor then ordered the police to pick her up from home and drop her at the Heatherton Hospital ,where he was in charge of the involuntary unit.

To cut the story short, he failed to force the Clozapine on Rebecca, as I was strongly opposed , of course, to this new psychiatric atrocity against my daughter. However, he kept torturing her with the dangerous Risperdal, instead of Clozapine, for the first few years that Rebecca was obliged to be under "treatment" at the Waiora Clinic.I could go on to tell you how another treating psychitrist at the clinic bungled her treatment during last two years in Waiora, but I won't.

However, it is important to let you know that after her first incarceration at the Alfred , in July 2005, he did agree to gradually lower her Clozapine dose to 100mg, and with good results ! However, he bungled the treatment by ordering her to take Effexor as well, and when he realized his mistake, he withdraw the Effexor abruptly. The inevitable result was that Rebecca was plunged into a crisis of her doctor's making. Yet he continued his bungle by considering her crisis as a relapse, and by instantly doubling her Clozapine intake ! All of which made things worse for her, and yet the treating psychiatrist blamed her crisis on her "being very sick ",rather than admit that he was wrong, and try to correct his own mistakes !"

2008-03-17T18:13:00.000-07:00

http://www.stopshrinks.org/reading_room/nacp/nacp.html
Network Against Coercive Psychiatry

is an organization comprised of psychotherapists (including psychiatrists), survivors of psychiatric incarceration (commonly known as "mental patients") scholars and other concerned citizens.

OUR POSITION IS UNCOMPROMISING. WE BELIEVE THE "MENTAL HEALTH" ESTABLISHMENT HAS CONNED THE AMERICAN PEOPLE (as well as the rest of the world's people - J.L.).

The idea of "mental illness" is a misleading and degrading metaphor. "Psychiatric treatments" in mental hospitals are for the most part forms of physical and emotional abuse. Psychiatric "diagnoses" are demeaning labels without any scientific validity. The psychiatric Establishment is pushing dangerous drugs which they euphemistically call "medication."

Treatments in this century have ranged from revolving chairs to lobotomies to electrical assaults on the human brain to neurologically damaging drugs. There has been no revolution in the treatment of individuals who are psychiatrically labeled: it is an unbroken history of barbaric practices, justified by professionals as medical procedures designed to control patients' ostensible mental diseases.

THE STRUCTURE OF DEMOCRACY IS BEING UNDERMINED BY THE MENTAL HEALTH SYSTEM

The Network is emerging at an historical juncture that constitutes a time of potential danger as well as opportunity. The danger lies in the continued expansion of psychiatric power and of the merger of the "mental health" system with the American government. This forbodes a social control apparatus as totalitarian as that forseen by George Orwell in 1984. In this case conformity to social norms would be enforced by mental health professionals playing the role of Big Brother. The opportunity lies in the possible development of a social movement against the mental health system.

FOR WELL OVER THIRTY YEARS THEORISTS AND THERAPISTS HAVE BEEN WRITING DEVASTATING CRITIQUES OF THE MEDICAL MODEL OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR (as well as against any other psychiatric model - J.L.)

Thomas Szasz M.D. was the first to argue that to describe individuals who are having "problems in life" as mentally ill is to use a metaphor that is misleading and demeaning. It obscures the individuals real problems and it serves to justify psychiatric coercion and the gratuitous deprivation of individual liberty. R.D. Laing, the British psychiatrist, argued that "psychiatric treatment" of "schizophrenia" typically aborts what is essentially a natural process tending toward the reconstitution of the self on a more mature level.

Theodore Sarbin and James Mancuso conclude in their exhaustive study that despite 80 years of popularity, the "disease model" has failed to establish its value as either an explanatory theory or a practical tool. Family therapists like Jay Haley, Salvador Minuchin and the Mental Research Institute have demonstrated the extraordinary success of an approach that is not based on the metaphor of mental illness. These theorists/practitioners have had virtually no effect on public policy.

IF THE CRISIS IN THE MENTAL HEALTH SYSTEM IS TO BE RESOLVED THE "DISEASE MODEL" MUST BE REPLACED ( and with it the entire dogma and practice of psychiatry ! J.L.)

Viable models must be based on a developmental perspective. In the context of this perspective, psychological and spiritual crises, despair, anxiety, unusual behavior, and emotional ups and downs are not symptoms of chronic mental illnesses but natural manifestations of processes of individual and social growth and maturation. If this change in orientation is effected, the helping profession will be able to help people: it will help individuals overcome their addiction to psychiatric drugs that impair their ability to think and create, it will help reintegrate individuals into society by making available to them education and job training, housing and jobs-- it will give them the vision of a future worth struggling for.

In the absence of this fundamental philosophical change, mental health workers will continue to impede individuals' reintegration into society by branding them "mentally ill" and by withholding from them opportunities for social and spiritual advancement. The disastrous and unseemly results of the stunting of individual growth by the mental health system will continue to be blamed on "the tragedy of mental illness."

A MONSTROUS ABUSE OF POWER IS OCCURRING RIGHT NOW (by psychiatry in collaboration with corrupt politicians - J.L.)

The American public is aware through exposure to a variety of documentary materials- including such realistic works of the imagination as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey- that "mental health" professionals in the public sector in another era abused the authority vested in them. The public has not confronted the fact- and the media has not exposed the fact- that the same kind of monstrous abuse of power is occurring right now. If the radical humanitarian changes advocated by the critics of the mental health system are to be implemented, it will be because the American people will begin to realize that they have been abused and mystified by the mental health professions and because they will seize the opportunity to assert their rights and to demand accountability from those who claim to serve them.

PEOPLE ARE BEING TORTURED, OPPRESSED AND DENIED OWNERSHIP OF THEIR LIVES

Psychiatric survivors have been organizing for human rights and against psychiatric oppression since the mid-1970's. George Ebert, a psychiatric survivor, recently described the reason for his twelve year involvement in the movement against psychiatric oppression. "As long as the psychiatric state remains, as long as people are being tortured, oppressed, dehumanized, and denied ownership of their lives, we who have survived are obligated to struggle to break the silence." The Network Against Coercive Psychiatry calls upon all socially conscious persons to join the movement.

YOU CAN HELP( by demanding the immediate outlaw of psychiatry - J.L.)!

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

2008-03-13T04:54:00.000-07:00

FURTHER INCREASE OF THE PSYCHIATRIC TORTURE OF REBECCA MERHAV IN THE PSYCHIATRIC WARD ON THE ORDERS OF THE DIRECTOR OF THE WARD, AND OF HIS PSYCHIATRIC STAFF THERE
By Justice Lover

Today, 13th of March, 2008, Rebecca and her father attended a meeting with psychiatrists at psychiatric ward of the local Alfred Hospital , where Rebecca is incarcerated. Ignoring all of Benjamin’s previous pleas to them for the immediate release Rebecca from her irrational incarceration - pleas by phone and by email - they made it clear that the “treatment” (psychiatric torture) of Rebecca while she is being incarcerated will be further intensified. Accordingly, beginning from today, she will be forced to consume daily 600mg of Seroquel (instead of 400mg) as the first stage.

They also admitted at the meeting that they do know that they force the “treatment” with the full knowledge of all the deadly risks and all the adverse effects of the Seroquel which they are forcing Rebecca to consume. Their “justification” is that they “weigh” against the deadly risks and adverse effects the possible “benefits” gained by Seroquel . When Benjamin pointed out to them that there are no benefits, and that Rebecca would only suffer as a result, and her life would be at risk ,they said that they will monitor the situation, and if necessary they will try another psychiatric drug on her while she remains incarcerated there.

This is a new psychiatric atrocity, of course, against Rebecca. Yet, although it is a moral crime which the shrinks are perpetrating against Rebecca, they are protected by law, without any real accountability, even if Rebecca would be crushed to death, or suffer irreversible damage to her brain and/or to her body, as a result of their “treatment”.

A few days ago, while on the phone to one of the psychiatrists ,he sounded very angry at Rebecca’s father, according to the latter. He actually alluded to him that all the protests by Benjamin and by Rebecca’s friends over the internet would lead him to do the opposite of what he has been asked to do, namely, that the torture (“treatment”) of Rebecca would intensify no matter what. He also alluded that he would take legal action against Benjamin for his protests and for exposing the moral crimes of psychiatry ( which he termed as “defamation”).

Could it be that now Rebecca is getting the first installment of his revenge ? Considering the barbaric history of psychiatry this could be a real possibility and real danger for Rebecca, unless there is going to be a world outcry over this continuous cruel psychiatric torture of Rebecca Merhav, torture which has been going on for over 30 years now !

2008-03-11T17:00:00.000-07:00

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=
104&STORY=/www/story/03-11-2008/
0004772066&EDATE=

Open Letter by Dr. Fred Baughman
to Speaker Pelosi on Approval of
Mental Health Parity Bill

    SAN DIEGO, March 11 /PRNewswire/ --
Dr. Fred Baughman released the following
statement today:

Dear Madam Speaker,

   Believing, with you,
that "Illness of the
brain must be treated
like illness anywhere
else in the body,"
the House of Represen
tatives have passed a
mental health parity
bill.

The problem is that
there is no medical
proof that psychiat
ric diagnoses are
actual diseases,
disorders or illne
sses of the brain.
Claiming they are,
as purveyors of
psychiatry and
"mental health"
assert,is the
greatest health
care fraud in
U.S. history.

    In fact,
psychiatry is
distinct from
the rest of
medicine in
that they
do not
examine for,
test for,
or diagnose,
physical abnormalities --
diseases.

    Make no mistake:
psychiatrists absent
themselves from the
medical profession
the moment they
enter their psych
iatric training
programs, and
leave behind the
tools with which
to diagnose phys
ical diseases,
embracing instead,
interviews,
behavior check-
lists and their
labeling-billing
bible,the Diag
nostic and Stat
istical Manual
published by the
American Psychi
atric Association.

Predictably, the
Psychiatric Asso
ciation's Manual
of diseases
has exploded
from 112 mental
disorders in
1952 to 374
in the 1994,
DSM-IV.

By parroting
the "disease"
lie, psych
iatry guaran
tees a never
-ending supp
ly of new
"patients"
made up of
normals of
all ages,
while abro
gating the
informed
consent
rights of
every one
of them.

My specialty,
neurology, is
officially
dedicated to
the diagnosis
and treatment
of organic-
physical
diseases of
the brain and
nervous sys
tem. As a
Fellow of the
American
Academy of
Neurology,
I have fought
and lobbied
to get its
leaders to
clarify for
the public
what a
disease is
and is not,
to help
educate
the public
and to help
them educate
themselves
in the face
of the
ubiquitous
"disease"-
"chemical
imbalance"
lie.

I am appalled
by the actions
of the AAN, 
the American 
Medical Assoc
iation, the 
American Acad
emy of Pediat
rics, and of 
all of organ
ized medicine
for accepting
and using the
psychiatric 
disease lie,
which even
the White House,
has bought into
by arguing it 
"would effect
ively mandate
coverage of a
broad range 
of diseases."

Passage of your
bill means there
will no longer
be limits to the
coverage of psych
iatric "diseases"
any more than
there would be
for cancer,
heart disease,
and diabetes.

Here we have
proof that
you in the
House -- at
least the 268
members, who
voted this
bill into
existence,
have been
duped--
or worse.

On September 29,
2000, I testified
before the Commit
tee on Education
and the Workforce,
on Behavioral 
Drugs in Schools,
saying: "The biggest
health care fraud 
in US history is
the representation
of ADHD to be a
disease, and the
drugging of 
millions of normal
children."
"Without an iota
of proof the Nat
ional Institute on
Mental Health 
proclaims the 
children "brain-
diseased," "abnormal".
ADHD is a total,
100% fraud."

In 1993 I testified on 
the nature of psychia
tric diagnosis at the
National Institute of
Health:
"If, as I am convinced,
these entities are
not diseases, it would
be unethical to initia
te research to evaluate
biological interven
tions- unethical and
fatally flawed
scientifically."

On December 13, 1999, Surgeon
General,David Satcher announced:
" ...Mental illnesses are 
physical illnesses ... we know 
the chemical disorders
we are treating ... "

I responded: "there is
no abnormality in life,
or at autopsy, in
depression,bipolar
disorder and other
mental illnesses ...
your role in this
deception is clear...
you should resign."

Americans are routinely
lied to in this regard
and their right to 
informed consent
is universally
abrogated.

They are coerced and 
preyed upon by govern
ment schools,Child
Protective Services,
Departments of Child
and Family Services,
family and juvenile
courts.

If they resist such
labeling and drugging
they will be deemed
to be guilty of 
medical negligence
and stand to lose
custody of their
children.
This is the "mental 
health parity"
this bill would further
enable.

The media coverage
of your enactment 
of the House mental
health parity bill
observes, "Research
ers have found bio
logical causes and 
effective treatments
for numerous mental
illnesses.


But no matter how
passionate current
and past members of 
government feel about
the issue, whether or
not there are proven,
demonstrable,
abnormalities to
validate mental, psych
iatric diagnoses as
diseases is entirely
a matter for scientific
medicine to answer,
patient-by patient. No
child can be called
ADHD-diseased, by
adoption of a 
list of behaviors by
the DSM Committee of
the APA,and none can
be diagnosed by
any act of the
Congress or White House.
That is my duty as a
physician, and it is a duty
I cannot abdicate.

I would welcome an opportunity
to testify before your committee-
under oath.



Sincerely,


Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD,
Neurologist
Fellow, American Academy of Neurology
Author: The ADHD Fraud- How Psychiatry
Makes "Patients" of Normal Children
http://www.Trafford.com


Contact: Dr. Fred Baughman
Phone: 619.440.8236
Date: March 11, 2008
E-mail:  fredbaughmanmd@cox.net

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

2008-03-08T19:12:00.000-08:00

REBECCA MERHAV IS INCARCERATED ONCE MORE IN THE LOONY BIN, AND FOR NO OTHER OFFICIAL REASON THAN HER CONFUSION (WHICH IS THE DIRECT RESULT OF THE 400mg SEROQUEL "ANTIPSYCHOTIC"SHE IS DAILY FORCED TO CONSUME BY THE SAME SHRINK WHO ORDERED HER INCARCERATION). Please help her now !
by Justice Lover

Yesterday Rebecca was visited at her home by her father. He was alarmed to see her confused and disoriented. Yet he was not surprised. He has been pleading with her "treating psychiatrist", as well as with her superiors, for many weeks now not to continue with this daily 400mg of an harmful, dangerous, useless, and unnecessary "antipsychotic". Now, beginning from this morning Rebecca is being punished once more by being incarcerated for the wrongs and mistakes of her shrink who either does not know what to do, or could not care less if Rebecca would be crushed to death by her "treatment".

There are several horror striking aspects to this over 30 year old psychiatric torture and crushing process employed by the local shrinks against the innocent ,sensitive, loving, good natured and intelligent Rebecca Merhav. One of them is that almost the same cycle of torture keeps repeating itself by the shrinks, knowingly, deliberately, mecilessly and viciously against Rebecca, their victim-patient - all without regret ,with no remorse ! This is obvious from the following synopsis prepared by Rebecca's father originally for another psychitrist in late 2006, and passed on to the present treating psychitrist, when early last year she took over the role of "treating" Rebecca from him.

The synopsis below mentions the "treatment" of Rebecca by her last two"treating" psychiatrists of Junction Clinic. All there is to be done to identify each of the 3 "treatments" is change the name of the shrink and change the name of the neuroleptic ("Antipsychotic") drug, all the rest is almost identical , namely : use the CTO to incarcerate Rebecca for a few weeks in the loony
bin ,where she would be forced to consume a high level dose of the poison,then following her release supervise that she continues to swallow it daily, and as the "psychotic symptoms"get worse, incarcerate her again to experiment with another "Antipsychotic" drug, blaming the failure on the patient's "chronic illness" rather than on the shrink's bungle and on the fraudulent drug !

Here is the synopsis :

"1. The first wrong diagnosis and unnecessary treatment that followed

Christmas 1977 was the worst day in my daughter's life. It was shortly after she turned 15 that she was caught up in a domestic tangle, not of her making, to be referred wrongly to a psychiatric ward for "observation", following her mother's complaints. Those complaints were based on Rebecca's refusal to do the house chores as required by the mother. There was absolutely nothing wrong with Rebecca, but the mere referral by the diagnosing psychiatrist was taken,apparently, to be a positive diagnosis of mental illness.

Upon her arrival she was immediately required to consume a psychiatric drug, and when she refused it was injected to her by force. Her refusal , by itself, was considered as a "worsening of her mental illness",therefore more injections followed with higher dosage of neuroleptics. She then absconded, but only to get herself into worse trouble, because the abrupt termination of the neuroleptics played havoc on her brain (see Dr. Breggin below who says on page 16 "All psychiatric drugs can cause problems during withdrawal" ), and when returned to the ward her treating doctor considered her crisis as a "deterioration of her psychotic illness".

An Australian government website, of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, on the 21st of April this year, published a report :
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/health/HealthRepublish_1620772.htm
titled, Psychiatry Manual Linked to Drug Money , which proves that the diagnosis manual for psychiatrists was financed by the drug corporations. Could it be that the first wrong diagnosis of my daughter was due to the guidlines by such a manual ?

Furthermore, the financial interests of drug corporations require that compulsory drug treatment be entrenched and widespread so as to maximise their profits. It is well known that the level of drug corporations' profits is so high at present, that it is second only to the armament industry level of profits !

In any case, 29 years of compulsory "treatment" have not produced any
beneficial results for my daughter, and therefore proved to be completely unnecessary. Moreover, most of the neuroleptic drugs she was forced to take have since been declared harmful by the psychiatric profession itself, and are not in use any longer, leaving my daughter with the pain, the trauma, and possibly damaged vital organs (like her liver and her kidneys, but hopefully not her brain) as a result of so much intake of potent and harmful synthetic chemicals.

The experience and research done by the USA veteran psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Breggin, http://www.breggin.com/ ,proves that most neuroleptics given to psychiatric patients are harmful rather than helpful (to some people more than to others, of course). However, the drug corporations have produced misleading advertising to sell their harmful drugs. In his book, Your Drug May Be Your Problem: How and Why to Stop Taking Psychiatric Drugs, (Perseus Books- Reading, Massachusetts - 1999),Dr. Breggin says that "Precisely because there is so little scientific backing for the use of psychiatric drugs, mystification and slogans are often communicated to doctors by drug advertising, and then to patients by doctors" (p. 112-123).

On page 37 he says that "Despite a hugely successful promotional campaign by drug companies and biological psychiatry, the effectiveness of most or all psychiatric drugs remains difficult to demonstrate. The drugs often prove no more effective than sugar pills, or placebos - and to accomplish even these limited positive results, the clinical trials and data that they generate typically have to be statistically manipulated" . The question then begs itself : why force
a patient to consume a drug which does no good, when the patient is not dangerous - not to herself and not to others ! - and therefore with no public interest in the matter, even if the patient is mentally ill, let alone in a case of wrong diagnosis like the case of my daughter ?

On page 77 Dr. Breggin says that even when a patient is diagnosed as psychotic then neuroleptic drugs do not eliminate the psychotic symptoms : "Contrary to claims, neuroleptics have no specific effects on irrational ideas (delusions) or perceptions (hallucinations). Like all other psychiatric drugs, they have the same impact on healthy animals, healthy volunteers, and patients - namely, the production of apathy and indifference" . Moreover, the neuroleptics do have harmful effects. Here are some of harmful effects mentioned by Dr. Breggin in his above book :

"Neuroleptic drugs cause brain damage evidenced by a movement disorder called tardive dyskinesia, but "Neuroleptics actually suppress the symptoms of tardive dyskinesia while the disease is developing. ... The rates of TD [tardive dyskinesia] are extremely high. Many standard textbooks estimate a rate of 5% - 7% per year in healthy young adults [who are taking neuroleptic drugs]. The rate is cumulative so that 25% - 35% of patients [taking neuroleptics]
will develop the disorder in 5 years of treatment. Among the elderly [taking neuroleptics], rates of TD reach 20% or more per year. For a variety of reasons, including the failure to include tardive akathisia in estimates, the actual rates are probably much higher for all patients" (p. 78).

On page 79 :

"So-called antipsychotic or neuroleptic drugs cause a fatal disease called neuroleptic malignant syndrome in up to 2.4% of people taking them. "Using a low-end rate of 1 percent, Maxmen and Ward (1995, p. 33) estimate that 1,000 - 4,000 deaths occur in America each year as a result of neuroleptic malignant syndrome. The actual number is probably much greater" .

On page 81 :

"Neuroleptic, also known as antipsychotic or major tranquilizer drugs subject almost every system in the body to impairment. Research, including a recent study, indicates that these drugs are toxic to cells in general".

The most dangerous of all the neuroleptics is, of course, the Clozapine (Clozaril), the drug which Rebecca has been forced to take for more than a year now. Here is what Dr. Breggin says at page 82 :

"Clozaril ... was banned in some European countries because it caused so many fatalities; but the escalating power of drug companies subsequently led to its approval by the FDA" in the United States.

There are ,of course, many more deadly risks that any consumer of Clozapine takes, such as diabetes, heart attacks, epilepsy, severe constipation etc. but in the case of Rebecca her immeidate and daily sufferings ( chronic insomnia,back pain, pain in bones and joints etc) make her daily life unbearable, and this is tantamount to torture ! It certainly cannot be considered as a medical treatment !

So this is her situation now, under the Clozapine, but she has been suffering for 29 years now ! Twenty nine years of trauma, torture, humiliation,degradation and loss of the 29 best years of her life ! Now it is already too late for her, for example, to have children and create her own family ! Under such circumstances no one can function better than a human wreck ! Why punish her for the rest of her life too ? Why force on her the risks of
death ?

2. The only way to help Rebecca

Knowing my daughter I am hopeful that she is still a very capable and talented person. It is the compulsory drug treatment, the traumatic incarcerations, and her betrayal by her own mother that turned her disabled, a psychiatrically disabled person. Yet, despite her sufferings, despite the limitations imposed on her by the Clozapine, she never lost her hope and her will to return to normal life. She has been looking for a job, any work which would be available to her. She has been interested in various courses to study and improve her qualifications, and she has made many enquiries regarding her possible participation in such courses.She wants to live
a normal life ! Why deny her any chance to live a normal life ?

Obviously, the only way to help her - indeed the only way to save her life ! - is to gradually reduce her intake of Clozapine, revoke the CTO, and eventually allow her to take up drug-free alternative treatment ( which was offered to her in Adelaide), to detoxfy her body, to return to society as an active member, to make friends and to live a normal life, the life she wants to live !
She badly needs physical activities ( which she likes very much, like swimming, tennis, netball) ;

she badly needs friends to break through her isolation, but the Clozapine makes these important needs impossible for her to achieve. She has all the needs of any normal adult and there is no rational reason to deny fulfilment of her needs to her ! Why torture her instead for the rest of her life ?

The answer to the argument that she needs drug treatment because "she is sick" - and without debating the validity of this argument ! - is that OK, having been been taken off the drugs and then - in the worst case - facing a crisis again, it would never be too late to return to the psychiatric ward anywhere, and to resume the drug treatment, if there is no realistic
alternative !

To close my appeal I would add this very important piece of informatiom :

Around 1995, when Rebecca was getting treatment at Southen Clinic, in Moorabbin, her neuroleptic intake was on the minimum level. That followed her past demands, at the previous clinic at Albert Park, demands which I strongly supported, to start reducing her dose of neuroleptics intake. At first the treating doctors refused to even consider our demands, but then they decided to give it a try, and lo and behold the experiment did work ! With each reduction Rebecca felt better and her performance improved too ! So when she was moved to the Southern Clinic ( because of changing her residence) she was on the lowest level of the neuroleptic.

We then asked the treating woman psychiatrist in the Southern clinic to take her off the drug altogether, and she arranged for a meeting with us so that she could consider our request. It was about an hour long meeting at the end of which the treating psychiatrist turned to me and said :

"I do not see any reason why she should be on any (psychiatric) drug !"

Upon hearing the good news Rebecca became very happy, and I could hardly catch up with her, as she was dancing (rather than walking) all the way back to her home. However, her happiness did not last long, because she tried to share it with her mother. The mother, who befriended an Israeli psychiatrist in Waiora Clinic ,followed his instructions. That psychiatrist turned out to be a bad man as well as a bad doctor. He told Rebecca's mother that Rebecca should not be allowed to stop taking psychiatric drugs, and he offered his "help" by instructing the mother to get Rebecca moved immediately to Waiora Clinic under his "care".

Rebecca, hardly a couple of weeks in Waiora Clinic, was told to take the Clozapine as the new "medication" for her, or else. She refused, of course, and that bad doctor then ordered the police to pick her up from home and drop her at the Heatherton Hospital ,where he was in charge of the involuntary unit. To cut the story short, he failed to force the Clozapine on Rebecca, as I was strongly opposed , of course, to this new psychiatric atrocity against my daughter. However, he kept torturing her with the dangerous Risperdal, instead of Clozapine, for the first few years that Rebecca was obliged to be under "treatment" at the Waiora Clinic.

I could go on to tell you how an earlier psychitrist bungled her treatment during last two years in Waiora, but I won't. However, it is important to let you know that after her first incarceration at the Alfred , in July 2005, he did agree to gradually lower her Clozapine dose to 100mg, and with good results ! However, he bungled the treatment by ordering her to take Effexor as well, and when he realized his mistake, he withdraw the Effexor abruptly. The inevitable result was that
Rebecca was plunged into a crisis of her doctor's making. Yet he continued his bungle by considering her crisis as a relapse, and by instantly doubling her Clozapine intake ! All of which made things worse for her, and yet Dr. Shields blamed her crisis on her "being very sick ",rather than admit that he was wrong, and try to correct his own mistakes !"

Please help save Rebecca's life now !

2008-03-07T01:13:00.000-08:00

BEWARE : BIG PHARMA-PSYCHIATRY TERRORISM AND GANGSTERISM HAVE BEEN LEGALISED, ARE PROTECTED BY STATE LEGISLATION AND ARE IMPOSED BY THE STATE ON THE ENTIRE POPULATION UNDER THE FALSE COVER OF “MEDICAL (MENTAL HEALTH) TREATMENT”
By Justice Lover

Dr. Fred Baughman, the renowned American neurologist, is quoted by Wikipedia describing the Big Pharma-psychiatry alliance as follows :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Baughman

“… the only way the pharma-psychiatry-government cartel differs for the Cali, Medellin, Tijuana, and opium cartels of the world is that the pharma-psychiatry-government cartel target everyone, from cradle to grave—your parents, and grandparents in their nursing home beds, those truly physically ill, adding their never-essential drugs to essential drugs, compromising real medical and surgical treatment, and infants, toddlers, preschoolers and all they can force or court-order to swallow their brain-altering, brain-damaging, “chemical balancers.” We are warned by Le Carre, that their power, in league with government, is the greatest of all threats to our liberty and right of self-determination".

In other words, the Big Pharma-psychiatry alliance has been using methods similar to those used by organised crime syndicates against innocent people to maintain and to increase colossal profits and worldwide power.

In the chapter Conclusions of his book, The Myth of Mental Illness (Paladin, 1972) , Prof. Thomas Szasz , MD (professor of psychiatry), states as as follows :"It is customary to define psychiatry as a medical specialty concerned with the study, diagnosis, and treatment of mental illness. This is a worthless and misleading definition. Mental illness is a myth. Psychiatrists are not concerned with mental illnesses and their treatment. In actual practice they deal with personal,social, and ethical problems in living."

Also in his book, Schizophrenia - The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry, the same author states that "There is, in short, no such thing as schizophrenia" (Syracuse University Press, 1988, p. 191).

Another American veteran psychiatrist,Dr. Peter Breggin , in his book TOXIC PSYCHIATRY (HarperCollins,London,1993) describes psychiatry at p. 453 as follows :"...Organised psychiatry is big business more than it is a profession. As a big business, managed by APA and NIMH, it developes media relationships, hires PR firms, developes its medical image, holds press conferences to publicise its products, lobbies on behalf of its interests, and issues 'scientific reports that protect its members from malpractice suits by lending legitimacy to brain- damaging technologies."

Earlier in the same book, at page 451 Breggin describes psychiatry and its partners as follows :"What we have been examining is a giant combine similar to the military-industrial complex and involving the psychiatric profession (APA), government (NIMH and FDA), private industry (drug companies and health insurers), education (medical schools),and organisations representing the parents of patients (NAMI and other family groups)."

As for psychiatric drugs, here is an opinion of one honest psychiatrist :

http://www.antipsychiatry.org/drsmith1.htm

"Why Psychiatric Drugs Are Always Bad

by Douglas C. Smith, M.D.

I no longer recommend psychiatric medications to anyone.This seems radical in this country because we are in the midst of the "biological revolution." Everyone seems to assume medications are specifically effective for various mental illnesses which are at least in part chemical or genetic in origin. I believe the science behind this is seriously flawed. It is based on false assumptions.

This seems radical in this country because we are in the midst of the "biological revolution." Everyone seems to assume medications are specifically effective for various mental illnesses which are at least in part chemical or genetic in origin. I believe the science behind this is seriously flawed. It is based on false assumptions that lead to self-perpetuating mythology (and huge profits for drug companies).

I first gave up on tranquilizers, then antidepressants, then all psychiatric drugs. I learned that there are certain general principles that govern all psychoactive substances and biologic treatments.General Principles:

(1) "Mental illnesses," even severe ones, are relational (I'd say spiritual as well). Psychiatry, by focusing almost exclusively on biology, is making itself increasingly irrelevant.

(2) Psychoactive substances provide at best, temporary relief, but always make things worse in the long run. They make things worse directly (chemically) and indirectly by distracting from the real issues.

(3) All psychoactive substances have rebound and withdrawal-related problems. "Relapse" rates, in general, during withdrawal from psychiatric drugs, are about 10 times higher than would be expected if the drug had never been taken.

(4) "All biopsychiatric treatments share a common mode of action -- the disruption of normal brain function" (Peter Breggin, M.D., Brain Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry, Springer Pub. Co., 1997, p. 3). Drugs never correct imbalances. They never improve the brain. They "work" by impairing the brain and dampening feelings in various ways.
-----------------------

THE AUTHOR, Douglas C. Smith, M.D., graduated from Indiana University (1982 - Phi Beta Kappa) and Indiana University School of Medicine (1986) and completed his psychiatry training in 1990 and is board certified in psychiatry. He also has had additional training in psychoanalysis. He currently lives and practices in Juneau, Alaska."
==========

Dr. Baughman, as a veteran neurologist, warns people against brain damage caused by psychiatric drugs as follows :
http://adhdfraud.org/frameit.asp?src=commentary.htm

Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD: “…it is a known fact that all psychotropic drugs relieve mental, psychic pain by damaging the brain. All of them without exception damage the brain. No mental illness damages the brain. The only abnormalities detectible in such patients in life or, at autopsy are those due to the drugs they are on, have been on, ECT or psychosurgery. The empty promise of psychopharmacology rests on the fact that their is no disease/damage to begin with. Psychopharmacologists posit they can improve upon the normal brain with their drugs when they only damage it--they only damage the previously normal brain--the organ of adaptation, of learning.”

Consider this outrage : the “treating” shrink considers the neuroleptic drugs disruption of the patient’s normal brain function (and leading to irreversible brain damage) as an “improvement” therefore maintains the high dose ( or increase it to “achieve improvement”) while deceiving the patient as well as the psychiatric nurses who are supposed to help the patient, but in reality serve only the shrinks and Big Pharma.

However, the neuroleptics (“Antipsychotics”) make psychosis worse, not better, as the following email by a British veteran psychiatrist to Rebecca Merhav’s father proves :

"Hi Ben,

You have my complete sympathy - for 50 years the evidence has been that all so called anti-psychotic drugs are in fact pro-psychotics - they prolong the psychosis. I cover what should be done in my recent book 'unsafe at any dose'.

I have been ejected from 6 consultant psychiatric posts - and effectively barred from ever working in the NHS again - however, my research into the software problems of mental disease convinces me, as evidence from long ago confirms, that all psychoses are 100% curable - whereas all drugs make things worse.

I wish you well in your campaign, and when I get a media pedestal I shall give you my full support.

Best Wishes,
Bob Johnson"
======================

Worse still, not only are the psychiatric drugs unnecessary, very dangerous , with many adverse and damaging effects, they actually prevent the patient’s recovery, and they shorten the patient’s life span by 25 years !

“The Alternative Mental Health News,
Issue 67, July 2007
Editor's Note
(mail@alternativementalhealth.com)

A recent USA Today headline—quite startling, really—splashed across its pages: MENTALLY ILL DIE 25 YEARS EARLIER, ON AVERAGE. One would think this would strike the psychiatric world like a 9/11, stirring drastic changes. It did not.

They've known for decades that psychiatric patients die earlier that the average population. But since the early 1990s the lifespan gap has DOUBLED. That's right. Patients used to live 10-15 years less. Now it's 25. Still, psychiatrists are not storming CNN to get the message out.Even more damning is the fact that the research that discovered this 25-year gap was published in 2006 and is only now reaching a major newspaper.

We are left to wonder if the lives of the mentally ill are considered less important—so much so that the guardians of their care, modern psychiatry and its professional organizations, brushes off this news with a sigh and the usual finger-pointing.

If a headline announced that the general public was dying 10-15 years earlier, what do you think the response would be from the public and private sectors?Also, one would think that alarm bells would be ringing over two matters.First, the only thing that has significantly changed in psychiatry in the past two decades is the medications. "Modern" medications cause diabetes, obesity and other medical complications. A reasonable person could conclude that they are shortening the lives of millions of people by 10-15 years and that this could easily be regarded as a national crisis.

In fact, this was stated blatantly in the January 2007 issue of the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry by researcher Mary Seeman: "The general health of individuals with schizophrenia suffers from neglect, poor life style choices, and current treatments that increase death rates."Secondly, while numerous explanations have traditionally been given for why the mentally ill die early, even before the 1990s, one reason that is never given is the most obvious reason of all: They are physically ill.

Perhaps most mental illnesses are caused by hidden physical disorders that not only affects the person's mind but his body as well and will kill him early if not detected and treated.When a population has a life expectancy of 1/3 less than the rest of the population, why is this most obvious conclusion not being addressed? Why are millions spent on more drugs for symptoms and almost no treatments being developed that detect and address underlying physiological causes?"We're going in the wrong direction and have to change course," says Joseph director of psychiatric services for the Missouri Department of Mental Health
and lead author of the report.

The facts are simple. A person with a mental disorder had a far better chance of living longer 50 years ago than he does today. When medical doctors "treat" people resulting in an ADDITIONAL 10-15 year loss of lifespan, calling it a "wrong direction" is charitable at best. A court might call it negligent homicide—on a very large scale."

=========================

Many Schizophrenics Recover Faster Without Drugs

Research published in the May 2007 issue of the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease has found that many people diagnosed with schizophrenia actually recover without medication. The study's author's concluded, "The current longitudinal data suggest not all schizophrenia patients need to use antipsychotic medications continuously throughout their lives."The research found that, after 10 years, 79% of patients on antipsychotics were psychotic, whereas 23% of those not on medication were psychotic. After 15 years, 65 per cent of patients on antipsychotics were psychotic, whereas only 28% of those not on medication were psychotic.

Those who did well off medication tended to have certain character traits including better premorbid (before the illness) developmental achievements, favorable personality and attitudinal approaches, less vulnerability, greater resilience, and favorable prognostic factors.The study concluded that there is a subgroup of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia who do not immediately relapse while off antipsychotics and experience intervals of recovery."
========================

In conclusion the above mentioned facts and scientific evidence are sufficient to convince any doubtful person that Big Pharma-psychiatry alliance are presiding over a huge racket, a very dangerous racket, which is protected by the state ! Therefore, no psychiatrist can be considered innocent by plain human morality rules ! Yet, there are apparently, some “lost souls” even amongst the corrupt shrinks, who are simply very confused about their profession, such as the following example :

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/07/22/141824.php :

"A Psychiatrist Airs His Professional Doubts
Written by Dr Michael Benjamin
Published July 22, 2007

Did you ever stop to wonder or ask yourself 'what am I doing?' I did and in many ways I wish I had not. As a Psychiatrist, I still do not know what our profession is trying to do. It seems we have a series of solutions and now we are trying to find the problems that they can solve. My observations are either anecdotal or part of research that I have done as a Psychiatric Auditor and are based on my 38 years experience in the field of Psychiatry.

Psychiatrists are treating two major populations: Adults and Juveniles. These populations are further subdivided into severe and mild disturbances.I am not a Juvenile Psychiatrist, but I speak from impressions and my readings in the field. There is nothing more heart breaking than the severely mentally ill juvenile. We have increased our arsenal of medications, but in results and understanding, compared to other medical professions, our success rate is poor.

Prevention is a distant dream.The mildly mentally ill juveniles are a cause of concern to me. Psychiatry has waltzed into learning disorders with the crusading gusto that only psychiatrists seem to have. We are witnessing the 'medicinization' of a former outlawed drug. The criteria for using Ritalin far too often go unmet. There is no doubt in my mind that children that would not be given Ritalin by experts in the field are receiving it. No one can say with honesty and certainty what the effect of Ritalin use in juveniles will have on their brains as they age.

Yet the Ritalin pushers have an almost messianic fervor for their 'solution'.In the adult population, generally speaking, the influence of the Drug Companies is terrifying. Very few research projects disprove the efficacy of a drug when the trial is sponsored by the drug's manufacturer. Harmful facts that may be discovered are not disclosed. When they are, their importance and significance are downplayed.

For example, one of the major, popular, new anti psychotic drugs actively and substantially increases the risk factors for heart attacks or CVAs. In all the adult population the major medical goal is to reduce these risk factors. Only severely mentally ill psychiatric patients are the exception.It has been shown that after 10 years of illness a psychotic not taking medications is four times more likely to be symptom free than one that is taking medications.

Read that again. You would expect the complete opposite. In spite of the hype, the quality of life in patients using the older medications are better than the new. So we are paying more, endangering more and getting less. Not very impressive is it? The mantra of today's Psychiatric Services are something like this:A patient gets ill.He goes to the emergency room where he is admitted or referred to community service organizations.On admission he is diagnosed, medicated and sent home to continue care in the community.He continues his therapy in the community.He is only re-referred if the community cannot cope.

What happens in reality?There are no hard and fast rules or consistency as to who is received and why. A large proportion of first time hospitalized patients will never re-appear in the Mental-Health system. Why were they hospitalized in the first place? Referrals to community care from the ER are done badly, if at all.

The vast majority of hospitalized patients remain unknown to community care after discharge.A large proportion of the patients are no longer taking medications in a meaningful way three months after discharge from hospital.Most of the patients seen in community care were not hospitalized.Grim reading indeed.Over 30% of the adult population will visit their Family Doctor in any year. 30% of them, 10% of the population, are considered to have emotional problems.For some reason these emotional disturbances are treated as if they are mild forms of mental illness. They are not.

Very often we are seeing stress caused by poor coping styles or skills. They are treated as if they have, or about to have depression, anxiety, or panic. The vast majority are offered medication. They should be offered alternative drug-free modalities such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or Psychotherapy. Of those referred to psychotherapy much less than half will get past three visits.

The major explanation of 'file closure' in these cases is drop-out. 'Completion of therapy' ranks as one of the least given reasons.Are there any bright points? Yes there are:CBT: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is causing a rethink of treatment. It asks a patient to think about their feelings and behavior and thus influence subsequent behavior. This is a good answer for the patients with emotional problems in primary care. It enhances coping skills. This is a different approach from the attempt to cure an illness that does not exist.

We can now offer Online CBT in a Self-Help format over the Internet.Compliance and adherence: This is not a problem inherent only to Psychiatry. Doctors are not trained to explain and ensure compliance. They do not have the time to do simple weekly follow ups. This is easily done using the Internet web sites.

Medical Management: Uniform systematic treatment is essential. It is possible to ascertain accurately patient needs and utilization. It is possible to follow the two parameters in real time. Thus ensuring efficient performance of the Mental-Health system as a unit. Alongside this, the individual patient is never unknowingly lost. This can be done in real time and online.Yes there is a lot of criticism here. Is it justified? It certainly is honest and based on my clinical experience. I have hopefully done my part by initiating a discussion and providing solutions, as I see them to the problems as I saw them.
===========
Doctor Michael Benjamin is a Psychiatrist with 38 years experience. “

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

2008-03-05T01:13:00.000-08:00

ON THE NEED FOR THE MISSING PART IN THE VERDICTS OF THE FOUCAULT AND OF THE RUSSELL TRIBUNALS ON PSYCHIATRY
by Justice Lover

These two tribunals - the Foucault Tribunal which had adjudicated upon psychiatry some 10 years ago, and the Russell Tribunal which had adjudicated upon psychiatry almost 7 years ago - have not completed their jobs. The urgent problem of psychiatry remains unresolved !

Having found psychiatry and its practitioners guilty of crimes against humanity - as the Foucault Tribunal expressly did in its verdict - they should have denounced the shrinks as international criminals, and they should have proclaimed an absolute ban on psychiatry which is a fascist terrorist organisation/dogma extremely dangerous to the entire humanity! Perhaps a new third tribunal is needed for such a proclamation to take place !

The two tribunals limited themselves to impotent demands for reform of this morally criminal profession. Psychiatry and its shrinks act as an arm of Big Pharma, are being promoted by Big Pharma, and are being heavily bribed by Big Pharma in return for their services to Big Pharma. Psychiatric prescriptions, psychiatric coercion, and psychiatric propaganda lies have been made by the shrinks and by their professional organisations for the benefits of Big Pharma, and to the detriment of their innocent victim-patients. How can you reform fascist terrorism ?
Psychiatry has not been reformed, cannot be reformed, will not be reformed. It must be outlawed !

There are no "innocent" shrinks - whether they are employed by the state (and they are the most vicious,as they knowingly use their power to force torture and death on their victim-patients under the pretext of "medical treatment"),employed by big Pharma (directly or otherwise), or in private practice (clinical, academic or "research"). Every psychiatrist is a perpetrator or an accomplice, or else he/she would have resigned from this terrorist profession which has no place in a civilized society !

As a reminder ,the verdicts of the 2 tribunals are as follows (emphasis by Justice lover) :

http://www.foucault.de/index.htm
"Foucault Tribunal on the state of Psychiatry

The Verdict
of the Foucault Tribunal

We conclude that, being unwilling to renounce the use of force, violence and coercion, psychiatry is guilty of crimes against humanity: the deliberate destruction of dignity, liberty and life. Most of all through the legal category of "mental patient" which permits a total deprivation of human and civil rights and the laws of natural justice.

Furthermore, psychiatry cannot pretend to the art of healing, having violated the Hippocratic Oath through a conscious use of harmful drugs, which caused in particular the world wide epidemic of tardive dyskinesia, as well as other interventions which we recognize as tortures: involuntary confinement, forced drugging, four point restraints, electroshock, all forms of psychosurgery and outpatient commitment.

These practices and ideology allowed the psychiatrists during the Nazi era to go to the extreme of systematic mass murder of inmates under the pretext of "treatment".
Psychiatry not only refuses to renounce the force it has historically obtained from the state, it even takes on the role of a highly paid and respected agent of social control and international police force over behavior and the repression of political and social dissent.

We find psychiatry guilty of the combination of force and unaccountability, a classic definition of totalitarian systems. We demand the abolition of the "mental patients" laws as a first step toward making psychiatry accountable to society. To this end, compensation will have to be made for the harms it has done. Public funds must also be made available for humane and dignified alternatives to Psychiatry.

Reasons for the Verdict

The defense speaks of the therapeutic necessity for psychiatric coercion and, if necessary, the use of physical force. They admit though, that in "good psychiatric institutions" as little coercion as possible is used. Coercion is apparently not therapeutic, rather it is dependent on the type of psychiatry practiced. We condemn all forms of psychiatric coercion as a violation of human rights.

The laws for the mentally ill prescribe psychiatric coercion in the case of danger to oneself or others. In practice this is widely transgressed. The matter is only one of endangerment; no crime has been committed. This means that preventive detention is being practiced.

The defense describes someone as being mentally ill because his ability to help himself is reduced. They believe that he should be relieved of certain societal demands because of impairments in his ability to experience and behave as expected by society.

We are of the opinion that the accepted idea of illness is inadequate. In this case an institution such as a psychiatric hospital cannot offer any assistance.

We are of the opinion that treatment by doctors should only be applied on a voluntary basis.

It is especially dangerous that many judges are biased and that they agree with the expert opinions of the psychiatrists.

Psychiatric survivors have a right to demand financial compensation for any pain and suffering they experienced.

Berlin, 2nd of May 1998 ."

Three years later, the crimes of psychiatry were condemned again , and this time by the famous tribunal of Bertrand Russell, the Russell Tribunal , as follows :

http://www.freedom-of-thought.de/index.html

"Verdict of the Russell Tribunal on Psychiatry

As a result of the evidence it has heard in its first session in Berlin over the weekend of June 30/July 1, 2001, the Tribunal is convinced that the serious abuse of human rights in the name of psychiatry is widespread but largely unrecognized.

In accordance with the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights the majority of the jury deeply deplore the incarceration of people against their will in the name of psychiatry. The perpetration of such practices is a threat to individual and collective liberty everywhere.

We consider the concept of "mental illness" and the "medical model" of psychiatry to explain human behaviour dangerous and fallacious because it is deterministic (particularly in the case of bio-psychiatry) deprives people of choice and responsibility. It even justifies concepts such as the legal category of "mental patient" which permits a total deprivation of human and civil rights and actually is used to exculpate anti-social and criminal actions.

We deplore the action of the Free University which reneged upon its promise to host the Tribunal following pressure of its Department of Psychiatry. Nevertheless we are determined to continue our investigations and hearings and to use the media and all means of communication available to explore these abuses and to alert public opinion to the dangers to human freedom presented by the uncritical acceptance of the claims and practices of psychiatry. We think further investigation should be conducted to explore specific psychiatric abuses: forced drugging, electroshock, four point restraint and involuntary hospitalization.

Strict legal and political supervision of mental hospitals and psychiatric practices is a prerequisite for the effective protection of human rights. Legal mechanisms should include legal representation, access to relevant documents, civil or criminal liability for incarceration and prohibition of discrimination against "mental patients". Further political and public steps should be taken including critical public examination of the role of psychiatry, its scientific basis and the justifiability of contemporary psychiatric practice.

Psychiatry not only refuses to renounce the force it has historically obtained from the state, it even takes on the role of a highly paid and respected agent of social control and international police force over behaviour and the repression of political and social dissent.

We find psychiatry guilty of the combination of force and unaccountability, a classic definition of totalitarian systems. We demand the abolition of the "mental health" laws as a first step toward making psychiatry accountable to society. To this end, compensation should be made for harms it has done. Public funds should be made available for humane and dignified alternatives to coercive psychiatry."

JOIN THE DEMAND TO OUTLAW PSYCHIATRY NOW !

ESTABLISH NOW AN INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNAL FOR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY PERPETRATED BY SHRINKS, BY BIG PHARMA, AND BY THEIR ACCOMPLICES !

BAN NOW ALL PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS PRODUCED BY BIG PHARMA !

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

2008-03-03T22:18:00.000-08:00

Saving Rebecca NOW from being crushed to death by psychiatric "treatment"

Dear Doctor,

the following two articles should help you save Rebecca, if her life is of any value to you. The first is a paper presented in 2006 by Dr. Joanna Moncrieff, MBBS, MRCPsych, senior lecturer in Psychiatry in the UK. I quote only her summary, but the link would lead you to the full text. The second is a recent article by a British journalist who specialises on mental health issues. Here they are :

http://www.soteria.freeuk.com/medhypdrugred.pdf
“Why is it so difficult to stop psychiatric drug
treatment?
It may be nothing to do with the original problem
Joanna Moncrieff
Joanna Moncrieff, MBBS, MRCPsych
Senior Lecturer, Department of Mental Health Sciences
University College London, Wolfson Building, Riding House Street, London, UK

Summary

In this paper, I argue that the problems that occur after discontinuation or reduction of long-term psychiatric drug treatment may be caused by the process of drug withdrawal itself, rather than representing the course of the underlying illness.
Adverse effects induced by discontinuation of psychiatric medication include: (1) a somatic
discontinuation syndrome that includes psychological symptoms which may be mistaken for relapse,
(2) a rapid onset psychotic reaction after withdrawal of both conventional neuroleptic drugs and some atypicals, notably clozapine (sometimes referred to as supersensitivity psychosis), (3) a psychological reaction to withdrawal, which may be mistaken for relapse or may itself precipitate relapse,
(4) a genuine relapse of the underlying condition precipitated by the process of withdrawal. The implications of these effects include the possibility that much of the research on
maintenance treatment is flawed and that the recurrent nature of psychiatric conditions may sometimes be iatrogenic.
If withdrawal induced adverse effects could be effectively managed, the success of drug discontinuation might be much greater than usually assumed and might outweigh the disadvantages of continued treatment.”

================

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/adam_james/2008/03/myth_of_the_antipsychotic.html
“Myth of the antipsychotic
The psychiatric profession is ignoring evidence that treatment with antipsychotics can be harmful, according to a new book.
By Adam James
Adam James is a freelance journalist, former Mind journalist of the year, and editor of mental health website www.psychminded.co.uk.
March 2, 2008

Antipsychotic drugs don't work, are causing a brain damage epidemic and almost triple the risk of dying early, a new book claims. Yet the mental health establishment, as it did with Prozac, is failing to take the evidence seriously.

Christian was slouched in a chair in Bradford psychiatric unit. He was, seemingly, only half-conscious, half alive. He could hardly speak, let alone raise his head. Christian had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Two days before, in a haze of paranoia, he had punched a colleague of mine at a day centre. So Christian was sectioned and medicated, heavily, with neuroleptic drugs.
Most people, on seeing Christian, would have described him as being so whacked out he was a dribbling wreck. The drug-advisory body, the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) would say the neuroleptic treatment had successfully "calmed" Christian, in preparation for treating the "underlying psychiatric condition".

Neuroleptics - such as Clozapine, Olanzapine, Risperidone and Seroquel - are the "primary treatment" for psychosis, particularly schizophrenia. Indeed, 98%-100% of people diagnosed with schizophrenia inside our psychiatric units - and 90% living in the community - are on neuroleptics, also called antipsychotics. Nice's http://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/index.jsp?action=byID&r=true&o=10916"guidelines for the treatment of schizophrenia say: "There is well established evidence for the efficacy of antipsychotic drugs."

A similar efficacy used to be claimed for Prozac and other SSRIs in the treatment of depression. But a study published last Tuesday could well have pulled the plug on Prozac.
And now a London NHS psychiatrist, Joanna Moncrieff, has similarly endeavoured to expose the "myth" of antipsychotics. Whereas Moncrieff has already highlighted antidepressant non-effectiveness, it is her research on antipsychotics that is more shocking. The evidence shows, she says, that antipsychotics not only do not work long-term they also cause brain damage - a fact which is being "fatally" overlooked. Plus, because of a cocktail of vicious side-effects, antipsychotics almost triple a person's risk of dying prematurely.
Moncrieff particularly strikes out at her own profession, psychiatry, claiming it is ignoring the negative evidence for antipsychotics. In her book, The Myth of The Chemical Cure, Moncrieff argues, effectively, that psychiatry is guilty of gross scientific misconduct.

Having examined decades of clinical trials, Moncrieff's first point is that once variables such as placebo and drug withdrawal effects are accounted for, there is no concrete evidence for antipsychotic long-term effectiveness. This is a radically different interpretation of the meta-analyses and trials Nice used to arrive at its opposite conclusion. But Moncrieff is confident her scrutiny of the evidence is valid.

At the heart of years of dissent against psychiatry through the ages has been its use of drugs, particularly antipsychotics, to treat distress. Do such drugs actually target any "psychiatric condition"? Or are they chemical control - a socially-useful reduction of the paranoid, deluded, distressed, bizarre and odd into semi-vegetative zombies?
Historically, whatever dissenters thought has been ignored. So, it appears, have new studies which indicate that antipsychotics do not work long-term. For example, a US study last year in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease reported that people diagnosed with schizophrenia and not taking antipsychotics are more likely to recover than those on the drugs. The study was on 145 patients, and researchers reported that, after 15 years, 65% of patients on antipsychotics were psychotic, whereas only 28% of those not on medication were psychotic. A staggering finding, surely? So where were the mainstream media yelps of "breakthrough in schizophrenia treatment". Not a squeak.

Moncrieff's second point is that the psychiatric establishment, underpinned by the pharmaceutical industry, has glossed over studies showing that antipsychotics cause extensive damage - the most startling being permanent brain atrophy (brain damage) or tardive dyskinesia. As in Parkinson's Disease, patients suffer involuntary, repetitive movements, memory loss and behaviour changes. Antipsychotics cause atrophy within a year, Moncrieff says. She accuses her colleagues of risking creating an "epidemic of iatrogenic brain damage".
Moncrieff is a hard-nosed scientist, so she is respectfully reserved. But gross scientific misconduct is her accusation. "It is as if the psychiatric community can not bear to acknowledge its own published findings," she writes.
How worrying it is, then that the Healthcare Commission should report last year that almost 40% of people with psychosis are on levels of antipsychotics exceeding recommended limits. Such levels cause heart attacks. Indeed, the National Patient Safety Agency claims heart failure from antipsychotics is a likely cause for some of the 40 average annual "unexplained" deaths of patients on British mental health wards. Other effects of antipsychotics include massive weight gain (metabolic impairment) and increased risk of diabetes.
Two years ago, The British Journal of Psychiatry - Britain's most respected psychiatry journal - published a study reporting that people on antipsychotics were 2.5 times more likely to die prematurely. The researchers warned there was an "urgent need" to investigate whether this was due to antipsychotics. But so ingrained is the medication culture in mental health that many psychiatrists feel that not medicating early with antipsychotics amounts to negligence, Moncrieff notes.
Moncrieff does acknowledge there is evidence for the short-term effectiveness of antipsychotics. But again Moncrieff asks psychiatry to be honest. Moncrieff points out that when antipsychotics, such as chlorpromazine, were first used in the 1950s they were "major tranquillisers". Why? Because that's an accurate description of their effect, particularly short term. They sedate, or tranquillise, the emotions, so reducing the anxiety of paranoia and delusions. Any person on antipsychotics is likely to verify this (go to askapatient.com). Now, however, these drugs are referred to as "antipsychotics". For Moncrieff, this is a wheeze because there's no evidence that antipsychotics act directly on the "symptoms" - paranoia, delusions, hallucinations - of those diagnosed with psychosis. There's nothing antipsychotic about antipsychotics.

So what are the alternatives? Moncrieff - like her fellow psychiatrists in a group called the Critical Psychiatry Network - asks services to look seriously at non-drug approaches, such as the Soteria Network in America. She believes psychiatrists such as herself should no longer have unparalleled powers to forcibly detain and treat patients. Instead, they should be "pharmaceutical advisers" engaging in "democratic drug treatment" with patients.
Psychiatrists should be involved in "shared decision-making" with patients, and would have to go to civil courts to argue their case for compulsory treatment. "Psychiatry would be a more modest enterprise," writes Moncrieff, "no longer claiming to be able to alter the underlying course of psychological disturbance, but thereby avoiding some of the damage associated with the untrammelled use of imaginary chemical cures."

The mental health establishment should learn from the Prozac story and pay attention. It's about time.”

(Emphasis by JusticeLover)

2008-03-02T15:57:00.000-08:00

STATEMENT BY THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION AGAINST PSYCHIATRIC ASSAULT (IAAPA) SECRETARY

The following statement was emailed to me today by Rene Talbot,IAAPA(International Association Against Psychiatric Assault) Secretary (r.talbot@berlin.de)

“Never trust the judges! Struggle politically for the abolition of the mental health laws!

[please snowball this message on newsboards and your own e-mail address lists]

Statement on the publication of the expert opinion by lawyers Kaleck & Co. on Monday 25/2/2008 concerning the irreconcilability of the Berlin mental heath law with the UN Disability Convention.

Ten years ago the Foucault Tribunal [ http://www.foucault.de ] and 7 years ago the Russell Tribunal [ http://www.freedom-of-thought.de ] took place in Berlin. Both tribunals included in their verdict the demand for the abolition of the "mental patients" laws as a first step toward making psychiatry accountable to society.Now a fulfillment of this demand might be reached by the fact that on 30/3/2007 the German government signed the UN Disability Convention passed by the UN General Assembly on 13.12.2006.

With the intended ratification of this convention by both houses of the German lawmaking system, our assumption is that implicitly coercive psychiatry can entirely be brought to fall ,and because of this hope, we commissioned a legal expert opinion on this, using the Berlin PsychKG (the mental health law in Berlin) as an example. For this purpose we contracted the law firm of the renowned specialist lawyer in human rights questions and the chairman of the “Republican Lawyers' Association”, Wolfgang Kaleck.

This expert opinion published today in the regional state Berlin Parliament already has considerable support from commentators such as tenured professor Wolf-Dieter Narr and tenured professor Eckard Rohrmann. We were particularly pleased by the comments of Law Professor Theresia Degener, who supports the expert opinion in its conclusion. Mrs. Professor Degener is a special expert for the UN Disability Convention because as part of the German delegation, she participated considerably in it's development.

The Federal Government and its supporting parties, by signing it, have documented that they too want the ratification of the convention. Because the abolition of coercive psychiatry - to our regret - was unfortunately not explicitly stipulated in the convention, the implicit logic of the convention is now pointed out by the expert opinion, which leads to the same result: the legislator should only ratify the convention if, in doing so, at the same time it eliminates the three legal columns of coercive psychiatry. Although the expert opinion quite specifically only examines the reconcilability of the convention with the Berlin PsychKG, it is transferable to all other PsychKG's of all other federal states.

The second column of coercive psychiatry, the incapacitation against the will of the individual, euphemistically called "guardianship" ("Betreuung"), is explicitly contradicted by Article 12. In addition, regarding the UN Disability Convention, the law will have to be changed by the abolition of § 63 of the penal code [forensic psychiatry after a insanity defence], as proved by the dissertation by Annelie Prapolinat [ http://www.sub.uni-hamburg.de/opus/volltexte/2004/2271/pdf/Dissertation.pdf ]. This dissertation is unreservedly supported by the expert opinion by tenured professor Wolf-Dieter Narr [ http://www.die-bpe.de/kommentare/index.htm#narr ] commissioned by the “Committee for Constitutional Rights and Democracy” [a highly respected human rights organisation], quote: If one reads Annelie Prapolinat's work and again studies § 63 of the penal code, then it rapidly falls apart like mouldy mushrooms and leaves nothing.

Although I am extraordinarily satisfied with the result of the expert opinion by lawyers Kaleck, Hilbrans and Scharmer, I would like to refer to the points in which it substantially deviates from the opinion of the Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Psychiatrie-Erfahrener (die-BPE, an organisation of German survivors of psychiatry http://www.die-bpe.de ):
a) as mentioned in footnote 54 of the expert opinion, die-BPE has always denied the existence of mental illness, but rather regards it as an invention for the mystification of medical violence.

Therefore in the expert opinion, the term "so-called mentally ill" should be replaced by "alleged mentally ill". b) die-BPE does in fact see the criteria for torture as being fulfilled in psychiatric coercive treatment as designated in the UN Anti-Torture Convention of 10.12.1984 and has another opinion with regard to the statement on page 27 of the expert opinion concerning Art. 15 of the UN Disability Convention.

I am very pleased by the fact that Member of Parliament Mr. Behrendt and the Berlin Green parliamentary group is publicly presenting this expert opinion together with us and in doing so shows their readiness to discuss the implicit consequences of the UN Disability Convention. In this regard, one thing is certain: with the publication of this expert opinion we link the demand on the legislators in the federal states and on a federal level to get rid of coercive psychiatry immediately, so that the UN Disability Convention can then be ratified.

We would be very pleased if the Berlin parliament would abolish at short notice and without substitution all coercive passages of the Berlin PsychKG.

This statement was presented by me, René Talbot, board member of the Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Psychiatrie-Erfahrener e.V.
----------------

If you can read German or want to translate it in your own language, the complete expert opinion is available on the internet: http://www.die-bpe.de/stellungnahmeThe commentators statements - only in German - are available on the internet: http://www.die-bpe.de/kommentareOur first press statement issued on 29th of March in German: http://www.die-bpe.de/#brief

2008-02-29T00:59:00.000-08:00

Antidepressants Linked to 52 % Suicides among Swedish women, Antipsychotics linked to 26%

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org/ and http://ahrp.blogspot.com/

FYI

Despite the abysmal failure of SSRI Antidepressants to demonstrate clinically significant efficacy above placebo, and despite the severity of their adverse effects--including increased risk of suicide--the drugs have their powerful financially invested advocates who appear to be undeterred by science, by medicine's "do no harm" principle, or by the mounting preventable human casualties.The news headlines garnered by the latest scientific meta-analysis of 38 SSRI trials submitted to the FDA confirms that at best 82% of the drugs'clinical efficacy is attributable to the placebo effect. In another 9trials, excluded from the meta-analysis by Irving Kirsch and colleagues, the antidepressant failed to achieve the efficacy of the placebo. http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/feb/27/mentalhealth.health1?gusrc=rss

Though these drugs lack clinical efficacy, they come with severe risks of harm--most notably, suicide--which is now acknowledged in a Black Box label warning. An alarming report by Sweden's National Board of Health and Welfare revealsthat 80% of all adult suicides (18-84) reported in 2006 to the NationalBoard of Health and Welfare, were committed by persons "treated" with psychiatric drugs: 50% of those who committed suicide were on an SSRI, 60%had been on an antipsychotic. The number of women who committed suicide in 2006, was 377. Of these, 197(52%) had filled a prescription for antidepressants within 180 days beforetheir death; and 29 women (8%) had filled a prescription for antipsychotics within 180 days before they committed suicide.Furthermore, the number of suicide attempts among young people in Sweden is increasing.

In Sweden, health care providers are required to report all suicides committed up to four weeks after a patient's last health care visit. Last year, the Swedish Parliament mandated that the suicide registry include a detailed record of a victims recent psychopharmaceutical history. In sharp contrast to Sweden's effort to reduce suicides by documenting the use of psychoactive prescription drugs by those who committed suicide, to evaluate whether to encourage reduced use of these drugs, the United States Congress is in the process of passing a law that would surely INCREASE women's use of antidepressants and, hence, INCREASE suicides.The bill, HR 20, incorporating S. 1375, is promoted as "The Melanie BlockerStokes MOTHERS Act" ostensibly to combat postpartum depression.

The bill would authorize "screening" and "treating" women deemed "depressed"after giving birth. The bill's covert intent is to INCREASE use of SSRI antidepressants and antipsychotics.What's scary is that HR 20, authorizing appropriations for fiscal years2008-2010, has already passed the House with ne'er any resistance!

Instead, a grass roots crusader against HR 20, has stepped up to the plate:Amy Philo, a mother who became homicidally psychotic following ingestion ofZoloft prescribed by a psychiatrist who kept increasing the dose tofrightening ill effects. Her experience led her to found Children and Adults Against Drugging America- http://www.chaada.org/See her story and videos on YouTube:http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=W4B8I_8wz6I andhttp://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LQW23XCmOCw&feature=relatedSign the petition to stop the "Mothers Act" which will benefit thepharmaceutical-industrial complex, but cause great harm to American women,children and their families. http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-the-dangerous-and-invasive-mothers-act .

For evidence of SSRI-linked suicide and SSRI-linked violence see: 1. Arif Khan, Shirin Khan, Russell Kolts, Walter A Brown. Suicide rates inclinical trials of SSRIs, other antidepressants, and placebo: analysis ofFDA reports. Am J Psychiatry. 2003 Apr ;160 (4):790-2. Ignore the misleading abstracts which are belied by the findings. Dr. ArifKhan conducted exhaustive analyses of FDA data documenting suicides in antidepressant and antipsychotic drug trials and the suicide and attempted suicide rates are staggering. See: http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/0902/06.php.

Bear in mind that patients who are actively suicidal are excluded by protocol in all such trials. Khan's work demonstrated that the phenomenon of drug induced suicide is not confined to the SSRI class of medication but can be shown in an even greater degree in antipsychotics.

The suicide rates for both antipsychotics and the SSRI/SNRI substances were massive (well over700) as opposed to the rate in the general population which is in the verylow teens (10 - 12/100,000). 2. Dean Fergusson, Steve Doucette, Kathleen Cranley Glass, Stan Shapiro,David Healy, Paul Hebert, Brian Hutton . Association between suicide attempts and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors: systematic review of randomised controlled trials. BMJ. 2005 Feb 19;330:396 15718539 3. Healy D, Herxheimer A, Menkes DB (2006). "Antidepressants and violence:problems at the interface of medicine and law". PLoS Med. 3 (9): e372http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0030372

Contact:

Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974

Following are the relevant Swedish articles :

http://www.thelocal.se/9792/20080128/

More Swedes attempt suicide
28 Jan 08

The number of suicide attempts among young people in Sweden is increasing.The rise among young women has been particularly sharp, although the figure for young men is also up.* Baby height linked to suicide (24 Jan 08)* Young Swedish women kill themselves more often (4 Oct 07)* Sweat could reveal suicide risk (7 Aug 07)

The figures come in a report published on Monday by the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare, which shows that the greatest rise in attempted suicides in 2006 was among women in the 15-24 age group.A total of 140,000 people were admitted to hospital in 2006 for 'deliberate self-destructive action', the official term used in medical registers forsuicide attempts and other forms of self-harm. Overdoses of tablets were most common.The number of people who succeeded in killing themselves also increased,particularly among women aged 15-24. Some 8.4 women per 100,000 in the 15-24age group committed suicide in 2006, the highest figure since 1979,according to official records."This is a terrible development, and we have no scientific studies that explain why, although the social climate is tougher these days," Professor Britta Alin Åkerman at the Karolinska Institute's Institution for SuicidePrevention told Svenska Dagbladet.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://www.transworldnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?id=33878&cat=10

Antidepressants behind 52 percent of all suicides among women

by Janne Larsson

Incredible data have just been revealed that antidepressant drugs were behind 52 percent of all suicides among women (18-84) in Sweden (2006).United States 1/21/2008 08:04 PM GMT (TransWorldNews)This is not data from a limited study; it instead concerns information on a national level for ALL suicides (18-84 years) for 2006.

The information is unique; registries now exist in Sweden making it possible for the National Board of Health and Welfare to see how many of the suicides were preceded by psychiatric drug treatment.Among a total number of 377 women who committed suicide, 197 (52%) had filled a prescription for antidepressants within 180 days before their death. And 29 women (8%) had filled a prescription for neuroleptics ("antipsychotics") ONLY within 180 days before the suicide.This means that 229 women - 60% - of those who committed suicide (18-84) in Sweden (2006) had filled a prescription for antidepressant drugs OR neuroleptics within 180 days before their suicide.Neuroleptics were involved in total in 97 (26%) of the suicides among women, (68 women, 18%, got BOTH antidepressants and neuroleptics).

NOT included in these figures is the percentage of women who got other forms of psychiatric drugs, like benzodiazepines.The data are revealed just after the news broke that pharmaceutical companies have systematically hidden negative and exaggerated positive results in their clinical trials of antidepressants (see article Antidepressant Studies Unpublished in NYT), thus misleading patients and doctors for many years.

In general, pharmaceutical companies have used a "blackmail strategy" to get doctors and sad patients to believe that they MUST use the drugs - or else. In ads with pictures of gravestones they have proclaimed: "A depression can end unexpectedly fast" (Wyeth for Effexor.) Leading psychiatrists with financial interests in increased sales have been writing endlessly in medical journals about the “protective effect” of antidepressants against suicide. Shamelessly false statements that the psychiatric drugs correct a chemical imbalance (like a lack of serotonin) in the brain are still part of the official drug labels: "In depression the normal access to these [chemical] substances is lowered. Antidepressants can restore the deficits [of chemical substances] and give a normal function of the brain" (label for Remeron; Organon/ Schering-Plough). "These medications help restore the normal levels of serotonin in the brain" (Cipramil/Celexa; Lundbeck/ Forest Laboratories).

But the new data from Sweden tell the real story: Antidepressants do NOT have a positive effect in preventing suicides - they were part of 52 percent of all cases of suicide among women (18-84) for the year 2006; they did obviously not correct any form of “chemical imbalance” in the brain for those women.An earlier investigation 2007 of documents, gotten via FOI requests, gave information about suicides (2006) committed IN health care and UP TO four weeks after last health care visit.

The information was made available when a new law was enacted making it mandatory to report all such suicides to the National Board of Health and Welfare. 367 suicides were reported per this law for 2006: More than 80 percent of the persons who committed suicide were “treated” with psychiatric drugs; in well over 50 percent of the cases the persons got antidepressants, in more than 60 neuroleptics or antidepressants.

Senior officials at the Board were not interested in revealing anything more about this. They had adopted the marketing lines of pharmaceutical companies and relied on evaluations from well-known Swedish SSRI-proponents, (like psychiatrists G. Isacsson and A.L. von Knorring) who for more than a decade have touted the new antidepressants as “life saving”. A senior official even said that “evidence based treatment of the underlying psychiatric disorder can reduce the risk for suicide”, referring to the “protective effect” that he believed antidepressant drugs had. The data about the large percentage of persons who had committed suicide, after having been “treated” with psychiatric drugs, were brushed aside by the official, saying the data “cannot currently be seen as a representative source for a discussion about these questions” (!).

When the agency published its first analysis of cases from 2006, reported per the new law, there was not a single word written about the most compelling fact: Well over 80 percent of the persons who killed themselves were treated with psychiatric drugs.A lot of requests have been made to get the Board to publish ALL data about suicides and preceding psychiatric drug treatment. They have been turned down. Decisions have been taken at the very top of the Board not to let the public know.But now data have leaked out about ALL suicides (18-84) for 2006.

For women the results are as above.For men the figures for 2006 are as follows: Among a total of 878 men (18-84) who had committed suicide, 291 (33%) had filled a prescription for antidepressants within 180 days before their death. And 41 men (5%) had filled a prescription for neuroleptics ("antipsychotics") ONLY within 180 days before the suicide.This means that 332 men - 38% - of those who committed suicide (18-84) in Sweden (2006) had filled a prescription for antidepressant drugs OR neuroleptics within 180 days before their suicide.

Neuroleptics were involved in total in 119 (14%) of the suicides among men, (78 men, 9%, got BOTH antidepressants and neuroleptics). NOT included in these figures is the percentage of men who got other forms of psychiatric drugs.Thus it can be said that 561 (45%) of ALL 1255 persons (18-84) who committed suicide in Sweden 2006 had filled a prescription for antidepressant drugs OR neuroleptics (not at all counting other psychiatric drugs) within 180 days before their suicide.A certain number of the persons killing themselves can be expected to be suffering from drug induced akathisia – an extreme inner restlessness, a feeling of having to creep out of ones skin, a completely unbearable condition. It is CAUSED by the psychiatric drugs, not by any “underlying disease”.

Akathisia is a condition that can make a person commit violent acts – against self or others. It is a condition officially recognized and taken up in the warning texts for the drugs. A number of the persons can also be expected to be affected by mania or hypomania – again CAUSED by the drugs; conditions also officially recognized; conditions that can lead to suicide.

Some of the valid questions in an objective investigation of suicides, where psychiatric drugs preceded the tragic event, would be: Was the suicide an effect of an unbearable condition created by the drugs (like akathisia)? Had the drug dose been increased – with a catastrophic result – when the worsened condition in actual fact was caused by the drug (while being blamed on the “underlying disease”)? Had the patient been subject to an abrupt discontinuation (with severe withdrawal symptoms as the result)? Was the catastrophic result very likely caused by concomitant use of psychiatric drugs? Had the patient been informed about all the serious harmful effects that these drugs can cause?None of these questions are part of the form used when investigation suicides, worked out by senior officials at the National Board of Health and Welfare.

These questions would – if asked and the answers used – save lives. But they would also threaten the profits of pharmaceutical companies and the careers of their hired psychiatrists. Therefore they cannot be asked.The Swedish government has been notified about the concealment of data at the National Board of Health and Welfare (the hiding of data and neglect of analysis of drug induced harmful effects is decided at the very top; despite lower officials at the Board wanting to do a good job and let the public know the real story).

The Minister for Elderly Care and Public Health (Maria Larsson) has not at all acted to make the hidden data known to the public. The Minister for Health and Social Affairs (Göran Hägglund) has been asked in parliament, the Riksdag, to start a formal investigation inte the violence inducing effect (against self and others) of different psychiatric drugs, but his answer shows – at best – that he is living far from the real world. This is his view about the effectiveness of medical agencies, the adverse event reporting system and the speed of actions taken to protect the public: “If new data somewhere in the world indicate that a medical drug in use can have up to now unknown harmful effects, an alarm goes out that reaches responsible authorities over the world. The Medical Products Agency [the Swedish medical agency] fast conveys the information to prescribers and to pharmacies in Sweden.” (Answer in Swedish parliament, the Riksdag, December 2007.)Well, now “an alarm” goes out, that data buried in the registries at the National Board of Health and Welfare – very close to the Minister – show that psychiatric drugs are behind an incredible amount of suicides.

Will doctors and patients be told about it? And what consequences will it have for the “treatment guidelines”?

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(Very much is NOT KNOWN about the psychiatric treatment preceding the suicides above. For example the use of other psychiatric drugs or ECT in these cases are still completely concealed. The National Board of Health and Welfare has not published any documents about this.Some persons might want to verify some of the figures above. They can actually do so in a newly published English article. The astonishing data above are made part of a published letter about “ethnic differences in antidepressant treatment”. This subject is of course of relative disinterest – especially as no differences were found – compared to the facts revealed that 52% of all women who committed suicide had gotten antidepressant drugs and 26% had gotten neuroleptics. See article: Rickard Ljung, M.D., Ph.D., Charlotte Björkenstam, M.Sc. and Emma Björkenstam, B.Sc; Ethnic Differences in Antidepressant Treatment Preceding Suicide in Sweden, Psychiatric Services 59:116-a-117, January 2008 http://ps.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/59/1/116-a )

Janne Larssonreporter – investigating psychiatry Sweden
mail to:
janne.olov.larsson@telia.com

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)