Woman Doesn't Receive Proper Medical Attention in Psychiatric Ward

This story tells of a woman who had a preventable blood clot in a psychiatric ward, but due to lack of care and inattention to her symptoms, she died. Psychiatrists went to medical school with other medical doctors. To my knowledge, they took the same Hippocratic oath as those doctors. This sort of inattention in any medical facility would be inexcusable, yet they are saying the woman died of "natural causes". If it's natural to be stationary in a hospital for 20 hours and then die of a blood clot, then I suppose they are right, otherwise I think it's totally outrageous and is definite medical malpractice.

Any thoughts?

Sex as an Occupational Hazard?

The New York Post reports Dr. Glen Gabbard, a psychiatrist who treats his peers for sexual misconduct saying: "We all have to practice as if this (sexual misconduct) could happen to us - it's an occupational hazard to which we are all vulnerable."

How creepy is that? When I saw this and all the other psychiatrists and psychologists who said that they had been involved in sexual relations with their patients, I decided to do a little research. I did a quick search and found the following articles, a psychiatrist being charged with predatory behavior, a prison psychologist having an affair with a patient,a shocking report of psychiatrists involved in sexual misconduct.

There are more, but those are just a few links to check out. It's strange to think that those we trust with our sanity do such insane things themselves.

FDA Approves Abilify for Kids

*Warning – Excessive Sarcasm*

Great, just what we need - another psychiatric drug. This one's even approve for kids. The FDA recently approved Abilify for "Pediatric Bipolar Illness".
The facts are these: The symptoms for "Pediatric Bipolar Illness" sound like the growing pains most children go through. Here are the symptoms, and you can decide:

- An expansive or irritable mood (so if the kid is overly happy or overly irritable, they are mentally ill)

- Extreme sadness or lack of interest in play (if the other kids hate him or her - or vice versa)

- Rapidly changing moods lasting a few hours to a few days (ever seen a kid go from 0-60 in 1.3 seconds when they are hungry or tired? Could it be that it's a deficiency in food or sleep?)

- Explosive, lengthy, and often destructive rages (No tantrums allowed!)

- Separation anxiety (You can't love your parents and be worried that the people who have been around you constantly for the past five or so years are now leaving you with strangers)

- Defiance of authority (You must all be mindless drones)

- Hyperactivity, agitation, and distractibility (If you don't understand what your teacher is saying, so you get bored or distracted, you must have a mental illness)

- Sleeping little or, alternatively, sleeping too much (Who judges what "sleeping too much or too little" is in a child?)

- Bed wetting and night terrors (You know when you watched Terminator the other night? You now have a mental disorder. Enjoy.)

- Strong and frequent cravings, often for carbohydrates and sweets (Have a sweet tooth?! You MUST be crazy)

- Excessive involvement in multiple projects and activities (Can you multi-task? Can't have that. You might grow up to be capable of thinking for yourself)

- Impaired judgment, impulsively, racing thoughts, and pressure to keep talking
dare-devil behaviors (You react to peer pressure? You want to find out how high you can climb up that tree? Nutcase)

- Inappropriate or precocious sexual behavior (Your parents were too embarrassed to explain what your body is or does, so you are trying to figure it out? or You react to peer pressure? Off to the nuthouse with you! or better yet, let's give you a drug to make it all better)

- Delusions and hallucinations (hmmm... can't do much commenting on that one)

- Grandiose belief in own abilities that defy the laws of logic (ability to fly, for example) ( I guess R. Kelly is mentally ill then) - Note, the first comment in parentheses is not mine, it is actually on the list of symptoms. My comment is the R. Kelly one.

Okay, I know that this post is far more sarcastic than what I've posted before, but it makes me so mad I could spit that the FDA would approve a drug to "cure" kids of some specious disease. Look at the side-effects this drug has:

- Extrapyramidal Disorder (common extrapyramidal disorders are diseases like Parkinsons and they often cause strokes). Five percent of people who take Abilify got extrapyramidal disorder.
- Thoughts of hurting yourself
- Restlessness
- Headache or Anxiety
- Seizures
- Urinating less than usual or not at all
- Jaundice
- Insomnia
- Jerky muscle movements you cannot control
- Nausea
- Drowsiness, Dizziness or Weakness
- Choking or trouble swallowing
- Feeling faint

The list goes on. Look over these side-effects and look what the drug is supposed to cure. Do they look similar to you? Would you put your child on a drug like this?
Also, does anyone know if any studies done or any proofs presented with regard their being a connection between childhood "mental illness" (which, as I said above, sound a lot like growing pains to me) and adult "mental illness"?

Great Links About Psychiatry

Here are some great links to start March out with:

Psychdata reports on the Mothers Act

The Alliance for Human Research Project reports on the Zyprexa saga

The Alliance for Human Research Project reports on Ablify

Attention Deficit Disorder reports on how to use vitamins to curb ADHD and ADD symptoms

Grahame reports that Prozac doesn't work

Psychwatch reports that 80% of suicides in Sweden are committed by people on anti-depressants

MSNBC reports on using psychiatry as punishment in Russia

DBunker reports on drug companies hiding the negative results of clinical trials (please note that DBunker's blog contains uninhibited terms and strong language.)

Scientology Against Drugs asks, is Bipolar Disorder real?

These are all very interesting articles. Check 'em out!

The Lobotomist

There's a new PBS American Experience called "The Lobotomist" out. It's about Walter Freeman who is considered the father of the lobotomy. For those of you who don't know what a lobotomy is, it's basically a barbaric practice with very serious side effects in which the "doctor" (I'm sorry, but I can't bring myself to call someone a doctor who does this) takes an ice-pick like instrument and a mallet, and after knocking the victim out - usually by using electroshock treatment - inserts the ice-pick through the bone of your eye and slashes the lobes of the front of your brain. It's really disgusting and it's actually making my stomach turn just writing about it. Anyway, the PBS special is very interesting, check it out if you have the stomach for it.

Psychiatrist Sentanced to Prison

A Canadian psychiatrist was sent to prison for several of his unsavory acts toward his patients and for peddling drugs. This video has the scoop.

Johann Christian Reil, 1800-1808

Johann Christian Reil coined the term "psychiatry" in 1808. The word literally means "healing the soul" from Greek "psyche". Yet Reil had already concluded in 1803 - without evidence - that mental disturbances were of the brain, not the soul. He advocated punishment, intimidation, loud noises, flogging and opium as treatments, describing them as "non-injurious torture." For a man that suffered "delusions about the purity of the female sex," Reil recommended "a prostitute who will cure his delusions."

1700s-1800s

Here's a continuation of our history. I last left off on the 1700s. Here are the "advances" psychiatry made from 1700-1800:

Throughout the 1700s and 1800s, patients were chained naked to walls, beaten with rods and lashed into obedience. French asylum director Philippe Pinel abolished the use of chains in Paris' Salpetriere Institution in 1793. In their place he instituted straitjackets and threatened patients who misbehaved with "10 severe lashes".

I can't say that there were any huge advances or changes made in psychiatry during this time, it was pretty much the same torturous treatment as in the 1600s-1700s. None of the above is not nearly as awful as what the "Father of American Psychiatry" Benjamin Rush did to his patients. I'll share that with you next time, but just to leave you with an idea of his attitude, here's a quote from Dr. Benjamin Rush regarding one of his inventions - the "Tranquilizer Chair", which was used to keep the patient in a state of discomfort and pain for hours on end:
"It binds and confines every part of the body. By preventing the muscles from acting...the position of the head and feet favors the easy application of cold water or ice to the former and warm water to the latter. Its effects have been truly delightful to me."
Here's a pic of the chair:

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.

An article I ran across

The following article - titled "INHUMAN BEINGS - The Chemicalized Personality" is by Tom Solari, a writer and producer:
A mother murders her five children. High school students massacre their classmates. An Iraq vet stabs his wife 71 times. How can this happen?
A common thread in these occurrences is the fact that the killers have been taking psychiatric medications. But that is too simple. So we hear about “post-partum depression” and “combat stress.” In the case of the teens, it's “the breakdown of the family" or it’s the music, the movies, the video games.
The real answer is the dehumanizing effect of drugs.
A human being has more than one aspect. There is a definite electro-chemical component. The body physically functions via electro-chemical processes. Then there is that aspect which perceives and reasons and creates. This is not electro-chemical. When people communicate with each other, it is not chemical molecules that are exchanging ideas. This is the spiritual aspect; the conscious, aware individual.
There is also a mental component—a mind—which is an interactive link between the reasoning factor and the physical. A healthy mind (motivated by the spirit) is analytical. A less healthy mind is less analytical and more and more reactive. It operates on a stimulus/response basis, motivated by random factors. A troubled, unhealthy mind doesn't reason. It doesn't perceive well. It reacts to stimuli.
For a long time now, the mental health establishment has been telling us that we are chemical in nature. They would have us believe that they can solve our problems with mood-altering drugs—a little dash of this and a little dash of that. That approach may work at the purely physical level, as in taking antibiotics to handle infection, but it is not the physical component that gives us our rationality, our humanity. It is not the molecules in the brain that are thinking and perceiving, loving and caring, creating great music and poetry. No, the physical component is comprised of cells and electrical impulses, which are as reasoning and creative as an avocado or the electric current that powers your toaster.
When a person is troubled, he is already sliding in the direction of the reactive, unthinking, physical impulse side of his nature. To then give him chemical, mood-altering drugs, pushes him further in that direction. While the sedative effect may appear to calm him down, he is becoming, more and more chemicalized.
So is it any wonder that these killers seem less than human? They ARE less than human. Though they can appear bright and calculating at times, real judgment is gone. They are completely reactive; alienated. Their minds bubble and boil like the mass of chemicals they have become. The analytical capacity is gone. The spirit is gone. Their humanity is gone. They respond randomly and literally to stimuli (enter music, movies and video games). Then, in the extreme, they lash out with violence at the imagined demons and enemies in their own unreal world. They have been mentally short-circuited by the drugs that are supposed to be helping them. It is the ultimate betrayal.
And when their bizarre, chemically induced, nightmare world collides with the world of OUR reality—which consists of living people, loving families, children, teachers, learning, accomplishment—a slaughter ensues and we are left to wonder "WHY?" "WHAT HAPPENED?"
The answer: psychiatry happened. And why would anyone perpetrate such a crime as to drug children and adults, driving them insane, all in the name of help? It's too horribly simple. It’s a multi-billion dollar business. They do it for money.
The good news is that when society wakes up to these facts, we will cease to allow these evils to occur. It's time.

Tom Solari
Copyright(c)2006 Tom SolariAll Rights ReservedTom Solari is a writer and video producer, living and working in Los Angeles. He is concerned about a culture that promotes chemical dependency as a solution to problems, when logic and the evidence shows that this approach deepens the problem by numbing the brain, muddling the mind and undermining the human spirit

What's being in a Mental Hospital like?

Involuntary Commitment

You may wonder, how easy is it to be involuntarily commited to a psychiatric hospital? It's so easy that in the United States, a person is involuntarily committed every 1 1/4 minutes. It is similar throughout the entire world.

Click here for more info.

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.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog. In my life I have run into many people who have had damaging experiences with psychiatry and I have also run into people who have never looked at all of the pros and cons of psychiatry. Although I've always tried to point anyone I've run into who had misconceptions about psychiatry in the right direction, I thought I'd use blogging in order to reach out to more people. I don't claim to be an expert on the subject, but I have studied several different books, articles and websites on the subject and I have talked to quite a few people who have been treated by psychiatrists.

I thought I'd share a video with you now about a girl who was in a mental institution for a while. Here it is:



At the end of the clip it gives the website address of one of my friends on myspace. If you want more information about psychiatry, or if you've been abused by psychiatrists, go to www.cchr.com.