The National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery (NCMHR) calls upon the producers of “The Dr. Oz Show” to provide balanced and truthful coverage of the risks of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), in which grand mal seizures are electrically induced, usually to treat severe depression.

Dr. Oz apparently wants to give the impression that electro-shock is a safe procedure. If efforts on Capitol Hill to get the electro-shock devices declared safe by the FDA without further research failed, maybe Dr. Oz should listen to those people who have had first hand experience with this issue.

“Shock survivors” and many other mental health advocates assert that ECT’s disabling effects – including permanent memory loss and cognitive deficits – outweigh possible benefits, and call for potential ECT recipients to be told the risks so they can make an informed choice.

Informed consent is never truly informed consent until it is fully informed consent.

“The research is clear: ECT causes closed head injury, temporary euphoria, then return of depression but with enduring memory loss,” says Dr. Daniel B. Fisher, psychiatrist and NCMHR board member. Among the show’s false claims are that less electricity is used in unilateral ECT. “In reality,” Dr. Fisher said, “unilateral ECT requires more electricity.” Calling the show’s claim of 80 percent effectiveness “vastly exaggerated,” Dr. Fisher pointed out that, while many may experience a lifting of depression, this is only temporary, but the disabling side effects are permanent. In addition, many ECT recipients say their depression was exacerbated by the stress associated with their ECT-related cognitive disabilities.

Electro-shock survivors need to be listened to regardless of whether their experiences have been positive or negative. This kind of suppression of the evidence in the name of doing harm to the gullible is something that must be frowned on in all instances for basic humanitarian reasons.

The segment of The Dr. Oz show in question was called The Shock That Could Save Your Life. It would only be fitting and fair, not to mention truthful, if Dr. Oz were to air another segment of his show called The Shock That Could Take Your Life.

Shock survivors and other critics of psychiatric violence are encouraged to give Dr. Oz a piece of their mind in the comment section below the page containing the video.

I have long used the saying, “Nothing about us without us!”, when talking to people about our issues. Although I’ve been mostly ignored, and certainly that ignorance is no with us, I will continue to use this saying. If my words go in one ear, and out the other ear, that doesn’t cancel any of the experiences I have endured at the hands of the mental health establishment. I will continue to use those words up until and beyond the point when they are taken at face value. The suppression of free speech, and the silencing of dissent, are not with us either. When those words matter, my individual voice will matter, too, and with it the voice of everybody who has known the mental health system from the inside as prisoner or patient.

People on the receiving end of mental health treatment are often lumped together with what are referred to as “America’s most vulnerable citizens” by the media. They are also sometimes referred to as “voiceless”. In many cases other people, lawyers, politicians, even relatives, and suchlike designated mouthpieces, assume to be doing the talking for these people who are assumed to be unable to speak for themselves. Few people in the mental health system have had their tongues removed, or are mute. If you were to ask anyone of them a question, it’s highly likely that he or she would come up with an answer for you. Now if you can answer any question put to you, you probably don’t need another person to assume he or she would know better than you what you would say.

The next question is, why the intermediaries? Why this buffer zone? What are people afraid of? Is the public afraid that this or that patient is not going to regurgitate the official treatment line? I think sometimes such is the case. Is it the truth people are afraid of? Again, I think sometimes such is the case. People who are disoriented can speak for themselves. People who have been, but are no longer, disoriented can speak. People who were never disoriented in the first place can speak. The fact is though they can’t always speak through the walls people use to exclude them. They can’t speak through the defenses people have set up to defend themselves from their deepest fears. One of those deepest fears, apparently, is that these people when disoriented have any resemblance to themselves.

The distinction between mental health and “mental illness”, or at least serious “mental illness”, mental health seeming to be neutral, in the DSM is determined by one’s ability to function in society. Yes, function as in work, although it can also refer to play. The thing is that there are many people working inside of the mental health system itself who have had treatment for this “dysfunction” or that. They are working, and some of them are drawing in hefty salaries, and thus the seriousness of their “mental illnesses” could be said to be in remission at the very least. I’d like to see even more former patients working fulltime both inside and outside of the mental health system. In this way, we would know progress is being achieved.

The retired Timaru woman has every reason to have an opinion on the 250 former psychiatric patients who are suing psychiatric hospitals throughout New Zealand over their treatment and the use of ECT. Miss Lister also received the treatment, but her views of it are very different to those taking the legal action.

New Zealand has 250 former patients to take on electro-shock!? If it didn’t have much of a survivor movement in the past, it certainly has one now.

The news media picks up on one woman who didn’t mind ECT so much, but preferred LSD. She goes back to the time when they experimented with that substance legally on psychiatric patients. There are, let’s see, at least 250 people out there with harsher views on the subject of ECT.

I did a little Google search of my own to see what this is all about, and one thing is for certain, if anything is going on here, the press don’t seem to have picked up on it yet. I did find an earlier more balanced article in Stuff again, Electroconvulsive therapy endures.

Women receive ECT nearly twice as much as men do, and elderly women receive the most. Reasons for this could include loneliness and isolation, specialists say.

You don’t mean those elderly women, already at a risk for Alzheimers and dementia, do you?

Why do I call them survivors?

Memory returns within six weeks after treatment for 95 per cent of patients, but “it might take a bit longer” for the other 5 per cent, she [psychiatrist Pamela Melding] says. The greatest risk was to people with cardiovascular problems, but this was monitored and considered before treatment. Muscle pains, ringing in the ears, headaches and nausea are other adverse effects.

A certain number of these patients die during the procedure. Shock, coupled with cardiovascular problems, for instance, can produce a cadaver.

My feeling is that this lack of coverage has something to do with the way mental patients and former mental patients are treated in general.

“We will look back on ECT as we now look back on lobotomies.”

Such were the concluding sentiments of University of Auckland psychologist and researcher John Read.

Having seen the ups and downs of the movement against shock in this country, the USA, I would say celebrating is still a bit premature. I would also wager that the eclipse won‘t happen without direct action, but the good news is at least New Zealanders have the people to make a start at changing things for the better where people facing mental health treatment are concerned in their homeland.

A Topeka woman is sharing what it is like to live with schizophrenia in a 30-minute documentary that will air Sunday on Topeka’s public television station.

I wonder why people so seldom talk about living without schizophrenia? Ditto, bipolar disorder? Why don’t we have stories starting, ‘I once had a pet schizophrenia, but I got rid of mine. I Just didn’t care for it that much.’

Oh, I know…because they’ve got a drug to help people manage the symptoms now.

“Living with Schizophrenia: A Call for Hope and Recovery,” featuring Topekan Rebecca Phillips and two other people diagnosed with the chronic brain disorder, will air at 3 p.m. on KTWU, Channel 11.

“The chronic brain disorder”, say people who want to sell you a drug “treatment”.

“It’s been a long journey,” Phillips, 37, said of her recovery.

What kind of “recovery” can there be to a “chronic brain disorder“? Isn’t this sort of like talking about seeking the “cure” for “incurable insanity”?

“Someone with schizophrenia can be active in the community. They can make a difference in other people’s lives,” she said. “There’s hope for people with schizophrenia. The end doesn’t have to be bad. They can be just like anyone.”

Anyone? Even people without a pet schizophrenia? Now here comes the scary part…

Phillips said she was asked to do the film in 2010 by officials at Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc., which funded and produced the film. She previously had taken part in a shorter film about schizophrenia the company made for its sales representatives.

Jenssen Pharmaceuticals, if you don’t know, is owned by Johnson & Johnson. They are the not so wonderful people who brought you the neuroleptic drug Risperal.

Uh, considering the following, this isn’t the accident you might think it is, is it?

The years that followed were a mix of hospitalizations and medications to try to control the schizophrenia. That changed when she went to The University of Kansas Hospital and was prescribed risperdal consta, a drug she takes by injection every two weeks.

Living with Schizophrenia, the documentary, brought to you by Johnson & Johnson, the makers of Risperal.

This is the same Johnson & Johnson that just got sued for fraud to the tune of 158,000,000 smackeroos by the state of Texas for ‘off label’ prescription practices, notably of their neuroleptic drug Risperal.

I’m thinking about making my own film, Living without Schizophrenia. A film of which it could be said that no drug company, neither Eli Lilly, nor Johnson & Johnson, nor Pfizer, nor Bristol-Myer Squibb, nor Asta Zeneca, had any hand in the production.

About 20 percent of American adults suffer some sort of mental illness each year, and about 5 percent experience a serious disorder that disrupts work, family or social life, according to a government report released Thursday.

Both Allen Frances and Daniel Carlat were consulted by The Washington Post for this article, and both of these doctors had similar takes on this survey. Both were skeptical about the non-serious mental disturbance rate, but both showed themselves to be fervent zealots when it came to the serious “mental disorder” faith.

“There is a stigma about ‘mental illness’ that as soon as you hear the term people assume that it’s something quite severe. The nuances of this type of data tend to be lost on people,” he said. He added, however, that he doesn’t doubt that 5 percent of the population has a serious mental disorder.

Concluded Daniel J. Carlat in this article in The Washington Post.

“Whoa, Nelly! We have a true believer here”, said I.

I suggest instead that the great majority of that 5 % are actually sufferers of Psychiatric Drug Toxicity Syndrome, or PDTS for short. We get a lot of statistics dealing with present statistics. What we don’t get a lot of are statistics from the past. If the so called serious “mental illness” rate has risen sharply in modern times, such a rise supports the existence of PDTS.

We do know that serious “mental illness” rates have risen in recent years, and that this rise in serious “mental illness” rates has something to do with the corresponding quick rise of the big pharmaceutical companies. It is my contention that if this rise has been substantial, such a rise supports the existence of PDTS.

We also know that the recovery rates for people with serious “mental disorder” labels are not very good.  There is some evidence to suggest that those recovery rates  may have been better in the past. There is also some evidence of better outcomes where experimentation with less conventional forms of non-drug treatment have been tried. I suggest that this lack of good outcomes on the part of drug treatment is also a result of PDTS.

The cure for PDTS is achieved through psychiatric drug withdrawal (detoxification) under the care and guidance of an acknowledged, experienced, and trained professional.

Although do-it-yourself detoxification treatment programs are not out of the question, it has been suggested that individuals who chose this form of treatment educate themselves thoroughly on the subject first before they commence with treatment. This is especially true where the subject has been taking prescription psychiatric drugs over the course of many years.  There is a great deal of fear that quitting cold turkey after years of drug treatment adherence could exascerbate the PDTS.

Unbidden, the judge further directed that the 32-year-old woman be sterilized “to avoid this painful situation from recurring in the future.’’

The appeals court judge struck down this decision in what The Globe described as “unusually harsh terms.”

The personal decision whether to bear or beget a child is a right so fundamental that it must be extended to all persons, including those who are incompetent,’’ the opinion stated, citing a 1982 ruling by the state’s Supreme Judicial Court.

The woman, judged ‘incompetent’, had had a child previously, and she had undergone an abortion as well.  She said she was very Catholic, and she would not consent to such a procedure.

Regarding the frequency of such court orders…

“My guess is it happens a lot more than we know,’’ he [Daniel Pollack, professor, Yeshiva University] said.

The records from this case have been sealed.

Thankfully the Appellate Court recognised, in this instance, when a Judge’s ruling had been way out of bounds.

The World Transformation Movement today published a ground-breaking essay titled What is science? by Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith that offers hope to the public’s growing disenchantment with science, by revealing that science will be the saviour of the human race.

Now where have I come across ‘savior’ before? Hmmm, I wonder?  We have heard much about the separation of politics and religion. I was never aware that science and religion made such great bed mates. Do they!?

The What is science? essay cites a 2011 Australian Academy of Science report that found a ‘staggering’ 43 percent drop over the last 20 years in the number of Australian Year 11 and 12 students studying science from 94 percent to 51 percent (reference:1).

One thing that is not science as well is the subject of the afore mentioned essay. I read it, and I encourage others to do the same, although not for scientific reasons, for critical and philosophical reasons. I suggest that the essay stands as a good introduction for a student interested in pursuing a career in the priesthood, or in psychiatry. To illustrate….

On this greatest of all breakthroughs in science, Professor Harry Prosen, a former president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, is quoted in the essay saying: “I have no doubt this biological explanation of the human condition is the holy grail of insight we have sought for the psychological rehabilitation of the human race.”

Speak of the devil! The human race is “sick” and needs to be psychologically rehabilitated. After their downfall following exile from the garden of Eden, of course!

Just in case you were wondering, this essay speaks often of a human condition while not mentioning a hedgehog condition, or a cockroach condition, let’s say, once.  A fact I find fascinating. Science is perceived as being “in denial” concerning this human condition. Funny thing, no mention was made of a green house effect in this essay at all, nor was any mention made of any denial of such an effect.

I left the following comment regarding this essay under the Merriam-Webster definition of Metaphysical.

I was reading an essay that claimed to be about science. I had to look up the definition of science to tackle that one. There seemed to be a great deal of metaphysical speculation in this essay. As science is  about the study of the natural, physical, and material world, my conclusion was that the essay was not scientific. Metaphysical matters, being imperceptible to the senses, are not accessible to scientific investigation by definition.

That definition is as follows…

1 : of or relating to metaphysics.

2 a : of or relating to the transcendent or to a reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses

   b : supernatural.

3:  highly abstract or abstruse; also : theoretical.

4 often capitalized : of or relating to poetry especially of the early 17th century that is highly intellectual and philosophical and marked by unconventional imagery.

Alright, if anybody should choose to write an essay about the nature of science I suggest they begin by searching Merriam-Webster or any other source  for the definition, always a good thing to have, first.

Mental Patients Liberation

Peer

Peer Support

Peer Specialist

Consumer

Consumer Empowerment

Psychiatric Survivor

Consumer/Survivor/Ex-patient

C/S/X

Ex-patient

User and Survivor

Anti-psychiatry

Anti-stigma

Peer Recovery

Recovery

Mad

Mad Pride

Mental Patients

Mental Health

Self-help

Disability

Ability

We are the __________ movement.

It’s Okay to be withdrawn, anti-social, socio or psychopathic, too.

There, I had my little transactional analyst moment. Thank you. Good night!

I myself was thinking of coming out as an anti-psychiatrist not that long ago. News searches on the search engine Google convinced me that doing so was not such a good idea. The only times anti-psychiatry appears in the English language press these days is to identify a discredited school of thought, or as a term of disparagement. It is not a fashionable term, to say the least, and it does not tend to be used as a term of endearment. I would imagine a few foreign nationalities might be more friendly to the term, but I’m not keen on the idea of wasting the time with BabelFish to find out.

RD Laing was probably the most celebrated psychiatrist in the world in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. This is long before the faddish nature of his visionary demeanor had faded into obscurity, he lost his medical license over a love of Scotch whiskey, and he suffered a fatal heart attack on the tennis court. Thomas Szasz, a critic of the psychiatric establishment himself, launched a few verbal missiles at the grave mounds of this group of doctors once they’d passed into the relative non-obtrusive silence of decay. Not surprisingly, the victims of this savage attack didn’t have much to say in their defense.

I don’t like psychiatry. I think the term anti-psychiatry, like the term anti-Christ in Christianity, gives psychiatry too much credit. I’m all for non-psychiatry. Non-psychiatry has worked wonders in my life. I’ve seen non-psychiatry work wonders in the lives of other people, too. Psychiatry, on the other hand, has been an absolute disaster from the very start. Psychiatry is there to treat diseases that aren’t even diseases, and there is a raging epidemic of these imaginary diseases ravaging the country right now. As long as a person pays a psychiatrist, often through an insurance company, a person can have one of these diseases. Sometimes the chemicals used to treat these imaginary diseases have their own debilitating effects, and psychiatrists have assumed as their chief role the dispensing of these chemical agents of control and disablement. There is an obvious cure to these imaginary diseases that most people just don’t pick up on. Stop paying the insurance companies, stop seeing the psychiatrist, and stop taking the poison he or she prescribes. Duh! There is no recovery, in fact, from what has been referred to as “mental illness” without non-psychiatry. Psychiatry is all about “mental illness”. If you are looking for mental health, well, you’re going to have to look elsewhere. That elsewhere, as you may have guessed, is non-psychiatry.

As many as ¼ of the people on earth may have had the misfortune of visiting a psychiatrist. It only takes one visit to pick up a psychiatric condition. Psychiatrists are very adept at doling out these conditions, just as they are adept at doling out the drugs used to treat them. Drug companies have made trillions of dollars from this cozy relationship they have developed with psychiatry. Most of the people who make the mistake of stumbling into a psychiatrists office will correct this error at some point in their lives. Most, but certainly not all of them. About 5 % of the people in the USA have been saddled with a serious “mental illness” delusion. Serious “mental illnesses” are, well, serious. The obvious antidote to such gravity is levity. 95 % of the people on earth can manage this levity. An fortunate few among the 5 % have picked up on it, too, and drifted back among the 95 %, while an unfortunate few among the 95 % have lost it entirely, and find themselves stuck among the 5 %. The moral of this tale is that ordinary discomfort is human and not pathological. If you want pathological, consult a psychiatrist.

Given mental health law, voluntary treatment is always voluntary in name only. A person can admit him or her self into the hospital, but if a doctor or doctors object to this individual leaving, he or she is stuck there. All the doctors and staff need to do is to ask for a court order, and then the formerly voluntary patient will be evaluated, and possibly face a commitment hearing. The units are locked, and people are not allowed to come and go at will. Thus voluntary treatment isn’t voluntary in point of fact.

When the locks are removed from the doors, and people are allowed to come and go as they please, then and only then will we have truly voluntary treatment. Voluntary treatment and forced treatment cannot exist side by side. The existence of one, being based upon power and violence, cancels out the other, being based on trust and mutual consent. Voluntary incarceration is an oxymoron, and a contradiction in terms. As we are dealing with psychiatric prisons that call themselves hospitals, this sleight of tongue can be the source of a great deal of confusion.

All we have to do to get the idea that something is amiss here is to compare the definitions of hospital and prison as provided by doing a search on Answers.com.

The definition given for hospital is as follows…

1. An institution that provides medical, surgical, or psychiatric care and treatment for the sick or the injured.
2. Chiefly British. A charitable institution, such as an orphanage or a home for the elderly.
3. A repair shop for specified items: a doll hospital.
4. Archaic. A hospice for travelers or pilgrims.

The definition of a prison is…

1. A place for the confinement of persons in lawful detention, especially persons convicted of crimes.
2. A place or condition of confinement or forcible restraint.
3. A state of imprisonment or captivity.

Putting aside the allusion to psychiatric “care” in the hospital definition, if there‘s any doubt that a psychiatric hospital has become “a place or condition of confinement or forcible restraint“ (i.e. a prison), somebody has neglected to sufficiently research the subject. A state hospital, that is, a psychiatric prison, is a place where people are confined and forcibly restrained.

Let’s not mince words, according the definitions we have a consulted, a mental patient in a locked psychiatric facility is a prisoner. If the mental patient were not a prisoner, he or she would be free to walk out the door wherever he or she desired to do so. They are not allowed to do so. They have been stripped of their liberties of movement and expression. They are confined to locked units. Confinement is imprisonment. Period.

Another alarming aspect of this matter is the fact that the primary forms of treatment used to treat patient/prisoners usually involves injuring the patient/prisoner, often against the will and wishes of the patient/prisoner. Some patient/prisoners are subjected to usually non-lethal electrocutions called Electro-convulsive shock therapy treatments. These ECT treatments always result in some memory loss. This memory loss indicates brain volume loss. Most patient/prisoners are put on neuroleptic drugs, and these drugs are proven brain damaging and life shortening poisons. No man or woman should, as happens in the mental health system, be subjected to these measures against his or her will and wishes. If a hospital is a place where the injured are treated, this treatment should never include further injury, as it all too often does in the mental health system. Therapeutic injury, in point of fact, is as much of an oxymoron as voluntary incarceration.

Violent criminals need to be held accountable for the crimes they commit regardless of the frame of mind they were in at the time of the commission of the crime. Crime is a matter of breaking the law. It is not a matter of pathology. The state has no business legislating medicine. The states business should be in protecting citizens instead. The NGRI (Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity) defense should be removed from the books. Mental health issues, in the criminal justice system, should be dealt with on a voluntary basis. When the stability of a suspect interferes with a court proceedings this interference shouldn’t forestall accountability. People who break the law, whether of sound mind or not, should be held accountable.

As is, due to mental health law, people have the right to receive mental health treatment, but they don’t have the right to refuse mental health treatment. This need for treatment is determined solely by a leap of judgment on the part of a psychiatrist or other designated professional. The targets of this action have few legal recourses to prevent this sort of action from taking place. Their constitutional rights, in fact, are circumvented in the commitment process. I support the rights of people to refuse mental health treatment. This is a right that will only come into being with the repeal of mental health law. Mental health law is actually forced treatment law. I am not against mental health treatment. A person should be allowed to receive such treatment if he or she wants it. I am against imposing mental health treatment on people who don‘t want it. Without mental health law, forcing treatment on a person is assault, and assault is illegal. This assault is conducted by the state. When the state puts itself above the very laws our representatives have enacted, and when it ceases to act in the interests of its citizens, all of its citizens, watch out! You could be next.