Citizens Commission of Human Rights in Florida

My dad sent me some links the the Citizens Commission of Human Rights in Florida that I'd like to share.

The first is to a book called A New Approach to a Healthy Mind

Here's some great videos

Local news articles about psychiatry

That's about it! Let me know what you think.

A history of Psychiatry -1600-1700

I have decided to post some information on the history of Psychiatry. Recently, I visited CCHR's Psychiatry - An Industry of Death Museum, which gave me a greater understanding of Psychiatrists and what they think of the human race and WHY they think that way. This museum shows the progression of psychiatry and it's views. I'd like to try to show anyone reading this blog that same progression. So, here it goes - starting with Psychiatry from 1600-1700:

Until the mid 1800s, the practice that became known as "psychiatry" was responsible only for the warehousing of the mentally disturbed. Patients were treated like animals, often confined to cages, closets and animal stalls. They were also shackled and flogged.

Psychiatrist Lee Coleman, author of Reign of Error: Psychiatry, Authority, and Law, says the roots of psychiatry are based on control and power, "Whatever was done to make this person more manageable would be simply called a treatment. And the sad realty is that many of these so-called treatments were in essence torture."

Through the 1600s and 1700s, inmates of the infamous "Bedlam" mental asylum in London were chained, beaten, fed rotten food and subjected to regular bloodlettings. The only beneficiaries of this treatment were the asylum attendants, who made fortunes from their human warehouses and displayed their victims like circus sideshow acts to anyone willing to pay admission.

In 1684 in England, Dr. Thomas Willis authored a text on insanity, claiming: "Discipline, threats, fetters [shackles], and blows are needed...Truly nothing is more necessary and more effective for the recovery of these people than forcing them to respect and fear intimidation."

It has often been said that those who don't know the history are likely to repeat it. Lets see if Psychiatrists have. I'll be posting tidbits of history that I've been able to find every day that I can.

Reporting Psychiatric Abuse

When someone is abused by a doctor, they rarely have anyone to turn to. If you have been abused by your psychiatrist, report it to http://www.cchr.org/drugreporting. They will help.

Deadly Use of Psychiatric Restraints

• Between 1950 and 1964, more people died in U.S. psychiatric hospitals than were killed in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Persian Gulf War combined. In fact, between 1950 and 1990, the total number of psychiatric inpatient deaths exceeded the cumulative number of war casualties by at least 70%.
• Between 1998 and 1999, 150 people died from restraint procedures in psychiatric facilities in the United States. Thirteen of these deaths over a two-year period were of teenagers and children placed under psychiatric care.

The above are some facts I found on restraints from www.cchr.com. You would think that a mental hospital would be a caring place where mental patients get the help they need to get better. This is not so. Virtually every day through psychiatric drugs, restraints, brutality, assault and neglect, mental patients are tortured and killed.
Horror stories have recently emerged of children dying strapped to beds and chairs. Others were pinned to floors by hospital staff, crying out that they couldn't breathe. One six-year-old boy, for instance, died alone of asphyxiation while strapped to a wheelchair. Another teenager died of the same cause, while staffers shoved a towel over his mouth and wrapped a sheet around his head. Far from being told the circumstances under which their children died, family members were frequently told that these deaths were due to natural causes or unfortunate accidents.
Due to exposure of these needless and tragic deaths, federal regulations in the United States now prohibit the use of physical and chemical restraints to coerce or discipline psychiatric patients. The regulation, passed in 1999, also ordered a national reporting system to be implemented and for government funding to be cut to any facility that fails to abide by the regulations.
Yet despite these federal regulations, the deaths continue. The Citizen's Commission on Human Rights is partnering with state and federal agencies to abolish this deadly practice.

For more information on deadly restraints, go to www.cchr.com, or try this link.