Gimme a break, Judge!

I note in yesterday's Chicago Tribune that a federal judge was upset with nursing home operators who distributed deceptive information sheets to mentally ill residents. Hon. William Hart of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois accused the operators of employing scare tactics about a proposed legal settlement to convince vulnerable patients and family members not to take their business elsewhere.

I have to laugh out loud.

What else, exactly, do Judge Hart, the Trib and the public think the whole "mental illness" industry is all about? Medical psychiatry would not exist without fraud and coercion, which are its basic, essential stock in trade.

Ever since I have been advocating for patients at Elgin Mental Health Center, that state institution has continuously, freely and enthusiastically distributed the most deceptive information in existence about mental illness: NAMI fliers and brochures which attempt to convince the public that depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and anxiety disorders (along with anything else graced by a magic DSM code) are proven brain diseases.

This is a bald, flat-out lie, invented for no other reason than to sell drugs that dehumanize and control people. Every state institution I have ever been to in Illinois does the same thing.

I was in a monthly staffing at EMHC on Wednesday, during which the patient (my client) appealed to his treatment team with a manifestly rational and well-informed argument, that psychotropic drugs had never been helpful to him. They had in fact tortured him and damaged him. He wanted the help of these clinicians, to progress toward conditional release on a treatment plan without meds.

This patient was not demanding, hostile, or even very unrealistic. He hasn't taken any meds for about a year now, and there's nothing really wrong with him. If the treatment team dealt with him on just some part of his own terms, he'd quickly prove to them that he is in fact well.

But forget it! State psych-slave-keepers cannot bring themselves to think that way. At least, not until somebody demonstrates that it will cost too much not to.

They were all about interpreting every little disagreement, every departure from the most perfect adherence to their psychiatric religion and unconditional expressions of fealty, as the "rigidity of the patient's thinking" - caused, of course, by his not taking psychotropic meds. It's pure nonsense, every bit as despicable as the nursing home operators' deceptive information sheets, complained of by Judge Hart.

The treatment team seemed to actually believe the nonsense themselves, until I spoke up and agreed with the patient. I was rather quickly cut off with, "Well, enough has been said about meds, let's just move on." The truth was unacceptable, the motive was utterly malevolent.

There's no use in soft-pedaling any of this. The State of Illinois obstructs informed consent and perpetrates a continuing crime against humanity.