The Shame of Medicine: The Depravity of Psychiatry
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Filed Under: The Therapeutic State
Tags: civil liberties • criminal justice • danger to society • indefinite incarceration • psychiatric evaluation • psychiatry • torture
Responding to my May 2009 column, George Mason University economics professor Bryan Caplan commented: “In the last couple of decades, a lot of
people have apologized for the past crimes of the groups with which they identify: the U.S. for Japanese internment, the Church for Galileo, Swiss bankers for Nazi money laundering, even the Japanese (kind of) for their war crimes. I’d like to see psychiatrists do the same—to admit that unusual preferences are not ‘disease,’ affirm that it is wrong to treat people against their will, and turn their backs on the ‘greats’ of their profession who believed in and practiced coercive therapy.”
I am grateful to Caplan for calling attention to a problem most people prefer to ignore. His expectation will, however, not be fulfilled, and it is important to understand why. Claiming competence in astronomy and incarcerating heretics are not integral to the identity of the Catholic Church. In contrast, claiming competence in predicting “dangerousness” and incarcerating persons alleged to be so because of “mental illness” are integral to the psychiatric enterprise. Wikipedia defines civil commitment as “the practice of using legal means or forms as part of a mental health law to commit a person to a mental hospital, insane asylum or psychiatric ward against their will and/or over their protests. . . . A common reason given for involuntary commitment is to prevent danger to the individual or society.”
Psychiatrists alternately deny and delight in possessing special professional skill at detecting future “dangerousness” that entitles them to the special power to incarcerate individuals they so stigmatize in prisons that masquerade as hospitals. The American legal system makes heavy use of psychiatric determinations of dangerousness, as a result of which vast numbers of Americans are deprived of liberty and, at the same time, of opportunity to demonstrate the injustice of their detention. Examples abound.
Kafka in Court
In March 2004 Susan Lindauer was arrested in Maryland and charged with “acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government.” She faced up to 25 years in prison. Instead of trying Lindauer, government psychiatrists declared her mentally incompetent to stand trial and incarcerated her at the Carswell Federal Medical Center in Texas, a facility described as providing “medical and mental health services to female offenders.” But Lindauer was not an offender. She was an innocent American.
After “hospitalizing” Lindauer for 18 months, her “medical” torturers concluded that, although she was still mentally ill and incompetent to stand trial, she no longer needed psychiatric “care.” Released from detention, she returned to Maryland where federal court services referred her to a private agency for counseling. According to a motion filed by her attorney, her counselor, Dr. Bruke Tadessah, said, “That evaluation showed a diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder due to her experiences at Carswell.” Last January the federal government dropped its case against Lindauer as ”no longer in the interest of justice,” implying that her psychiatric persecution had been in the interest of justice.
Consider the contrast. Inmates of American mental-health facilities are stigmatized as “mental patients”; their torture is called “treatment”; and they are regarded as the beneficiaries of a caring government’s therapeutic services. The inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were not stigmatized as “mental patients”; their torture was not called “treatment”; and they were regarded as the victims of government-sponsored “detainee abuse.”
Indefinite Incarceration
When Donald Schmidt was 16, he molested and drowned a 3-year-old girl. Under California law juvenile offenders who commit serious crimes can be kept in the system only until they are 25. But Schmidt’s detention has been extended under the state code that allows “continued detention if a jury finds the inmate has a mental disorder, defect or abnormality that causes the person to have serious difficulty controlling his or her dangerous behavior.”
What is Schmidt expected to do to get a divorce from his “doctors” and regain his liberty? Every two years he can petition for release and hope that a judge will order a “trial,” letting jurors decide whether he remains a “danger to society.” Anticipating another such contingency, a Santa Cruz County district attorney Bob Lee declared, “We believe he’s a psychopath.” Richard A. Starrett, a clinical psychologist, agreed that Schmidt was still a danger, though “not a psychopath.” Barry Krisberg, president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency in Oakland, California, called Schmidt’s situation “one in a million.”
The claim that Schmidt’s indefinite psychiatric sentence is unusual is typical of the deceit and depravity intrinsic to forensic psychiatry. John Hinckley, Jr., never convicted of a crime, is serving his 28th year of psychiatric imprisonment. Evidently the government’s greatest psychiatrists need more time to cure him of dangerousness.
Psychiatry is the political legitimation of the incarceration of innocent individuals under psychiatric auspices, a practice that appears to enjoy near-universal approval by people in modern societies. Recognition of the fact that noncoercive psychiatry is an oxymoron is obscured by the concurrent practice of seemingly consensual “therapy.” I say “seemingly” because the mental-health professional retains the privilege and obligation to deprive his patient of liberty if he “poses a danger to himself or others.” As a result, psychiatrists and the press regularly tout psychiatric “reforms,” while the “doctors” engage in ever-increasingly refined forms of psychiatric depravity, supported by the unquestioned and unquestionable premise that “dangerousness” justifies imprisonment called “hospitalization.”
In the published report of a 1981 workshop titled Behavioral Science and the Secret Service, sponsored by the prestigious Institute of Medicine, Robert Michels, University Professor of Medicine and of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, asserted that “most mental health professionals believe that there is no major ethical dilemma if it is in the patient’s interest to violate his confidentiality, and that it is generally in the patient’s (as well as society’s) interest to prevent a major violence.” The assertion that “most mental health professionals believe” that violating a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to trial serves his interest is evidence of psychiatric depravity, not morality.
To make matters worse, a few pages later the workshop reporter informs us that “Some conferees, including psychiatrists Robert Michels and Loren Roth [a prominent forensic psychiatrist and professor at the University of Pittsburgh], questioned the utility of making dangerousness determinations at all, because such decisions at any one time are likely to be highly unreliable and invalid. . . . Mental health professionals in general have not been shown to be better than anyone else in making predictions about behavior which might occur in the distant future under changing conditions.”
None of this evidence impairs the professional standing of psychiatry as an ethical and scientific medical discipline. The psychiatric enterprise is so deeply rooted in social control and so strongly supported by pseudoscientific magic and prejudice that psychiatrists must either cling to and justify the coercive services they render or repudiate and abolish their profession as they and we know it.
Comment by Tracy Alexis on 19 June 2009:
Just like the aforementioned untried \"criminals,\" one of the last \"captive\" populations for forced medicalizations is America\’s foster children (and children whose parents think they suffer from ADHD, ADD, etc. and take them to doctors for meds to calm their unwanted or misunderstood behaviors)! Just look at the current scandal in Broward County, Florida (and elsewhere). At least Floridians have the decency to air their dirty laundry so the rest of us become more educated (through diligent news reporters\’ efforts at the Miami Herald). How many other states are still cloaking their scandals (and unwanted or misunderstood child and adult behaviors) in secrecy and darkness with the public at large completely unaware?! Thank you Dr. Szasz for your very cogent, and continued, truthfulness! I know you have know that being right is rarely popular.
Comment by Loretta on 20 June 2009:
Tracey Alexis,
The war against children that you’re describing, in which children are viciously attacked with psychiatric druggings, is even worse than you thought.
You’re right to mention the gross injustices against foster children. Yet, other children are being systematically destroyed through psychiatric druggings.
The drug companies have a lot to do with it. They’re using children as a profit base.
Have you heard about the following two wretches: “Charles Nemeroff” or “Frederick K. Goodwin”? You can web-search those two names. Both of these guys were wealthy and powerful psychiatrists who accepted money from the drug companies for representing the interests of the drug companies under the guise of “science”. Goodwin is especially memorable because, while his NPR radio show was still on the air, he explicitly advocated the psychiatric drugging of children, claiming that the drugs were somehow “good” for the children’s growing young brains, and all the while he was accepting money from the drug companies.
Goodwin had accumulated more than a million dollars of money from several or many drug companies, and he had advocated the use of their products on his show “The Infinite Mind” — by the time he was caught and the very embarrassed NPR took his show off of the air.
Complete-phrase web searches: “Charles Nemeroff” and “Frederick K. Goodwin”.
There are probably many others who pretend to be in the healing arts, but are actually drug-pimps just like Nemeroff and Goodwin (only difference that those two got caught).
Comment by Tracy Alexis on 20 June 2009:
Loretta:
Thank you for the Nemeroff and Goodwin info. Yes, the implicit meaning of my post is that the depth and breadth of this so called problem is unfathomable by the public at large. Kids and adults are dying daily from taking these atypical antipsychotic medications/cocktails. Blatantly, Big Pharma is behind it…it has so much to gain monetarily and so little to lose – especially with no real oversight from FDA. Chemical lobotomy anyone??? Prescribers can and will serve one up a nice chemical cocktail for you if you just tell them you are depressed…and many, like Nemeroff and Goodwin, will gain kick-backs from the pharmaceutical companies for the Rx, and then be asked to speak/present at professional conferences. Wake Up America…You say you want a different and better economy…get out of your chemically induced coma and see it for what it is! If Congress had all of the profits from big pharmaceutical companies, we would NOT have a national deficit! Ah, but I mix universes of discourse (only because they ARE inextricably intertwined).
Comment by Sunita on 21 June 2009:
America has become a dangerous country for her own citizens namely our children. Thanks for speaking up and sounding the alarm though I suspect it is going to get worse. I and my children almost became victims of psychiatric-pimps and the “drug-lords”.
Comment by Tracy Alexis on 22 June 2009:
There are a few lose ends that need tying with respect to this thread of dialogue. Most importantly, there is no such thing as ‘mental illness.’ What there is (that psychiatrists and psychologists label as mental illenss) are numerous manifestations of unwanted or misunderstood behaviors-the root causes of which are ‘professionally’ (and I use that term loosely) medicated under the various labels of mental illness. “Therapy” is only, and I stress the word ONLY, truly conducted when physchiatrists and/or psychologists explore the CAUSES of those unwanted or misunderstood behaviors (not mask them with medications). The unwanted and/or misunderstood behaviors that are being medically masked are life-long traumas such as family secrets (molestation perhaps), abuse (parent to child, sibling to sibling, etc.) and collusions (let’s not tell anyone just how messed up we are and maybe no one will figure it out), just to name a few. Of course, psychiatrists and psychologists are both guilty of making more and more and more money by billing insurance companies (or Medicaid) as they quickly cycle patients in and out of their offices with a swift diagnosis of mental illness and an RX for a dangerously potent life-altering chemical lobotomy. It takes TIME to explore the underlying causes of trauma. There is no money to be made with spending untold hours of TIME with a patient to discover and understand the real causes underlying his/her traumas. It is much more efficient, for the so-called professional, to get the patient in, slap a label on him/her, give them an RX, usher them out the door and cycle in the next victim for the same quick treatment. What is so blatantly egregious is that Americans have allowed themselves to be so misled for so long by so many so-called ‘professionals.’ If you are not angry about this, you should be as it is eroding our country from the inside and from the youngest members (our future leaders)! Parents are supposed to protect their children, not offer them up for slaughter.
Comment by Rob on 28 July 2009:
15 years ago I exhibited symptoms which the medical and psychiatric community referred to as “depression.” They gave me medications which triggered mania, and then diagnosed me as “bipolar.” Side-effects from continued medications have me left on disability for 8 years.
Yes, this is a mass conspiracy, but you don’t need Szasz’s legal case studies to make the point necessarily. 10’s of millions of people like me are diagnosed, medicated, and mothballed by sedating and fatiguing treatments. We are conveniently left in a purgatory of disability payments (if we’re lucky to get them), boredom, and suffering.
The drug companies, psychiatrists, and the government are all willing, if unconscious (?) participants, but so too are the “patients,” although they are often helpless to resist. I am trying to fight my way out by unwinding myself from the cocktail of meds I’m on right now.
People who present “mental health” symptoms do need help in the form of support from family and friends, some kind of goal-oriented therapy, and possibly temporal (not permanent) drug therapy, or other treatments. These “psychotic” symptoms come from some part of ourselves that western medicine has difficulty reaching, and often exacerbate the problem and prevent individuals from completing the “inward journey” through the difficulties and out the other side to fully regained health.
Do keep an eye out for psychiatric diagnoses and treatments. I agree with many that we should keep our children, family and friends out of the trap. I know better. I wish I knew better when this whole experience started for me.
Comment by Lynn on 30 July 2009:
The larger issue here is one in which the personal can be extrapolated out to the political.
I stayed in a frustrating and unsatisfying marriage for 18 years with the “help” of Prozac. Once I finally obtained a divorce, the “need” for Prozac miraculously ended. I have heard the same from numerous friends and acquaintances.
How much of Americans’ current lack of outrage about the curtailment of our liberties and the ballooning tax and debt burden our government is creating, is due to the prevalence (10-15% of the population) of antidepressant use? Would that 10-15% be the fiery leadership which could spark a revolution if unmedicated?
Comment by Frederick Alexander Jones on 4 August 2009:
THE PSYCHIATRIST AS HIGH PRIEST
Bogus psychistric commitments have always been a very routine matter in the new york state criminal justice system, under CPL 730.50. For the innocent, the legal aid society lawyer, the legal aid society counsel, the legal aid society legal expert (Bruce Thurston), and the legal aid society policy will suborne the very routine and lengthly perjury of a psychiatrist. Of course, such a defendant/respondent will not cooperate. Consequently, his lawyer will begin waiving his most important right: the right to public scrutiny of the events that transpire in the court. This, of course, must include an appropriate procedural protection: a contemporaneous recording (audio and visual)of all psychiatric examinations that are relied upon. A complete copy of this recording must be immediately available to the defendant/respondent personally, and whenever such person requests it. It must be the most respected of all federal and state constitutional rights. It is the right to a meaningful guarantee of public scrutiny.
Without such a fundamental right, anything can and will occur in the courts within New York State. The court officers almost never have any public persons in their courts, and section 52 of the N.Y.S. Civil Rights Law strictly prohibited all electronic recordings and cameras to the public for many previous decades. Moreover, Judge Judy and the other fakers are not judges. They are arbitrators, and the most serious crimes are almost always tried in completely empty courtroom. The guarantee of public scrutiny has never actually existed in the state of New York. Ergo, any rights deprivation can,and very frequently, does occur.
The innocent citizen will not be able to meaningfully challenge the factual determinations upon which the certain baneful psychiatric recommendations and outrageous conclusions will be based. A CPL 730.50 commitment will generate thousands or false documents, and the legal aid lawyer will waive the rights that prohibit them during a criminal or civil jury trial.
Landlords will use the massive numbers of venal judges to enter such false documents in housing courts that plainly have no subject-matter jurisdiction.
Moreover, the baneful consequences of a lack of public scrutiny seem literally boundless.
Contact me if you are single,very young, female, speak German, have red hair and freckles. Otherwise, see my website : liebestadt.com
Comment by Frederick Alexander Jones on 4 August 2009:
THE PSYCHIATRIST AS HIGH PRIEST
Bogus psychiatric commitments have always been a very routine matter in the new york state criminal justice system, under CPL 730.50. For the innocent, the legal aid society lawyer, the legal aid society counsel, the legal aid society legal expert (Bruce Thurston), and the legal aid society policy will suborne the very routine and lengthly perjury of a psychiatrist. Of course, such a defendant/respondent will not cooperate. Consequently, his lawyer will begin waiving his client’s most important right: the right to public scrutiny of the events that transpire in the court. This, of course, must include an appropriate procedural protection: a contemporaneous recording (audio and visual)of all psychiatric examinations that are relied upon. A complete copy of this recording must be immediately available to the defendant/respondent personally, and whenever such person requests it. It must be the most respected of all federal and state constitutional rights. It is the right to a meaningful guarantee of public scrutiny.
Without such a fundamental right, anything can and will occur in the courts within New York State. The court officers almost never have any public persons in their courts, and section 52 of the N.Y.S. Civil Rights Law strictly prohibited all electronic recordings and cameras to the public for many previous decades. Moreover, Judge Judy and the other fakers are not judges. They are arbitrators, and the most serious crimes are almost always tried in completely empty courtroom. The guarantee of public scrutiny has never actually existed in the state of New York. Ergo, any rights deprivation can,and very frequently, does occur.
The innocent citizen will not be able to meaningfully challenge the factual determinations upon which the certain baneful psychiatric recommendations and outrageous conclusions will be based. A CPL 730.50 commitment will generate thousands or false documents, and the legal aid lawyer will waive the rights that prohibit them during a criminal or civil jury trial.
Landlords will use the massive numbers of venal judges to enter such false documents in housing courts that plainly have no subject-matter jurisdiction.
Moreover, the baneful consequences of a lack of public scrutiny seem literally boundless.
Contact me if you are single,very young, female, speak German, have red hair and freckles. Otherwise, see my website : liebestadt.com
Pingback by Rad Geek People’s Daily 2009-12-03 – Without remorse on 3 December 2009:
[...] I’d like it, too. Psychiatrists expect to be taken seriously, both as scientific experts and as benevolent caretakers; I think at least a minimal requirement of being taken seriously on these claims would be for them to own up to the fact that within living memory, their discipline was rife with theories now universally regarded as the worst sort of politically-motivated pseudoscience and therapeutic practices now universally reviled as the worst sort of atrocities. They have been wrong about everything and they ruined life after life with the most appalling sorts of brain-damaging treatment on the basis of these pseudoscientific superstitions. If shrinks want to be taken seriously, they need to start by owning up to their record; because if they can’t do so much as that, the rest of us have every reason to expect that they’ve done nothing to correct the systematic vices that led to the ridiculous lies and sadistic horrors they were inflicting as recently as 30-40 years ago. But I don’t expect anything like it to happen this side of the revolution.*. As Szasz says in The Freeman: Ideas On Liberty (July/August 2009): The Shame of Medicine: The Depravity of Psychiatry: [...]