Excessive Use Of The Baker Act On School Children In Miami-Dade County

The Baker Act, officially the Florida Mental Health Act, allows authorities to hold a person for 3 days (72 hours) evaluation if he or she is suspected of having serious mental health issues.

Miami-Dade County police apparently like to use the Baker Act on school children. A recent issue of the Miami Herald story bore the headline, Number of Miami-Dade students ‘Baker Acted’ on the rise.

At least 646 times this year — that’s an average of more than thee times every school day — Miami-Dade school police have handcuffed a student, put him or her in the back of a patrol car and driven to a mental health facility under the rules in Florida’s mental health law, the Baker Act.

This number is almost double what it was 5 years ago.

Nearly 2 students in every 1,000 have been Bakered Act in Miami-Dade this year. In Broward County, the 2nd largest district behind Miami-Dade, this figure is closer to .5 of a student per 1,000. Miami-Dade has Baker Acted 4 x more students than Broward.

This is not about crime. The number of crime incidents at Dade county Schools dropped 24 % from 2007 to 2011. The number of juvenile arrests in the schools has similarly fallen 35 %.

Baker Act numbers are heading in the opposite direction: In 2006-07, there were 427 calls to the police for mental health help, resulting in 322 students shuttled by school cops for exams. This year, there have been 1,042 calls and at least 646 students Baker Acted. So, calls for assistance have increased 144 percent and the Baker Act transports about 100 percent.

Use of the Baker Act is up statewide, but this dismal fact doesn’t excuse the increased use of this law on school children.

Statewide, the number of Baker Act exams — for everyone, not just children — rose 79 percent from 2000 to 2010. In Miami-Dade, the number more than tripled from 1999 to 2009 to about 16,700 exams

Whether this increased use represents over-use or not has not been resolved in the eyes of some experts. Miami-Dade County school officials are currently investigating the matter.

Pregnant Woman Neglected At Florida State Hospital

In December, a week or so before Christmas, staff at Florida State Hospital refused to believe a woman when she told them she was going into labor. The headline in The Miami Herald runs, Florida hospital ignores pregnant mental patient’s pleas, and tragedy ensues.

Held against her will at Florida’s largest state mental hospital, and fearing that she was about to give birth, a 34-year-old woman became so frantic in her efforts to get medical care that she called 911, twice. “There’s nobody here that can help me right now, and I’m pregnant,” she said.

She was reported to have pregnancy induced hypertension making any delivery risky in the first place. Her baby was born with brain damage, and he is on life support.

But she was, indeed, in labor. And her son was born hours later with profound brain damage. He remains on a ventilator, perhaps permanently.

A number of hospital employees have been discharged over this incident.

After the baby’s birth, DCF either launched or cooperated with several investigations of the incident, Follick said. DCF’s internal investigation resulted in the discipline of four department employees: Licensed Practical Nurse Kathryn Cottle was placed on administrative leave on May 24 and given notice of intent to dismiss her; caregiver Eddie McMillian was fired on March 13; Rosalee Peckoo, a doctor, was placed on administrative leave on Jan. 16 and returned to her position May 24; caregiver Maryland Clopton resigned on Feb. 1.

The hospital administrator, Diane James, before the incident occurred had announced her intention to resign, and she has done so.

The woman name was not released to the press due to her civil commitment.

Hospital nursing staff thought this woman was not so far along in her pregnancy as she apparently was, and they dismissed her pleas for help as premature and delusive.

UK Inquiry Investigates Damage Done By Schizophrenia Label

In response to a Schizophrenia Committee set up in the UK last year an inquiry investigation is being launched into the harm caused by psychiatric labeling. The story as it appears in PsychMinded bears the heading, Inquiry to investigate how schizophrenia ‘label’ is dehumanising and stigmatizing.

Some of us have issues with the word “stigmatizing”, but if you were to replace it in your mind with the word prejudice then I’d say the whole thing follows.

The commission, set up by the Rethink Mental Illness charity and chaired by Professor Sir Robin Murray of London’s institute of psychiatry, has been criticised for failing to involve service users adequately.

Apparently this is another instance of the voice that speaks for the voiceless (i.e. ventriloquism advocacy). When this practice is coupled with the practice of dragging in a very few token services users (i.e. dummies), it can become a very effective weapon in the fight for defusing dissent and assuring the disempowerment and further marginalization of service users.

An inquiry panel will, instead, examine the fundamental validity of schizophrenia and psychosis, examining to what extent schizophrenia and psychosis diagnoses are useful or not, and whether people with such diagnoses suffer discrimination.

There are better ways to treat people, are there? My answer to this question would be a unequivocal, “No doubt!”

The inquiry panel will also examine why ethnic minority and black people are up to six times more likely to be given a schizophrenia diagnosis than the general population.

Hmmm. Do I detect a hint of a double standard operating here? Unless black people are disproportionately damned by bad genes, the government must be using these labels to oppress racial and ethnic minorities.

Let’s hope that this inquiry may result in a lot of rewording, and the better treatment that goes along with such rewording.

Women in the military services labeled “crazy” for reporting rape

Women have long been unduly oppressed by psychiatry. This oppression is still taking place. In the military, according to a CNN report, Rape victims say military labels them ‘crazy’, women are being dishonorably discharged from the armed forces for reporting rape and sexual assault.

CNN has interviewed women in all branches of the armed forces, including the Coast Guard, who tell stories that follow a similar pattern — a sexual assault, a command dismissive of the allegations and a psychiatric discharge.

Obviously the prospect of being kicked out of the service for reporting a sexual offense, and receiving a psychiatric label to boot, would make many women leery of making any such report.

Despite the Defense Department’s “zero tolerance” policy, there were 3,191 military sexual assaults reported in 2011. Given that most sexual assaults are not reported, the Pentagon estimates the actual number was probably closer to 19,000.

The psychiatric excuse used for discharging most of these women has been that of having a personality disorder label. An FOIA request found that 31,000 service members were released from service on grounds of having a personality disorder label between 2001 and 2010. The personality disorder label is being used disproportionably on women in all branches of the military.

In the military’s eyes, a personality disorder diagnosis is a pre-existing condition and does not constitute a service-related disability. That means sexual assault victims with personality disorder discharges don’t receive benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs to help with their trauma. They can still apply for benefits, but it’s considered an uphill battle.

This circumstance, of course, creates undue hardship for the discharged service member forced to go without benefits and expected to pay penalties on a term of duty uncompleted.

I would imagine that a large number of them get labeled borderline as borderline personality disorder is a diagnosis often used by psychiatrists on people who are seen as disagreeable or difficult.

Adjustment disorder is was another disorder label used to get rid of soldiers who report rapes and sexual assault. Adjustment disorder is described as an excessive response to stressful circumstances.

Representative Jackie Spierer of California has introduced legislature that would take sexual assault cases out of the chain of command, under the auspices of higher ups, and that would assign them to a separate autonomous office at the Pentagon. This would represent a definite improvement as the commanders in charge are often the reason these reports are not being taken seriously.

A former Coast Guard member, Panayiota Bertzikis, runs a website for survivors of such attacks, mydutytospeak.com, and she also runs The Military Rape Crisis Center . She and other ex-soldiers are suing the Defense Department for damages owing to a culture that permits such assaults to occur.

Nope, No Bipolar Disorder, Not This Time. Sorry.

A New Zealand woman has been given a formal apology and an insurance payment after being hospitalized and shocked 200 times for an “illness” that she didn’t even have. The story in TVNZ bears the heading, Wrongly diagnosed woman shocked 200 times.

At 17, [Joan] Bellingham was training to be a nurse, and she claimed she was bullied by one of her tutors because she was a lesbian.

The bullying nursing tutor drove her to a hospital and had her committed for “neurotic personality disorder.”

That was 42 years ago.

Between 1970 and 1982, Bellingham was admitted to hospital 24 times and had about 200 ECT treatments.

Three years after being first admitted to the hospital, she’s received her degree in “Major Mental Disorders”.

She was in and out of hospital but was kept highly medicated. In 1973 – three years after she was first committed – she was diagnosed as a schizophrenic, a diagnosis maintained until 1982.

She has also received a Hepititis C diagnosis, thought to have been contracted while in the hospital.

She doesn’t reflect extensively, in this article, on the effects this kind of damaging and forced maltreatment might have had on her health and her life subsequently.

I wonder, hmmm. Is it possible that there are thousands and thousands of people being held at the present time in psychiatric hospitals around the world for non-existent “illnesses”? If so, I would imagine there could be a great deal of potential for more and more of this sort of coverage in the future.

Courthouse persecution and prison neglect

A recent headline in Courthouse News Service struck me as peculiar, Parents of Late Schizophrenic Win Appeal. Why should a young man be known only for his psychiatric label? He wasn’t a professional schizophrenic, was he? Keep reading, and you’ve entered a very weird world indeed.

The first paragraph is strange enough, but not nearly so strange as what follows.

The 7th Circuit revived some of the claims of parents who blamed Indiana prison officials and medical staff for the death of their 21-year-old schizophrenic son, who died from drinking too much water while awaiting transfer to a psychiatric hospital.

Just take a gander at what he was actually in prison for.

The prison saga and subsequent legal battle began on March 5, 2003, when [Nicholas] Rice, of Stevensville, Mich., stole a neighbor’s car and drove to a KeyBank in Nappanee, Ind. Rice threatened to detonate a bomb if the teller refused to give him money. Then he walked out of the bank without explanation or money and returned home. He was arrested for auto theft and jailed in Berrien County, Mich.

This imprisonment leads to a hospitalization, and then discharge.

When he was discharged in August 2003, he was identified as a suspect in the failed Indiana bank robbery and was taken to Elkhart Jail in Indiana. He was booked in September 2003 and bail was set at $20,000, preventing his release.

Now tell me this second arrest has anything to do with anything besides protocol.

Things go downhill from there. The problem I have with this predicament is that if you’ve got a person in prison for a bank robbery that didn’t even come off. Who’s pressing charges?

Well, actually it probably did have to do with a little bit more than protocol. You’ve got the criminal justice authorities saying we’ve just had a bomb threat here, and we have to take these matters very seriously indeed, and therefore, clang bang go the prison cell doors.

He was booked in September 2003, and he died well over a year later in December 2004.

If you read further you will find that his parents have a great deal of reason to sue, and that the courts have not been particularly responsive. This is the sad story of a young man mistreated by the state who should be remembered for something besides the psychiatric label he was given.

Army Shrink Jumps On Schizophrenia As Possible Killer

Seems the soldier that killed 16 innocent civilians, mostly children, in Afghanistan did have a post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis. I don’t know how many brownie points that gets me, but it should garner a few. Here’s another psychiatrist offering his 10 cents worth of wisdom in TheLeafChronicle.com under the heading, Reasons for killings uncertain. This Harry Croft shrink should know. He’s interviewed, he says, at least 7,000 PTSD cases. Next question, who rubber stamped ‘em all?

Dr. Harry Croft of San Antonio, Texas, has worked with PTSD since before it even had a name. As a major in the U.S. Army serving as a psychiatrist during Vietnam, Croft said that he and others had known of the disorder as early as 1973, and that since then, he said he has interviewed no less than 7,000 PTSD sufferers in his practice and as a contracted specialist working for companies in conjunction with the Veterans Administration (VA).

At this point, not only does this soldier have a certified mental health condition, but he also has a name. He’s Staff Sargeant Robert Bales.

Dr. Croft, to quell fears that any soldier may be labeled PTSD, explains that only 1 in 5 or 20 % of the troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to become so labeled. He thinks that a small figure. He doesn’t want people to blame the PTSD as matter of course. As he explains, mass murder is rare, and he wouldn’t attribute the killings to PTSD just off the cuff.

Reports in recent days have cited a past diagnosis of PTSD and possible traumatic brain injury as a result of a rollover accident in Iraq, but have also uncovered financial problems and past incidents of erratic behavior that conflicted with a picture of a “super soldier” painted by former commanders and others.

This doctor blames multiple deployments as a possible factor involved in the shootings. He also mentioned incidents where supposedly friendly Afghans shot in the back, or blew up, American soldiers.

Bogeyman of bogeymen, demon of the courthouse, where’s this discussion leading? Why to psychosis as the culprit, of course.

“There was rage and a possible flip into a psychotic state,” said Croft. “I just don’t think this was simply PTSD, and I worry that people are going to generalize from this and say that everyone coming back from over there is a potential murderer. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Uh, we hope so, too.

Realistically we know if an ex-troop is stuck in a bad situation, and he wants out, all he has to do is get some shrink to certify him a PTSD case, and it’s fun in the sun time. Keep those benefits coming, thank you, Uncle Sam. Of course, these disturbed regular troops wouldn’t do anything of the order of the things that Sgt. Bales did. That goes without saying.

Sgt. Bales couldn’t have been in his right mind either for that matter. I imagine he was possessed by the schizophrenia demon, and the schizophrenia demon perpetuated those vile deeds. If a court buys it, no need to exorcise him by electric chair, or do they still use a firing squad in the military these days? We can sweep him into the loon bin and all’s forgotten. All’s forgotten, that is, until the next soldier snaps under the strain, and let’s loose on the innocent.

Nothing is stranger than war

Another soldier has committed an atrocity, only this time the soldier was acting alone, and therefore, he has the DSM is on his side. We have this absurd headline from CNN on the subject, Mental illness more likely behind Afghan shooting than PTSD, psychiatrist says. The first paragraph of the report makes the matter a little clearer.

While officials have provided few details about the U.S. Army soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan men, women and children in a house-to-house shooting rampage in two villages, one psychiatrist speculated the incident may have stemmed from mental illness, but not necessarily post-traumatic stress disorder.

The enemy, man! It’s the enemy we’re supposed to be shooting! That’s hostile forces, and not innocent civilians! As I’ve noted previously we’ve got this problem with a legal definition of insanity that reads ‘a danger to oneself or others’. I’m not sure we’ve got a legal definition for soldier, otherwise, they would all be locked up.

This is serious.

Afghans approached the gate to the outpost, saying there had been a shooting and carrying their wounded, according to a senior Defense Department official. The death toll included nine children, three women and four men.

To his credit, he turned himself into military authorities afterwards.

This man’s army does not recruit psycho or sociopaths.

“A sociopath or a psychopath is somebody who isn’t going to fit into the rules of something like the U.S. military, and that kind of person would have been likely drummed out or released from the military many years ago,” he [psychiatry professor Paul Newhouse] said. “I understand this individual was, had been, in the Army for quite some time, so I think a better likelihood is that this person suffered from some severe illness or mental illness that may have come on more recently and perhaps is linked to this terrible incident.”

This psychiatry professor thinks he was probably just nuts (i.e. delusional, psychotic) instead.

On pretrial confinement, uncharged as of yet, the death penalty hasn’t been ruled out in this soldier’s case.

The suspect had 3 tours of duty in Iraq under his belt before this event occured according to the report. The brigade he had been assigned to was initially stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington. Here’s what this article tells us about Lewis-McChord.

In December 2010, the Stars and Stripes military newspaper said Lewis-McChord had gained a reputation as “the most troubled base in the military.” It also reported that year that multiple investigations were under way into the conduct of troops at the base and the adequacy of the mental health and medical care soldiers were receiving upon their return home.

I wouldn’t rule out PTSD just yet.

The Human Being As An Association of Genes

One article in Science Daily happened to catch my eye of late, Two Genes Do Not Make a Voter. The implication, apparently dispelled, was that a couple of genes, or four, or five, could determine a specific human behaviorial trait.

They use as an example a 2008 study by James H. Fowler and Christopher T. Dawes of the University of California, San Diego which claimed that two genes predict voter turnout. Charney and English demonstrate that when certain errors in the original study are corrected — errors common to many gene association studies — there is no longer any association between these genes and voter turnout.

Emphasis added.

If you keep reading you will find that these genes have been credited with having a great many unfounded attributes. Sloth on the part of citizens is not the only negative quality, vice is still too strong a word to use in this instance, some researchers would find inherited.

Charney and English also document how the same two genes that Fowler and Dawes claimed would predict voter turnout are also said to predict, according to other recently published studies, alcoholism, Alzheimer’s disease, anorexia nervosa, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, depression, epilepsy, extraversion, insomnia, migraines, narcolepsy, obesity, obsessive compulsive disorder, panic disorder, Parkinson’s disease, postpartum depression, restless legs syndrome, premature ejaculation, schizophrenia, smoking, success by professional Wall Street traders, sudden infant death syndrome, suicide, Tourette syndrome, and several hundred other behaviors. They point to a number of studies that attempted to confirm these findings and could not.

Hmmm, I wonder how “extraversion” and “success by” “Wall Street traders” got thrown in there? I think it amusing how these are the exceptions that prove the rule. Our researchers don’t tend to be searching for success genes, but rather they tend to be looking for failure genes instead. I wonder why this is? I don’t get the impression that they’ve managed to remove many of these failure genes from the human gene pool yet.

“There is a growing consensus that complex traits that are heritable are influenced by differences in thousands of genes interacting with each other, with the epigenome (which regulates gene expressivity), and with the environment in complex ways,” Charney said. “The idea that one or two genes could predict something like voting behavior or partisanship violates all that we now know about the complex relationship between genes and traits.”

So much for the hunt for the non-voter gene. I imagine that would be the first step in determining which genes vote republican, which genes vote democrat, and which maverick genes out there happen to vote independent. Now what arrangement of thousands of genes, plus interactions, cause people to avoid the voting booth, and what arrangement of thousands of genes cause certain people to receive a “mental illness” label.

This kind of senseless endeavor could go on for a spell. Do you have forever? If you don’t know, flip a coin, and call the side you favor forever. The other side of the coin, of course, you can call never.

ON HUMANITY: Addressing The Problem Of Forced Drugging

Jack Bragen is a nutcase who writes a mental health column for The Berkeley Daily Planet. He’s on his meds, and he has no problem with that fact. I, who am not on any psychiatric drugs whatsoever, on the other hand, do have a problem with him promoting forced mental health treatment. His latest article does just that. It bears the thoroughly biased heading, ON MENTAL ILLNESS: Addressing the Problem of Non-compliance Among People with Schizophrenia.

Nobody has ever proven the existence of any “mental illness”, therefore, why force drugs on people for the sake of a theory. People are convicted of schizophrenia without a trial by a jury of their peers. Legitimate medicine doesn’t sentence people to a drug taking regimen. Real “sicknesses” are not some kind of misbehavior requiring the intervention of law enforcement. Psychiatry, blurring the distinction between law and medicine, sometimes does sentence people to take drugs, so called chemical restraints, for this alleged schizophrenia.

The first change I would suggest is to somewhat extend the criteria for a 51 or 5250. An additional criterion that can be added would be to “50″ a person if unable to provide for his or her basic needs [such as going to the store and buying a loaf of bread] due to a mental illness. Such a criteria would be less offensive than the one Laura’s Law provides which says they are subject to forced treatment if refusing medication due to the lack of judgment caused by their illness [not in those exact words]. The problem I have with the Laura’s Law criteria is that the patient is presumed incompetent based on making the choice to refuse treatment. The fact that I take medication to an extent by choice and not because a law is mandating it makes a huge difference to me, to my quality of life, and to my attitude toward treatment practitioners.

His first change seems like no change. In fact I think it would be covered under ‘gravely disabled’, a part of the current law that law enforcement officers are fain to enforce. My point, you don’t make laws because you think they won’t be enforced. The change is redundant, and if it wasn’t redundant, why would authorities be any more inclined to enforce it than they are under the current law which includes something of the sort.

The second change that I would introduce is to create a 5350, which would mandate treatment for two or three months, a long enough time period for someone to get over his or her delusional system and come to the realization of needing treatment, but not such a long time that it resembles a six-month jail sentence. At the end of the 5350 time period, if someone is still unable to provide for basic needs, conservatorship could be considered. The 5350 could be used if someone has a track record of noncompliance and resultant relapse, and if currently unfit to survive in society.

3 months is the mental health equivalent of 90 days in jail. The thing is, after doing your 90 days, if we’re talking jail, you’re home free. The state isn’t likely to confiscate your property, nor is the state likely to appoint a warder to keep you under perpetual house arrest. The problem with sentencing people for non-compliance is that if you suspect further non-compliance in the future, technically, you could hold a person for life. All you’d have to do, not having trials in such instances, is to keep recommitting them to successive sentences once their initial sentence had been served. This “conservatorship”, too; what is that, if a man or woman have done their time, except adding insult to injury!?

When making the change in the law that I propose, there ought to be additional requirements that mental health treatment facilities provide humane treatment and quality of care. If we are to be forced into treatment by a governmental mandate, it becomes the responsibility of that government to make that treatment humane, free of malpractice, and respectful of basic human dignity.

Geez, Mr Bragen! Where have you been the last few years? It’s not like there aren’t requirements of the sort you would be asking for. It’s just…who’s going to enforce them? Why mental health authorities, of course. If records show enough unexplained cadavers turning up here and there, well, you call in the feds. The point I am trying to make is that when you make treatment free of liberty, brutality, malpractice (called something else of course), and indignity are going to be the natural consequence. We’re still waiting for our countries’ representatives to recognise those rights put forth in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights drafted by the United Nations.

I’ve got a better idea. Let’s stop treating people in crisis as if they were criminals. Let’s repeal mental health law entirely, including in this repeal 5150, 5250, Laura’s Law, and what have you. Let’s close those decaying relics of moral management and the old asylum system down completely, and let’s put our money into prevention, community care, and social reintegration instead. Of course, reason is not going to prevail anytime soon. Our mad law makers, in collusion with drug companies, and the revisers of the DSM, will not rest content until they’ve gotten “help” for most of the people on this planet. Resigning ourselves to having the future hospital without walls replace the hospital with walls is not going to mean an improvement in any way shape or form.