The Evolution Revolution

Forced treatment is the big secret in the mental health “care” world today. Once upon a time, not that long ago, there was only one form of mental health treatment available, and that was it.

The American Psychiatric Association in fact grew out of the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutes for the Insane. Where once you had the heads of what were then called Lunatic Asylums, now you have an association of professional pill pushers.

The big lie is that the pills they are pushing, and whose usage they are promulgating, are good for people, and not people in general, but specific people. People diagnosed with a “mental disorder”. This diagnosis is thought to make the people who have been given one somehow different from the general run of humanity and, therefore, in need of the fix that comes with a drug.

The truth is that mental health treatment is about social control. We have this law that permits confinement of anybody acting oddly on the grounds that they may cause harm to themselves or others. It would be a serious mistake, albeit a common one, to assume that people are held in psychiatric institutions because they are dangerous.

People in mental hospitals are not there because they were given a trial by jury. Usually they are there because they were given a hearing by judge, attorney, and psychiatrist in which judicial opinion subordinates itself to the whims of professional bias and procedural habit. Mental health commitment hearings, in other words, in the present day and age, are little more than kangaroo courts.

Drugs can’t fix people. Drugs can damage people. Drugs can’t straighten out faulty logic. Education can teach logical deduction. Drugs can’t supply insight. Drugs generally mask a problem rather than correct it. Masking a problem is not dealing with it, and coming  up with a solution to it.

Waiving independence in order to be treated by the mental health authorities, usually as a charity case, is not the best course of action to take as a rule. Doing so often involves forfeiting rights we think of as basic to our species. This revelation may take time to register and resonate, but it should come in time.

Yes, Virginia, there is life beyond the confines of the Mental Health clinic. One is not bound to the human services system the way a rat can be restricted to its track through a maze.  The thing is that that system shares many similarities with a rat maze. If it didn’t, researchers wouldn’t be studying rats with the idea of better understanding human behavior. I would strongly suggest that if success in the world is at all important to you, you should abandon the maze.

The irony found in the heading of this post comes with the realization that more complex organisms evolved from less complex organisms. The butterfly in a display frame is not a butterfly in flight. Our capacity expands to the extent that we learn to escape those boxes that other people would try to contain us within. Quite apart from biological limitations, and barring extreme circumstances, we have minds that allow us this advance and that departure.

The Current Crop Of Whoppers On Capitol Hill

The vote on a bill to restrict the Second Amendment rights of people in America is described as still “too close to call”. The story, as reported in FloridaToday.com, goes under the heading, Background check plan needs GOP.

Words, words, words–it all becomes a blur, especially when so many of those words are just plain lies.

The plan would “strengthen the background check system without in any way infringing on Second Amendment rights,” Maine Sen. Susan Collins said in a statement explaining her support for the measure. But she added that “it is impossible to predict at this point” what will be in a final bill.

Excuse me, Senator Collins. If you are going to enter the names of people, many of whom are citizens, who AREN’T criminals, into a criminal background check system, for the express reason of denying them their Second Amendment rights, you CANNOT do so without infringing on Second Amendment rights.

Do I need to repeat myself!?

These background check measures that may be pushed through congress are unconstitutional so long as we have a bill of rights, but this is hardly the first time we’ve had unconstitutional laws on the books. If I remember correctly there was once this remedy to the mixing of the races called Jim Crow for the longest kind of time in the southern states of the USA.

The measure requires background checks for people buying guns at gun shows and online. Background checks currently apply only to transactions handled by the country’s 55,000 licensed gun dealers. Private transactions, such as a sale of a gun between family members, would still be exempt.

Thus, family members will still be able to sell arms to ex-felons, illegal aliens, spousal abusers, mental patients, and other errant human beings, and all is hunky dory. It is just licensed gun dealers who won’t be able to make such sales.

[Senator Joe] Manchin urged lawmakers to read the 49-page proposal. He said it should dispel any misconceptions about infringing on the constitutional right to bear arms.

I’m sorry. It will take more than a 49-page booklet to convince me that legislation enacted expressly for the purpose of infringing on the constitutional right of American citizens to bear arms is not legislation infringing on the constitutional right of American citizens to bear arms. When you diminish the citizenship of a segment of the population by subtracting this right or that, usually we have to call this subtracting, or restriction if you will, an infringement.

This attack on civil liberties and civil rights is plowing ahead full stream. It has been in effect, through unevenly enforced, since the insanity defense was used to condemn and excuse John Hinkley for shooting President Reagan. Blast the insanity defense! Incarceration should be about punishment, and not about therapeutic rehabilitation, regardless of the criminal’s mental state at the time of the commission of the crime. “Mental illness”, that ‘will o’the wisp’ of consensus reality, should not be an used to excuse people from punishment for criminal activities and, likewise, ill health should not be used as an excuse to imprison people.

Harmful Psychiatric Drug Use Highest In Southern States

The magazine is Health, and the article screams out, Psychiatric Drugs More Often Prescribed in the South.

Living in a southern state, and knowing what this part of the country is like, this somewhat disturbing finding is not all that surprising to me.

Although people living in the West are the least likely to use antipsychotics, antidepressants and stimulants, the Yale researchers found that the drugs’ use is 40 percent higher in a large section of the South than in other parts of the country. The study authors attributed this discrepancy to variations in local access to health care and marketing efforts within the pharmaceutical industry.

Uh, right. If you were wondering about the source of this statistical data, this is what the study results from a new Yale survey indicate.

The study, which included data on 60 percent of the prescriptions written in the United States in 2008, revealed that patients living in sections of the South were 77 percent more likely to fill a prescription for a stimulant. Southerners also were 46 percent more likely to fill a prescription for an antidepressant and 42 percent more likely to do so for an antipsychotic.

Let me add that it was a little encouraging to think that in other parts of the nation people know better.

…16 % of Cape Cod, Mass. residents on stimulants…national average at 2.6 %…

Meanwhile, about 40 percent of residents of Alexandria, Va., took antidepressants. In contrast, roughly 10 percent of the U.S. population used these drugs. Antipsychotics were most commonly used in Gainesville, Fla., where 4.6 percent of local residents took the drugs, compared with a national average of 0.8 percent.

 Emphasis added.

Whoa! 40 % is 2/5ths, and that is approaching 1/2. What a coup for some drug company mogul, and if you think about it, the market isn’t nearly saturated if you can have that level of use in one single locality. I’m not a drug company mogul though, and I think the 10 % national average outrageously excessive.

Obviously, residing in Gainesville Florida, if it’s a matter of the greatest need I guess I’ve come to the right place. How do I explain this high level of neuroleptic use? Easy, four letters, NAMI, acronym for the National Alliance for Mental Illness. This organization, founded by relatives of people labeled “mentally ill”, the very people most often responsible for sending their kinfolk to the Loony Bin, with its conflicts of interest, and its misinformation campaigns, is deeply entrenched in this state, and in this town. If you ever have the misfortune of visiting the NAMI Florida website you will see that the organization is sponsored, for one thing, by 3 drug companies: Pfizer (the makers of Geodon), Janssen (the makers of Risperdal), and AstraZenica (the makers of Seroquel).  Any questions?

As an advocate of healthy non-compliance to brain-damaging health-destroying drug taking regimens, this is as gloomy a situation as I’ve ever seen. I guess I’ve got my work cut out for me.  I’d better get down to business pronto.

Just Wait Until “Adult ADHD” Rates Catch Up

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) rates are going up. Hardly a shocking finding. If you invent a disease, disease rates are likely to go up rather than down without an effective way to expose you, and with you, it. As reported in Psychiatric Annals, Rate of ADHD diagnosis increased in past decade, researchers looking at trends among 842,830 schoolchildren aged 5 to 11 found the following.

According to the researchers, rates of ADHD diagnosis were 2.5% in 2001 vs. 3.1% in 2010, a relative increase of 24%. During the same period, the rate of ADHD diagnosis increased among whites (4.7% to 5.6%; RR=1.3; 95% CI, 1.2-1.4), blacks (2.6% to 4.1%; RR=1.7; 95% CI, 1.5-1.9) and Hispanics (1.7% to 2.5%; RR=1.6; 95% CI, 1.5-1.7). Rates of diagnosis among Asian/Pacific Islander and other racial groups remained unchanged.

We’re more hyperactive then in 2010 than we were in 2001, that is to say, that boys will be boys, and not only will boys be boys, but girls will be girls. Confused? You’re not alone. Or to be more on target, children will be children.

The rate increase among blacks was largely due to a growing number of girls with an ADHD diagnosis (RR=1.9; 95% CI, 1.5-2.3). Boys were more likely than girls to be diagnosed with ADHD, but study results indicated that the sex gap may be closing among blacks. The researchers also observed a much higher rate of ADHD diagnosis among children living in high-income ($70,000 per year or more) households (P<.001).

Just imagine, sex equality in pathology. Things must be improving for folks of color out there, wouldn’t you say? Or, maybe not. The good news is the arrival of the spoiled brat syndrome so you folks out there in the ghetto don’t have to feel like you’re alone in your misery. Or, maybe not. Mommy and daddy uptown can buy success for junior, can’t they? …Oh, well…Them’s the breaks.

“Although the reasons for increasing ADHD rates are not well understood, contributing factors may include heightened ADHD awareness among parents and physicians, increased use of screening and other preventive services, and variability in surveillance methods among institutions,” the researchers wrote.

Okay dokey. If awareness induces contagion, no wonder they say ‘ignorance is bliss’. Screening for figurative disease is going to increase the incidence of figurative disease. Undoubtedly. Calling screening and miseducation preventive is the real kicker though. Rates go up, and you’re preventing. Oh, yeah? Uh huh. Alluding to surveillance is more to the point. This isn’t about letting children be children, this is about training the next generation of corporate bureaucrats, and maybe, just maybe, we’ve got better things to be doing in the first place.

One factor  not listed, although the authors did mention not having any published ties to pharmaceutical companies, is the influence of drug markets on this increase. I can’t imagine it doesn’t have anything to do with stimulant, and the miscalled ‘performance enhancing’, drug sales, does it? Check out stock exchange figures sometime. I reckon, if anything, ADHD treatment drug makers aren’t suffering. The wall street party goes on and on, even if from here on out at a tightly guarded secret location.

On The Need For Resisting Corporate Rule And Plutocracy

A radio interview with psychologist Michael Cornwall sent me to wikipedia to look up ‘glass ceiling‘ after he referred to his own mad experience as meeting such a ‘glass ceiling’ for late adolescents and young adults.

In economics, the glass ceiling is “the unseen, yet unbreachable barrier that keeps minorities and women from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder, regardless of their qualifications or achievements.” Initially, the metaphor applied to barriers in the careers of women but was quickly extended to refer to obstacles hindering the advancement of minority men, as well as women.

Notice that the elevation in this economic definition is “to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder” (i.e. wealth). One who is not working for the international corporate imperialist elite is likely to be seen, given this definition, in relative terms, as a failure.

The truth suffers when it is prostituted to business interests. Living a good life is not seen as a virtuous aim when it is also an impoverished life. Corporations control the mass media, and so they have the ability to silence dissent through commercial propaganda and neglect. When Mr. Money Bags pulls the strings, you’re out of luck if you don’t ingratiate yourself for ‘the dough, re, mi’.

There is a point at which even the objection is tempered by the degree to which corruption pervades the system. One is beholden to one institution, or the other, or else one is silent, and thereby, a complete loss. The illusion of an impartial news media has been exposed for the myth that it happens to be. You would have no news without periodically hearing from the news service’s corporate sponsors. There are, given those corporate sponsors, stories that will never make the light of day.

Value is manufactured by the global market. A global market that manipulates “supply” and “demand”. Dead artists are the prices their produce command at Sotheby’s. Stars emerge from television variety show ‘competitions’. Man woman the institution eclipse man woman the individuals. We are represented by, as was always the case, our betrayers. Nowhere is this more evident than in the electoral process where indirect democracy, given private interests, becomes even less direct all the time. All the middle men have to, after all, make a killing.

A few advance and glory at the expense of the many. Ours is less and less a world made for the mass of humanity. Starvation and plague in Africa, unrest and violence in the middle east, are the cost of civilization in the Americas and Europe. Philanthropists are people with millions and millions of dollars to give away. If they have billions, well, they can easily enough spare millions. It puts them in a better tax bracket.

As you can see, the mass of humanity are being challenged to do something about this devastating fiasco every day of the week. The corporate imperialists are only as powerful as the mass of humanity allow them to be. Right now, many more people are being robbed than are being benefited by these upper crust privateers. The religion of wealth may be limitless, but the reality of resources is quite limited. We need to reestablish some of the old antitrust laws before, after competition, a king of the mountain purple-assed baboon is the only creature left standing.

Mutants are taking over? Really? You think…

Psychiatry is full of it, and some of the latest “discoveries” in the field indicate just how full of it psychiatry happens to be. Take this report, New Genetic Mutations May Keep Some Mental Disorders From Dying Out, at PsychCentral. The post concerns a study suggesting that because mental patients have fewer children and “mental illness”, the label, isn’t dying out, we’re seeing genetic mutations…

People with certain mental disorders, such as schizophrenia and autism, tend to have fewer children than the average person, suggesting that these disorders persist not because of heredity, but because of new genetic mutations, according to a new study.

Or, and this isn’t stated, because we’re not dealing with a heritable condition. In other words, it’s a matter of the decisions people make in their lives and not so much the genes their parents gave them.

People in the psychiatric system exist within a social context, and it’s this social context that is not being looked at so much.

The findings shed light on a longstanding puzzle in psychiatry: How do the genes linked with some mental health disorders persist in the human population, if people with those disorders tend to have fewer children?

I would suggest that the issue is a matter of supply and demand. If mental health professionals had fewer children, there wouldn’t be such a demand for nut cases.

No doubt some Swedish researcher somewhere along the way was impacted by the SciFi movie The Andromeda Strain, and nothing can be the same since.

For example, schizophrenia is extremely heritable, so it would make sense that it becomes more rare over time. But the disorder seems to persist in 1 percent of the population, which suggests that new mutations are occurring quickly enough for it to remain consistent, said [researcher Robert] Power.

Correction, bias has it that schizophrenia is extremely heritable despite all the evidence that would indicate otherwise. If it’s not genes, it must be genes. This is biological psychiatry to the core. Nobody is saying look to social and environmental factors, nobody is saying that, but maybe somebody should.

When you are selling disease it is convenient to pretend you are selling something else, like health, because people wouldn’t tend to buy disease on its demerits alone.

The researchers note that some people with mental disorders may take medication that affects fertility, or they may have been hospitalized at some point during their reproductive years, and these factors may have influenced the results.

Or they may be facing prejudice in what is referred to as the competition for suitable, if desirable is too strong a word, partners. One scapegoat doesn’t reproduce. Two scapegoats do reproduce, but they hardly do so well as the goat with his harem in the herd.

A Little Bit of Discretion, Please

Bad advice remains bad advice. Bad parents are gullible parents. Skepticism, given the amount of nonsense floating about in the world today, is a virtue.

Are you dealing with Turbulent teens or mental illness? this article in the The Gleaner from Jamaica would deceptively appear to ask. The article is actually selling “mental illness”. It suggests that any reader’s child could be “sick”. First thought. Read on, and damn your kid to a diminished life as a social and human failure in the mental sickness system if you want to do so, or think better of the matter, and go, “Wait a minute, maybe pegging my kid with a psychiatric label isn’t the best way to proceed at all”.

The article answers the question, “What should parents do?” with the following 7 alarmist answers that were probably dreamed up by a pharmaceutical company advertising team.

1. Be vigilant. 2. Seek professional help. 3. Do not be afraid to seek psychiatric care. 4. Do not shove it under the carpet. 5. There is danger in delay.

My response to this orange alert approach to problems in living is to reply, “Bullshit!” He or she who seeks to find “sickness” in a child will find it, and he or she who seeks to find “wellness” in a child will find that. This approach would hunt for “illness” rather than for “health”. To paraphrase gospel, “Let he or she who is without error attach the first label”.

The article supplies its own “mental illness” screening test of sorts. It gives 8 warning signs of “mental illness”. Now you’ve got a “mental illness” checklist if you are really desperate to have a child labeled, disposed of in the loony bin, locked away and abandoned. The message is clear. You, too, given this checklist, can bear a brood of loony birds.

1. Change in behavior. 2. Decline in school performance. 3. Drug use. 4. Poor self-care. 5. [Change in pattern of] Social interaction. 6. Communication is reduced. 7. Family breakdown. 8. Strange behavior.

I’ve got news for you. Each of the items on this checklist is a “symptom” of being a teenager. Adolescent rebellion is not a disease. Mom, Dad, get over it! Junior has to grow up. Mental health treatment or no mental health treatment, you shouldn’t try to hang onto your kid forever. Your child is merely testing his or her wings. Some parents will suffocate their kid rather than accept the simple truth that the kid needs more independence.

I could draw up a checklist for kids to use in diagnosing parents, too, but this is all about power, and we don’t give kids that kind of power until they are deemed old enough to use it. Unfortunately, some grown up kids never get old enough to use it wisely.

Undemonizing The Little Monsters

My view is that we simply shouldn’t saddle children with psychiatric labels. Why? The reasons are multiple. Labeled children grow up to be labeled adults, label A often comes with label B and label C or label D, and minor labels develop into major labels. With these labels come powerful and physical health destroying pharmaceuticals. Just look at the outcomes if you want to know why we shouldn’t label. Labeling a child isn’t putting that child on a success track. Labeling a child is actually harming that child.

When I was a kid attention deficit hyperactivity disorder didn’t exist, and conduct was a mark on a report card. Things have changed in this regard since then, but those changes have all been for the worse. Today misbehavior, healthy behavior from another perspective, is being medicalized, and mildly misbehaving children are growing into permanently “disturbed” and “disabled” adults.

I’m using the 6th part of the 7 part series Matters In Mind, Psychiatric labels and kids: benefits, side-effects and confused published recently in the journal In Conversation to draw The Behavior Key that follows.

The Behavior Key

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder – ADHD – ‘hyperactive or inattentive’
Obedient defiant disorder – ODD – ‘particularly naughty’
Conduct disorder – CD – ‘seriously nasty’
Major depressive disorder – MDD – ‘down in the dumps’
General anxiety disorder – GAD/ Obsessive compulsive disorder – OCD/ Social anxiety disorder (or social phobias) – SAD/ Panic disorder – PD/ etc. – ‘nervous’

Forget the label, and you’ve merely got an adjective with which to describe a child, accent on child.

On the coattails of transforming ADHD into childhood bipolar disorder, and manufacturing an epidemic, we know what’s coming, and it is more of the same.

The DSM-5, due out next year, is likely to unleash a new epidemic – DMDD (disruptive mood dysregulation disorder), which has been strongly criticised by the former DSM-IV task force head Professor Allen Frances.

Disruptive mood dysregulation disorder – DMDD (could more aptly be described as) – temper tantrums.

In psychiatric training, we learn that what really counts is a biopsychosocial (biological, psychological and social) formulation. This is a few paragraphs which accompanies the diagnosis, summarising the main relationships, genetic inheritance, stressful events, temperament and psychological coping style of the person. The biopsychosocial formulation seeks to uncover and put in perspective all the causes of their symptoms and point to what help is needed, even if not readily available.

This is bio-babble. I’ve seen articles that estimate biology to be 70 % – 80 % the source of any one “mental disorder”. Biological medical model psychiatry is the predominate school of psychiatry today, and thus, “disorders” have to be primarily biological in origin. This leaves 30 % – 20 % of any “disorder” attributable to psychology and social environment. If biology wasn’t the primary basis for “mental disorders”, the theory is wrong. Well, chances are the theory is wrong. This 70 % – 80 % figure is based entirely on speculation. It represents a type of negative wishful thinking with very little, if any, real science behind it.

This draws us to the final question, who’s minding baby? Let’s not leave child-rearing practices up to the pill bottle. Psychiatric drugs, if anything, make wholly inadequate parents. Labeled children, as the statistic’s show us, are doomed children. Now what kind of parent would consciously sentence his or her child to hell on earth? Not a good parent, surely. Let’s get back to the practice of producing good children through producing good parents, and vice versa. Care about your child, and don’t send that child to the boogie-psychiatrist for labeling, drugging, and the eternal curse of diagnostic sorcery.

Iatrogenic Damage As Treatment

Despite attempts to dismiss and discredit his contribution, psychiatrist RD Laing’s position in the pantheon of twentieth century thinkers is relatively secure. I was reading recently where somebody claimed R.D. Laing’s reputation needed rehabilitating. I don’t think this is so. The spirit of R.D. Laing is always there lingering in the background. He can’t go away, establishment or anti-establishment. He is present, cultural icon or counter-cultural guru. The same cannot be said of some of his associates, for example, David Cooper. I’ve seen his Wikipedia page grow less informative over the course of time. David Cooper’s reputation, if anyone had the interest or inclination, could probably use some serious rehabilitating.

Every time I mention so called anti-psychiatry I have misgivings. I feel I am going to be misunderstood. I am not so called pro-psychiatry in the slightest. The problem is biological medical model psychiatry. This school of psychiatry dominates the entire profession. Biological psychiatry is responsible for an epidemic of iatrogenic damage done to people in the mental health system. Biological psychiatry is behind an increased mortality rate among that population. Biological psychiatry is intimately tied to, and in bed with, the pharmaceutical industry. We need a dramatic paradigm shift away from this chemical quick fix approach to social and personal problems to an approach that realizes drugs aren’t solutions, problems aren’t illnesses, and drugs are a part of the problem. We have created a prescription drug culture today that is killing people.

If 95 % of psychiatrists are bad, and I believe that crediting the profession with 5 % good doctors is probably an over estimation, then there is not a whole lot of good to be said about that profession. We would not be in any worst state if the profession of psychiatry were eliminated altogether. People would actually be more likely to improve, given psychiatry’s cozy relationship to the drug industry, without the profession altogether rather than with it. The fact of the matter is that people labeled ‘schizophrenic’ recover, and do a lot better, more frequently where they have never been introduced to the pharmaceutical products used to treat the condition than where they are given drugs. The drugs are impediments to recovery, and worse, they are damaging in themselves. There have, in fact, been instances where the point of no return has been crossed.

This domination of biological psychiatry has meant tragedy on a worldwide scale. This tragedy is the result of confusing intended “help” with actual harm. Real assistance has human features, and it doesn’t come in liquid and capsule forms. Conceive throw away people, and throw away people end up thrown away. One way to throw them away is to contain them in places where they will only receive custodial care. Another way is to make the custodian a chemical substance. So long as so few people are doing anything about it, this tragedy can only continue to grow. Many people think they are actually doing something good when they are harming other people. This harming of people is not a good thing, and it is a point that must be made again and again. Loving people are not hurting people. Right now it is essential to change directions, we need more concern and less harm shown to those whom we so often scapegoat.

R.D. Laing and David Cooper were trail blazers. They were experimenters in a field that permitted very few experiments. These experiments pointed the way to a better approach to the problem than compounding it. Without their experiments, the later more successful experiment of Loren Mosher, the Soteria Project, might never have gotten off the ground. Some of us are hopeful that more encouraging signs are in the wind. I am aghast at all the people, given psychiatric labels, with physical injuries that came of the treatment they received for those labels. No injury of the body is the solution to an injury in the mind. No amount of fantasizing otherwise is going to make thought organic. Poison, on the other hand, will give the wounded thought an injured body, just as a cessation of poison may, but not always, return the body to health. I understand that some people are receiving money for tending the wounds of mind and body. I think a career of healing people vastly preferable to a career of keeping people in ill health. What we need today is more of the former and less of the latter.

Euthanasia for mental health reasons, although far from hot, rising in popularity in the Netherlands

13 people with psychiatric diagnoses had “assisted suicides” in the Netherlands last year. According to the story in Dutch News 13 psychiatric patients were helped to die last year.

Failing at suicide can get you a psychiatric label, but not to fear, now having a psychiatric label can get you “assistance” in murdering yourself.

In cases of senile dementia, a neurological not a psychiatric condition, when you can see it coming, you can nip that eventual confusion in the bud.

Euthanasia among people in the early stages of dementia also rose last year to 49 cases, double that of 2010.

Euthanasia is gaining popularity as a sport these days it would seem.

The figures are in line with a general upward trend. The total number of euthanasia cases rose 18% last year to 3,695 and the number of cases has doubled since 2006, the report said.

A small portion of people in the Netherlands are taking this option. I imagine a few of them are actually in real pain.

Assisted suicide now accounts for 2.8% of all deaths in the Netherlands, researchers from four Dutch teaching hospitals and the national statistics office CBS found earlier this year.

I expect this means we will be seeing a rise in “assisted suicides” for mental health reasons in the years ahead.

When we say “assisted” we are talking a number of accomplices. The patient must be said to be “suffering unbearably”, the doctor must be convinced the choice is “informed”, and the concurring opinion of a second physician is a mandatory requirement.

Nonetheless, and despite these restrictions, 13 people in reasonably good health presumably, managed to get approved for “assisted suicides” due to their alleged “mental ill” health in the Netherlands last year.

Keep counting. These numbers are sure to rise.

UPDATE 9/26/12

A news story just out in LifeSiteNews claims Euthanasia out of control in the Netherlands.

This article points out that the 13 people with psychiatric labels who opted for “assisted suicide” last year was up from 2 people with “mental illness” labels who opted to do so the year before.

A report cited in the same article from The Lancet noted that 23 % of the incidents of euthanasia go unreported.

Up up up is the word.

It is important to recognize that the number of reported euthanasia deaths in the Netherlands has increased by 19% in 2010 and 13% in 2009

Since ’06 this incline is as follows…

There were 1923 reported euthanasia deaths in 2006.
There were 2120 reported euthanasia deaths in 2007.
There were 2331 reported euthanasia deaths in 2008.
There were 2636 reported euthanasia deaths in 2009.
There were 3136 reported euthanasia deaths in 2010.
There are 3695 reported euthanasia deaths in 2011.

This spate of euthanasia has just been given a shot in the arm by the recent launch of mobile euthanasia units.

On March 1, the euthanasia lobby in the Netherlands launched six mobile euthanasia teams. The NVVE, euthanasia lobby in the Netherlands, announced that they anticipate that the mobile euthanasia teams would carry-out 1000 euthanasia deaths per year.

Misfits in the psychiatric system are going to be targeted by these mobile teams.

The mobile euthanasia teams plan to fill unmet demand for euthanasia for people with chronic depression (mental pain), people with disabilities, people with dementia/Alzheimer, loneliness, and those whose request for euthanasia is declined by their physician. In 2010, 45% of all euthanasia requests resulted in death by euthanasia.

If it is still apparently easier to do it yourself, given legal euthanasia, I expect this 45 % approval rate to rise to well over 50 % sometime in the future. When it comes to approval for “assisted suicide”, a greater demand for euthanasia will mean more doctors willing to meet that demand.

Stay connected all you anti-lifers. It seems ‘death-wish’ fulfillment has got a very bright future indeed.