Gay Conversion Therapy Trial: New Jersey Nonprofit Group In Fraud Trial For Claiming To Cure Homosexuality

Another case where Shrinks do not know what they are doing, and end up getting sued for it. From a report from the International Business Times (Warning, autoplay video on website)

A major challenge to “gay conversion” therapy is ramping up in New Jersey, in a case that critics of the controversial treatments hope will set a precedent for fighting the practice around the country. A group that offered the so-called therapy is scheduled to go on trial for fraud Wednesday in the state, one of only three to have banned licensed therapists from offering treatments that purport to change a person’s sexual orientation.

Four men and two of their mothers are suing the nonprofit group Jews Offering New Alternatives for Homosexuality, or Jonah, on the grounds that it fraudulently claimed that it could change patients’ sexual orientation and for characterizing homosexuality as a mental disorder, the Associated Press reported. The plaintiffs have accused the group of engaging in “unconscionable practices,” including making patients strip naked during therapy sessions and subjecting them to slurs regarding their homosexuality.

Lawyers for the group have countered that scientists are still debating the nature of sexual orientation, including whether it is fixed or changeable, as well as whether conversion therapies are actually harmful. They have also accused the plaintiffs of seeking to "shut down the debate by making one viewpoint on the issue literally illegal," the AP said.

[...]

In recent years, several states have moved to ban the therapy over fears that it could subject young people to psychological damage but only New Jersey, California, Oregon and Washington, D.C., have succeeded in passing and implementing bans. But the current bans apply only to licensed therapists who practice gay conversion therapy on minors, which is why prosecuting Jonah for consumer fraud could set an important precedent, according to Jack Drescher, a New York psychiatrist and one of the most vocal critics of these therapies.

“A win by the plaintiffs will undoubtedly have a chilling effect on practitioners of SOCE [sexual orientation change efforts] beyond the borders of New Jersey,” Drescher said in an interview with the Huffington Post. “A win would also expand the ban on SOCE embodied in existing legislative bans in CA, NJ, OR and DC: They only apply to licensed professionals who do SOCE with minors. Consumer fraud laws can be used against non-licensed practitioners and protect adult patients as well.”

"How dare you?"

An important column by activist Nancy Rubenstein del Giudice on the Mad in America Website

Here is a large snippet from the article

I am grateful to Phil Hickey and Robert Whitaker for challenging Jeffrey Lieberman in the manner they did, because, at this point my response to him is more of an emotional one and it can best be summed up this way; "How dare you?"

Dr. Lieberman, how dare you suggest that you should not have to endure critical examination? In case you missed the college experience, anthropology is all about looking at cultures and their institutions, and since your profession has sought to redefine what it means to be human, anthropologists have an absolute duty to examine that endeavor.

I am not sure what country you think you live in, but this is the one that celebrates freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and the New York Times is not here to protect your profession or any other.

How dare you ignore the thousands of people who have been harmed by psychiatric drugs and diagnostic lies over the last several decades. If you and your colleagues were the least bit concerned about people and society you would by now have mounted a full-scale investigation into hospital and physician records to find all the people who were told they had a "chemical imbalance" and needed to take psychiatric drugs for the rest of their lives, like a diabetic takes insulin. Dr. Pies' well known assertion that this is only propagated by "uninformed" psychiatrists is belied by the fact that these "uninformed" psychiatrists run hospital psych wards all over the country.

You would find all the people who had an adverse reaction to an SSRI and were told this had "unmasked an underlying illness," and were then put on polypharmacy cocktails leading to disability. That would be the responsible thing to do. But car manufacturers make changes for public safety, and they are not "well-educated professionals" who have sworn to "Do no harm."

How dare you call Robert Whitaker a menace to society? The real menace to society is a profession that has knowingly lied for decades to vulnerable people for profit, and refuses to take responsibility for the harm done.

For the past five years that I have worked for The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights, I have known over a thousand individuals who have literally lost everything because they are disabled after withdrawal from SSRIs, benzodiazapines, "mood stabilizers," and neuroleptics prescribed for sleep. They are a burden to their families, unable to qualify for disability because the medical profession refuses to learn and continues to deny the reality of their iatrogenic suffering.

How dare you ignore these young people whose twenties have been ripped away from them? As they suffer for years, unable even to leave the house, they watch their peers build families and careers and enjoy their youth. Any responsible group of people, instead of digging their heels in and denying this is happening would be diving in first to learn, and then to help. Because people matter. Because doctors are suppose to care about patients. Instead, we have a public health epidemic of iatrogenesis.

The Myth of the Chemical Cure: The Politics of Psychiatric Drug Treatment

Video presentation by UNE Center for Global Humanities and its founding director, Anouar Majid, host Joanna Moncrieff on "The Myth of the Chemical Cure: The Politics of Psychiatric Drug Treatment." Just under 1.5 hours

Judge: State of Alaska can't hold foster kids at mental hospital for indefinite stretches

From a report in the Alaska Dispatch News

More details at the link

Facing allegations that it improperly warehoused foster children at North Star psychiatric hospital in Anchorage, the Alaska Office of Children’s Services has been ordered by a state Superior Court judge not to keep children at the facility for indefinite periods of time.

The order is part of a preliminary injunction issued by Superior Court Judge Erin Marston that said a minor, admitted to the acute psychiatric hospital during an emergency, cannot remain there longer than 30 days without court approval.

But that length of time may change. As a next step, the judge has asked parties in the case to offer recommendations on the appropriate period of time a minor should be kept at the hospital before a court can weigh in.

The case was brought a year ago by the Southwest Alaska tribal governments of Hooper Bay and Kongiganak on behalf of the tribes’ children.

Alaska Legal Services, representing the tribes, argued that the state was improperly placing and holding children in the hospital. It provided examples of three Alaska Native teenage girls from two foster families who had been held at the hospital for at least four weeks without a judge’s approval, though their admission was based on questionable evidence.

One of the girls, a teenager referenced as C.A. for her initials, was held at the hospital for about a month, though a hearing judge later found there was no evidence supporting the decision to send her there, wrote Marston.

“OCS decided to send C.A. to North Star, although the reason for this decision is unclear,” Marston wrote.

Marston’s Feb. 12 preliminary order said that indefinite stays by children at North Star may violate U.S. constitutional rights and lead to “irreparable harm.”

“Continuing treatment of foster children without a judicial hearing raises the question of a violation of the fundamental right to due process,” he wrote.

The hospital provides a secure, locked facility where 24-hour services are given under the care of psychiatrists to children with severe emotional and behavioral disorders, he wrote.

But long, unnecessary placement at a mental hospital is not good for adolescents, said Jim Davis, the attorney arguing the case for Alaska Legal Services.

“This is not to say North Star is ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ but a mental hospital is not a good place for kids” with typical teenage behaviors, said Davis. “It can disempower and otherwise undermine a kid’s sense of self if they don’t really have a mental illness requiring them to be there.”

North Star Behavioral Health System was a defendant in the case along with Christy Lawton, OCS director. Like OCS, North Star must change its practices because of the preliminary order, Davis said.

Officials representing and working for North Star did not return phone calls seeking comments.

Though the case is not settled, the judge’s preliminary order is in part a victory for the tribal governments.

[...]

The state’s policy was insufficient because it proposed no timeline, leaving that up to the scheduling of the courts, Davis said. Getting a hearing can take far too long, sometimes leaving a child in the mental hospital long after they should have been released, said Davis.

The girl had caused alarm after it was believed she had overdosed on antidepressants, leading to a trip to the hospital emergency room in the hub city of Bethel. There, the girl showed no physical signs of overdosing and the girl’s foster mother found the bottle of pills the next day.

[...]

D.S. was held for 38 days, while J.S. was held for 47 days, Davis said. They were released after a Superior Court judge said they shouldn’t be there, he said.

“The process isn’t working when it takes weeks and weeks to have a hearing,” Davis said.

In his order, the judge wants the parties by March 12 to recommend the appropriate length of time to hold minors before a court can weigh in.

Davis said he will argue that minors, just like adults, should not be involuntarily held longer than 72 hours without a court’s input. That is more than enough time to determine whether a minor is being improperly held at the hospital, he said.

Bookman, of the OCS, said a child admitted by a guardian is in a situation different from that of an involuntarily admitted adult, so 72 hours may not be appropriate. He said he would “talk to OCS about it, do some research and come up with a position.”

Class Action Lawsuit Alleges that Surveillance of Mental Health Records is Unconstitutional

As reported by CourtHouse News.

Read the full report at the link

New York State is collecting confidential information on mental health patients to create a database of people it deems unfit to carry a firearm, according to a federal class action.

Lead plaintiff Donald Montgomery claims the state created a reporting system, as part of the New York Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act (Safe Act), that forces health professionals to transmit mental health patients' confidential information to a database shared by various government agencies, including law enforcement. It was part of the state's response to the rash of mass shootings over the past several years, in particular, that in Newtown, Conn.

Montgomery estimates that medical providers have reported such information on more than 60,000 people.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the lead defendant, signed the Safe Act into law in January 2013. Montgomery calls him "the principal architect of the Act."

New York Mental Hygiene Law 9.46 compels health professionals to report patients' data to the state if they feel the patients' actions are "likely to result in serious harm to self or others," the complaint states.

"The personal health information amassed includes, but is not limited to, any mental health diagnosis of a patient. The personal health information is shared by numerous agencies, including, but not limited to law enforcement and non-state agencies and offices," the lawsuit states.

"The state does not use a subpoena to obtain this confidential personal health information. The state has made the affirmative misrepresentation to medical professionals and others that transmitting this data is lawful."

Neither the state nor the treatment providers notify patients about the information sharing, the lawsuit states. It adds: "The Office of Mental Health underplays and misrepresents the seriousness of the personal health information being transmitted. The state intends its operations around MHL 9.46 to be conducted in a secretive and over-reaching manner."

The law defines mental health professionals as physicians, psychologists, registered nurses and social workers, according to the lawsuit.

NY lawmakers probe care for mentally ill inmates

As seen in the Houston Chronicle, much more info at the link.

The head of the troubled New York City jail system said Thursday it's critical to send mentally ill inmates to treatment programs instead of a lockup.

Department of Corrections Commissioner Joseph Ponte told state lawmakers that Rikers Island is poorly equipped to be a mental health treatment center. The primary goal, one he shares with the medical staff, is to keep staff and inmates safe, he said.

"Violence at Rikers Island the past five or six years has gone through the roof," Ponte said, adding that assaults on his medical staff have tripled.

Dr. Homer Venters, head of the jail's health services, testified alongside Ponte. He said admission medical screenings done on every incoming inmate show about 25 percent have mental illnesses, though that diagnosis applies to about 38 percent of the daily population of about 11,500. Those inmates tend to stay twice as long.

which brings up the question of:

Are the shrinks are competent to handle the problem? That is, beyond the usual quick fix of chemical straight jackets, or even just doping up the prisoners . . .

The film 'Mental Hospital' shows life inside a 1950s Oklahoma psychiatric facility

The film 'Mental Hospital' shows life inside a 1950s Oklahoma psychiatric facility



Discussed in great detail here in a great article by by Jaclyn Cosgrove

Actually, Fred is a character in “Mental Hospital,” a film produced in 1953 that shows what life was like for patients in Oklahoma’s mental health institutions.

From what I can gather, the film was produced by the University of Oklahoma for the Oklahoma State Department of Health and the state mental health agency.
Interestingly enough, the film was produced the same year that the agency now known as the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services was formed.

The agency was established through the Mental Health Law of 1953, although publicly supported services to Oklahomans with mental illness date back to early statehood.

“Until the mid-1960s, the primary means to treat mental illness was institutionalization in large state hospitals. On an average day in 1960, nearly 6,400 Oklahomans were in the state’s mental hospitals,” according to the agency.

The film “Mental Hospital” gives us a glimpse of how mental illness was viewed and treated 61 years ago.

I should note: Over the past several years, treatments have changed, and there’s more focus on understanding mental health issues as medical conditions.

Viewers follow Fred from the day he’s admitted to discharged, including the “insulin shock therapy” that he receives to treat his schizophrenia. This happens about 12 minutes into the film.

The preferred name for this treatment was “insulin coma treatment,” according to this long historical guide on the treatment. By 1962, most of these units had closed throughout the U.S.

Once stable, Fred is offered a job as a grounds keeper.

"What a difference it makes,” the narrator says, “At last, Fred can be outside once more, working, enjoying the sun and the seasons."

Not long after Fred gets his job at the hospital campus, wife Betty and his friend George come to visit him.

At 17:24, we see a psychiatrist talking with Betty and George.

"It's not too long 'til the psychiatrist decides that Fred can try it for a while at home,” the narrator says. “He talks with Betty and with George, helps them to understand that they too have vital roles to play in aiding Fred to adjust successfully to the world outside."
This is something that so many family members say gets left out of present-day treatment.

In interviews I’ve had, people have said they’ve been quoted federal health care privacy laws and left out of their loved one's discharge plan. Sometimes, their family members are discharged without them knowing.

By the end of the film, Fred’s doctor gives him a cigarette, and he collects the crafts he has made at the facility. We learn that Fred has been there for six months.

"If I'd come here sooner, I might have been out in three,” Fred says. “But all I could think about was fear, the way everyone was all against me, how much I hated George. How wrong I was. Or no, not wrong — sick. And now that I'm well again, I can't help feeling just a little sad, the way you always feel when you leave a place where you've lived, learned and grown, but I am well, and I know it."

 Of course, they will try to paint a positive pretty face on all of this. Even though this was a period of history renowned for their failures. (I'm looking at you Lobotomy)

Advocacy group for mentally ill denied access to Franklin County jail

As reported by the Tri-City Herald in Wisconsin (more information at the link)

Franklin County corrections officers did not allow an attorney with an advocacy group for the mentally ill inside the county jail on a visit this week.

Disability Rights Washington received a complaint about the conditions for two inmates in the jail and sent an attorney to check the facility Oct. 28, said David Carlson, the Seattle group’s director of legal advocacy. Federal law allows the private agency to visit any place that houses people with mental illness, including jails, psychiatric hospitals, homeless shelters and nursing homes.

But attorney Anna Guy was not allowed inside the cell pods and, instead, had to speak with inmates in the visitation area, Guy said in a Friday letter to county Deputy Prosecutor Tim Dickerson.

Officers told Guy when she arrived that jail Capt. Rick Long would not be able to speak with her because he was busy and she arrived at 10 a.m. for her scheduled 9:30 a.m. visit, she said. They told her to instead wait for Dickerson.

The agency likes to see inside the jail to get a better idea what conditions the inmates are living in, Carlson said.

Franklin County Sheriff Richard Lathim said Guy told the jail by email late Monday afternoon that she would be visiting Tuesday, giving jail staff little time to prepare. Tuesdays usually are busy because of inmate traffic to and from court. Sheriff’s officials referred the lawyer to the prosecutor’s office because the sheriff’s office didn’t understand what she was looking for.

“Basically, they were inconsiderate and rude and very unclear with what they wanted,” Lathim said.

Lathim questions the authority the group has to visit the jail.

“I’m sure the federal law doesn’t say you can show up at the busiest time and do what you want,” he said.

Disability Rights Washington sent an informal notice that it was coming because it has worked with the jail before, and it is not required to give any notice, Carlson said. The group received an email back Tuesday morning from Long saying the visit was OK.

“We don’t write really long lawyer letters every time we go someplace, especially if they know us,” he said.

Dickerson told Guy that he was unfamiliar with Disability Rights Washington, Guy said in her letter. He then told her that low staffing levels at the jail and pending litigation could affect the visit.

“I explained that pending litigation does not preclude DRW from accessing your facilities and inmates,” Guy said. “I also explained that DRW’s authority grants it unaccompanied access to facilities.”

An unrelated lawsuit, brought by Columbia Legal Services of Seattle, claims mentally ill inmates are subjected to inhumane and barbaric practices at the jail.

Dickerson continued to deny Guy access to the inmate holding and medical areas, Guy said. But he allowed her to see inmates in the visitation area.

You can find the Disability Rights Washington website here

Chinese Dissidents Committed to Mental Hospitals

As reported on the PBS NewsHour of September 11, 2009



(Video Link Updated)

From the Transcript

China's emphasis on social harmony provides an incentive for petitioners to press for justice, but it also sets the stage for their persecution. That's because petitioners know that Chinese officials in the central government take unrest in local communities seriously, but the local officials who are being complained about will often seek retribution or try to stop people from petitioning in the first place.

Teng Biao, a professor at the University of Politics and Law in Beijing, says the system itself creates these kinds of problems. He runs an NGO to provide legal aid to petitioners.

TENG BIAO, University of Politics and Law, Beijing: From the top down, the petitioning situation is an assessing index for the officials on their political achievements. If there are many petitioners coming to Beijing from a place, then it will affect the local officials on their promotions and bonuses.

SHANNON VAN SANT: For his work, Teng Biao had his lawyers license and passport taken away. After this interview, Chinese authorities shut down Teng Biao's NGO, and police detained two of his colleagues. Despite the risk, Teng said he will continue his work.

I traveled to Wuhan to talk with another Chinese activist, Liu Feiyue, but he was under house arrest. Liu heads an NGO that is currently following 100 cases of wrongful psychiatric detention. Over the last three years, he says he knows of 500 more whistleblowers and protesters who have been detained in mental hospitals.

Robin Munro, who has extensively researched psychiatric detention in China and written two books on the topic, thinks the practice is widespread.

ROBIN MUNRO, human rights activist: China's experience in this area is far more serious and extensive than any other country.

SHANNON VAN SANT: Munro, who is based in Hong Kong, believes that since there are no national mental health laws protecting the rights of people who have been compulsorily hospitalized, but there are rules limiting arbitrary arrest, hospitals are becoming a convenient means of silencing protesters.

ROBIN MUNRO: Once diagnosed in this way, as dangerously mentally ill, citizens have no rights. They have no legal right to see a lawyer; they have no legal right to be brought before a judge so that a judicial determination can be made.

SHANNON VAN SANT: The Chinese press, including the Beijing News, has reported on the hospitalizations. The story was picked up by the state's official press agency, The People's Daily and Sina.com, where it drew 23,000 comments. Such coverage in Chinese newspapers could imply there is central government support for preventing wrongful psychiatric detention by local officials.

China's Ministry of Health denied requests for an interview, but sent a list of relevant regulations on treatment of the mentally ill, which said, in part, "The diagnosis of psychiatric disease is, according to the Chinese mental disorder category and diagnosis standard third edition, approved by Chinese medical association and referring to the related standards of international disease diagnosis category."

When asked at a press conference about the increasing numbers of protesters being put in mental hospitals, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said...

QIN GANG, Spokesperson, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (through translator): It's the first time for me to hear the situation you addressed. I don't know about the situation of psychiatric hospitals, but please believe the related Chinese governmental departments conduct administration according to law.

SHANNON VAN SANT: But in Wuhan, another petitioner, Hu Guohong, said he has been forcibly hospitalized in mental institutions four times and that he and his wife, Cheng Xue, have been warned repeatedly by local officials to stop petitioning.

HU GUOHONG, petitioner: They said, "We don't allow you to go petitioning to the upper levels. If you do that, we will beat you to death."

Electroshock therapy is being used on chinese teenagers to treat Internet addiction

From a report first seen here

Electroshock therapy is being administered to youngsters at a controversial Internet addiction clinic where patients are "reborn".

More than 3,000 youths have been tricked or forced in to a four-month program run by Dr Yang Yongxin at a clinic in Shandong province. About 100 people are currently receiving treatment at the clinic.

Patients are given electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for breaking any of the center's 86 rules, including eating chocolate, locking the bathroom door, taking pills before a meal and sitting on Yang's chair without permission, the Information Times reported.

Parents or guardians sign a contract acknowledging that the child will be given ECT and pay 6,000 yuan ($878) per month for treatment.

Details about the treatment were revealed online recently when a number of former patients began to write about their experience.

According to the posts, the clinic administers continuous ECT in a current of up to 200 milliamperes.

Meanwhile, patients are forced to admit "wrongdoings" and those of others and are also instructed to kneel down in front of their parents to show obedience.

In addition, patients - known as "members of the alliance" at the clinic - are not permitted to talk about anything other than overcoming their Internet addiction, numerous former patients write.

Most are found to be "cured" - or "reborn" according to Yang - by simply "admitting" that they have overcome their addiction.

Internet addiction is not classified as a mental illness in China, a country with nearly 300 million Internet users, many of whom are adolescents who willingly indulge in endless hours of online games per day.

Depression, fainting, muscle weakness and twitching and anorexia have been listed as typical syndromes of Internet addiction.

The government established the first Internet addiction treatment clinic in Beijing in 2004.

Today, all online game operators are required to install a "fatigue system" for players under 18 years, which is designed to restrict their play time to three hours a day. But analysts say there are too many ways to work around the rules.

Until recently, media reported on Yang's alleged "success". Liu Mingyin, a China Central Television reporter, called Yang "a fighter in the Third Opium War", framing the doctor's combat against Internet obsession as part of an ongoing war against "spiritual opium".

For his part, Yang views his acts as part of "a holy crusade" and says the electric current he applies to his "patients" is mild and "not dangerous".

What the youths receive at the clinic isn't really ECT, but a "refreshment therapy" that cautiously helps Net-addicted children calm down, says a story written in Yang's name and published online.

[...]

Tao Ran, director of the China's first Internet addiction clinic, said that ECT is "the last resort" in treating people with severe depression who are suicidal.

"It'll make patients more submissive, no doubt. But at the same time, ECT will cause memory loss," Tao says, adding that Yang's clinic is "the only Internet addiction clinic in the world that applies ECT to patients".

Tao's own center has treated more than 4,000 Internet-addicted youths. Patients have "comprehensive therapy" that includes medication and psychological counseling.

About 30 percent of Internet addicted youngsters are hyperactive and uncontrollable in a family environment, Tao said.

They need treatment at a professional institution that does not administer ECT, he said.

Zhuo Xiaoqin, a public health expert with the China University of Political Science and Law, said it was wrong to link Internet obsession with mental illness.

"A consistent standard must be in place to determine what Internet addiction really is," he said.

(China Daily June 3, 2009)

US soldier who shot five troops was 'broken' by counsellors

As seen in the Telegraph

Army Sgt. John M. Russell, 44, has been charged with murder and aggravated assault in the Baghdad shootings, which his father said took place about six weeks before the end of his third tour of duty in Iraq.

Wilburn Russell, 73, alleged his son had been treated poorly at the stress centre and had e-mailed his wife calling two recent days the worst in his life.

"I hate what that boy did," said Mr Russell, speaking in front of the two-story suburban home his son is buying with his wife. "He thought it was justified. That's never a solution."

Excerpts of his military record, obtained by The Associated Press, show Sgt. Russell previously did two one-year tours of duty in Iraq, one starting in April 2003 and another beginning November 2005. The stress of repeat and extended tours is considered a main contributor to mental health problems among troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His father said the soldier, an electronics technician, was at the stress centre to transition out of active duty. He said his son was undergoing stressful mental tests that he didn't understand were merely tests, "so they broke him."

"John has forfeited his life. Apparently, he said (to his wife), 'My life is over. To hell with it. I'm going to get even with 'em,"' he said.

"He lived for the military," Mr Russell said. "We're sorry for the families, too. It shouldn't have happened."

The soldier's son, John M. Russell II, said that he has communicated with his father by e-mail regularly. In the last message he received from him, April 25, his father sounded normal and planned to be back in Texas to visit in July.

"He's not a violent person," he said. "He's just a loving, caring guy.

He doesn't like to see anyone get hurt. For this to happen, it had to be something going on that the Army's not telling us about."

Related Articles

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• US soldier jailed for 'execution' murders in Iraq
• Iraq withdrawal: background to the war
• US army soldier sentenced to life in prison for murder of Iraqi prisoners
• US Army sergeant convicted of murdering four Iraqi detainees

Why people should be concerned with the impending revision of the DSM

An excellent but long post from the fine folks at feministing.com, with only a portion quoted below

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has been called the "bible of mental illness" because it lists and defines all of the "official" psychiatric diagnoses according to the American Psychiatric Association. The DSM is in the early stages of undergoing its 5th major revision; each previous revision has seen the total number of mental disorders recognized (some might say invented) by the APA greatly increase. Last year, trans activists were particularly concerned to learn that Ken Zucker and Ray Blanchard had been named to play critical lead roles in determining the language of the DSM sections focusing on gender and sexuality, especially given that these researchers are well known for forwarding theories and therapies that are especially pathologizing and stigmatizing to gender-variant people.

Blanchard has recently presented some of his suggestions to revise the "Paraphilia" section of the DSM. In the past, this section has generally received little attention from feminists, as it has been primarily limited to several sexual crimes (e.g., pedophilia, frotteurism and exhibitionism) and a handful of other generally consensual but unnecessarily stigmatized sexual acts (such as fetishism and BDSM) that are considered "atypical" by sex researchers. However, there are two aspects of the proposed Paraphilia section revision that should be of great concern to feminists, as well as anyone else who is interested in gender and sexual equality.

Expanding "Paraphilia"

First, Blanchard is proposing a significant expansion of the DSM's definition of "paraphilia" to include:

"any intense and persistent sexual interest other than sexual interest in genital stimulation or preparatory fondling with phenotypically normal, consenting adult human partners."

The first concern here is the term "phenotypically normal" (meaning "normal" with regards to observable anatomical or behavioral traits). Thus, according to this definition, attraction to any person deemed by sex researchers to be "abnormal" or "atypical" could conceivably be diagnosed as paraphilic. So, do you happen to be attracted to, or in a relationship with, someone who is differently-abled or differently-sized? Or someone who is gender-variant in some way? Well congratulations, you may now be diagnosed with a paraphilia!

Seriously.

Blanchard and other like-minded sex researchers have coined words like Gynandromorphophilia (attraction to trans women), Andromimetophilia (attraction to trans men), Abasiophilia (attraction to people who are physically disabled), Acrotomophilia (attraction to amputees), Gerontophilia (attraction to elderly people), Fat Fetishism (attraction to fat people), etc., and have forwarded them in the medical literature to denote the presumed "paraphilic" nature of such attractions.

This tendency reinforces the cultural belief that young, thin, able-bodied cisgender women and men are the only legitimate objects of sexual desire, and that you must be mentally disordered in some way if you are attracted to someone who falls outside of this ideal. It's bad enough that such cultural norms exist in the first place, but to codify them in the DSM is a truly terrifying prospect.

Another frightening aspect of Blanchard's proposal is that any sexual interest other than "genital stimulation or preparatory fondling" is now, by definition, a paraphilia.

In his presentation, he claimed that paraphilias should include all "erotic interests that are not focused on copulatory or precopulatory behaviors, or the equivalent behaviors in same-sex adult partners." Copulatory is defined as related to coitus or sexual intercourse (i.e., penetration sex). So, essentially, all forms of sexual arousal and expression that are not centered around penetration sex may now be considered paraphilias.

So, do you and your partner occasionally role-play or talk dirty to one another over the phone? Or engage in arousing play that is not intended to necessarily lead to "doing the deed"? Do you masturbate? Do you get a sexual charge from wearing a particularly sexy outfit or performing any act that falls outside of "genital stimulation or preparatory fondling"? Well, then congratulations, you can be diagnosed with a paraphilia!

Fourteen psychiatric patients have been sterilised in the Perm region of Russia against their will and without an appropriate court ruling.

As reported in Russia Today

This was the striking discovery made by the region’s human rights committee over the course of a two-year investigation, revealing numerous grave offences.

After receiving more than 50 complaints from patients of the 15 psychiatric asylums in the Perm region, an investigation was launched to analyse living conditions in these institutions. After two years of detailed study, a series of shocking discoveries was made.

Read more

Fourteen young women, born in the 1970s and 1980s were sterilised against their will, without the signed permission of their families or any appropriate court ruling. As the report states, the most poignant justification of these actions came from an unnamed asylum staff member. They did it so that the women “would not give birth to lunatics”.

In the Russian legislation, sterilisation of legally capable women is only permissible with their accord and when they’re aged over 35, or already have two children. When the woman is not legally capable, the signed permission of two gynaecologists and a court ruling are required.

There exists, however, an appendix to the law, which states that sterilisation can be carried out based purely on medical reasons if there exists “a threat to the woman’s life or health”. Staff have tended to interpret this appendix at will, using it to cover many sterilisations.

According to the human rights commission, the staff at the institutions were not even aware that a court decision was required to conduct the procedure. They based their decision simply on the advice of the institution’s administration.

Other infringements

It was discovered that the shocking cases of unlawful sterilisation were not the only cases of severe breaches of human rights in these psychiatric institutions. The official report drafted by Tatyana Margolina outlined three main areas of severe infringements of human rights in these institutions: medical care, the right to housing and the right to fair employment.

Perhaps the most fundamental malpractice in the institutions is the lack of adequate healthcare provision. According to the report some psychiatric institutions do not even have an appropriate medical licence.

Despite being state organisations, the institutions need to renew their medical licence every few years. Of those whose license had expired, the most recent renewal was in 2001. Since then, no new medical or diagnostic supplies were provided and no new medical personnel had been taken on.

“In several institutions medical attention was not provided and people simply died,” Margolina pointed out in the report. “Their death was a result of appropriate measures not being taken in due course.”

The lack of a medical licence resulted in the absence of basic medicines and diagnostic equipment. This has resulted in several deaths due to negligence in the last two years alone. The report refers to a number of unnamed cases. The causes of death named by coronary analysis include untreated and misdiagnosed pneumonia, a stomach ulcer and meningitis.

The last case is given specific attention. The patient was admitted to an institution and passed away only days later. The orderly simply gave the patient medicines against flu-like symptoms and proceeded to ignore the case for the next two days, during which the patient’s condition steadily worsened. Renewed medical attention was only given when the patient was on his deathbed, but it was too late. Even then, an appropriate diagnosis was not made.

Staff members point out that they don’t even call ambulances for the patients since the medics simply refuse to drive out to the institutions. In most places, no individual rehabilitation programmes were developed for patients. Some do not even have a stock of the required anti-psychotic drugs.

As a result, the patients’ abilities are not developed to their fullest potential. According to the report, some of the patients would have had the chance to do basic manual work and provide for themselves if given the appropriate training. Nevertheless, such fundamentals as sports equipment, professional and educational training and development programmes simply do not exist in Perm region institutions.

The living space provided for the patient is often far less than the basic minimum required by the Russian state. Some patients live in as few as three square metres of individual space with no access to privacy – nurses often break through locked doors and into restrooms as well as shower facilities.

The report points out that the conditions in the institutions breach several clauses of the UN charter and the human rights declaration: the patients do not have access to medical care, individual space, basic dignity, employment and personal development. Nevertheless, the report only goes as far as “advising” the local administration and the relevant institution to take these facts into account.

Regional problem?

Despite the gravity of the problem and its deep-rooted nature, the local administration appears to be inert in dealing with it. RT tried to get information of what the regional government is planning to do in order to resolve this shocking breach of basic human rights.

“Tatiana Margolina is refusing to give any comments on the situation, referring to the fact that it is a regional problem and the report was released regionally,” the human rights commissioner’s press office told RT.

When the local administration’s press office was contacted directly, RT was told that the general office does not have the competence to comment on such issues, and the human rights commission should be contacted.

As a result, no official comment was given on how the living conditions of the psychiatric patients will be ameliorated. So, despite the severe cases of human rights breaches and even abuse from state care providers being brought to public light, it remains unclear what will be done.

Pennsylvania judges accused of jailing kids for cash

As seen in this report

For years, the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre operated like a conveyor belt: Youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses.

The explanation, prosecutors say, was corruption on the bench.

In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers.

"I've never encountered, and I don't think that we will in our lifetimes, a case where literally thousands of kids' lives were just tossed aside in order for a couple of judges to make some money," said Marsha Levick, an attorney with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, which is representing hundreds of youths sentenced in Wilkes-Barre.

Prosecutors say Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, Western PA Child Care LLC. The judges were charged on Jan. 26 and removed from the bench by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court shortly afterward.

No company officials have been charged, but the investigation is still going on.

This fits into a larger pattern nation wide of sending kids away for "treatment" whenit is really for profit.

Whistle-Blowers in Chinese City Sent to Mental Hospital

As Reported in the NY Times

Local officials in Shandong Province have apparently found a cost-effective way to deal with gadflies, whistle-blowers and all manner of muckraking citizens who dare to challenge the authorities: dispatch them to the local psychiatric hospital.

In an investigative report published Monday by a state-owned newspaper, public security officials in the city of Xintai in Shandong Province were said to have been institutionalizing residents who persist in their personal campaigns to expose corruption or the unfair seizure of their property. Some people said they were committed for up to two years, and several of those interviewed said they were forcibly medicated.

The article, in The Beijing News, said most inmates were released after they agreed to give up their causes.

Sun Fawu, 57, a farmer seeking compensation for land spoiled by a coal-mining operation, said he was seized by local authorities on his way to petition the central government in Beijing and taken to the Xintai Mental Health Center in October.

During a 20-day stay, he said, he was lashed to a bed, forced to take pills and given injections that made him numb and woozy. According to the paper, when he told the doctor he was a petitioner, not mentally ill, the doctor said: “I don’t care if you’re sick or not. As long as you are sent by the township government, I’ll treat you as a mental patient.”

In an interview with the newspaper, the hospital’s director, Wu Yuzhu, acknowledged that some of the 18 patients brought there by the police in recent years were not deranged, but he said that he had no choice but to take them in. “The hospital also had its misgivings,” he said.

Xintai officials do not see any shame in the tactic, and they boasted that hospitalizing people they characterized as troublemakers saved money that would have been spent chasing them to Beijing. There is another reason to stop petitioners who seek redress from higher levels of government: they can prove embarrassing to local officials, especially if they make it to Beijing.

The Xintai government Web site noted that provincial authorities had recently referred to Xintai as “an advanced city in building a safe Shandong.” They said that from January to May this year, the number of petitioners who went over the heads of local authorities was 274, a 4 percent drop from the same period in 2007. Although China is not known for the kind of systematic abuse of psychiatry that occurred in the Soviet Union, human rights advocates say forced institutionalizations are not uncommon in smaller cities. Robin Munro, the research director of China Labor Bulletin, a rights organization in Hong Kong, said such “an kang” wards — Chinese for peace and health — were a convenient and effective means of dealing with pesky dissidents.

“Once a detainee has been officially diagnosed as dangerously mentally ill, they’re immediately taken out of the criminal justice system and they lose all legal rights,” said Mr. Munro, who has researched China’s practice of psychiatric detention.

In recent years practitioners of Falun Gong, the banned spiritual movement, have complained of what they call coerced hospitalizations. One of China’s best-known dissidents, Wang Wanxing, spent 13 years in a police-run psychiatric institution under conditions he later described as abusive.

In one recent, well-publicized case, Wang Jingmei, the mother of a man convicted of killing six policemen in Shanghai, was held incommunicado at a mental hospital for five months and released only days before her son was executed in late November.

The article in The Beijing News about the hospitalizations in Xintai was notable for the attention it gained in China’s constrained state-run media. Such Communist Party stalwarts as People’s Daily and the Xinhua news agency republished the article, and it was picked up by scores of Web sites. At Sina.com, the country’s most popular portal, the report ranked as the fifth most-viewed news headline, and readers posted more than 23,000 comments by evening. The indignation expressed was universal, with many clamoring for the dismissal of those involved. “They’re no different from animals,” read one post. “No, they’re worse.”

By Monday evening, the Xintai city government was rejecting the report by The Beijing News as reckless and slanted. In a telephone interview broadcast on Shandong provincial television, an unidentified municipal official suggested that those confined to the mental hospital had gone mad from their single-minded quest for justice. “There are some people who have been petitioning for years and become mentally aggravated,” the official said.

Reached by phone on Monday, a hospital employee said Mr. Wu, the hospital director who voiced his misgivings to The Beijing News, was unavailable. The employee, Hu Peng, said that officials from the local government had taken him away for “a meeting” earlier in the day.

Although he would not provide a reporter with contact information for the former patients, Mr. Hu defended the hospitalizations, saying that all those delivered by the Public Security Bureau were sick. He added that the hospital was not authorized to provide a diagnosis to the patients, only to treat them. “We definitely would not accept those without mental problems,” he said.

People with a bizarre disorder that makes them crave having a limb removed should be allowed amputations, according to Psychiatrist Christopher Ryan

Of course, curing them of the condition is something that the simply do not know how to do. As seen on News.Com Australia

To most people, the thought of amputating a perfectly healthy limb is unimaginable.

But for at least three Australians, possibly dozens more, cutting off their leg has felt perfectly normal.

These so-called "amputee wannabes" have a very rare condition in which they feel one of their limbs is not truly their own, and they become obsessed with cutting it off.

And people suffering from the bizarre body image disorder should be able to opt for amputation, a Sydney psychiatrist says.

Christopher Ryan, a psychiatrist at the University of Sydney, says there is a good argument for allowing patients with body integrity identity disorder (BIID) to have their unwanted limb removed.

"I am not saying we should unthinkingly cut off people's legs," Dr Ryan said.

"I realise that the idea strikes almost everyone as lunatic when they first hear it. However, there are a small number of people who see themselves, and have always seen themselves, as amputees," he said.

"They are often miserable their whole lives because of their 'extra limb', and we know that at least some of them feel much better if it is removed."

Dr Ryan has examined the ethics of the issue in the international philosophy journal Neuroethics and says doctors have a moral duty to amputate for the health and safety of the patient.

He said one 30-year-old patient of his lived his whole life feeling he was truly an amputee, but was so ashamed of how he felt he did not tell anyone.

"Eventually he took the only step he thought he had open to him and placed his leg in a bucket of dry ice until it died and had to be removed," Dr Ryan said.

"Now, a year later, he is living happily as an amputee and getting on with his life."

The paper said the operations should be likened to plastic surgery, with elective amputation offered to BIID sufferers only.

"Unless these patients know that doctors will take their concerns seriously, and at least consider their requests, more people will risk their lives trying to remove their own limbs," he said.

The disorder hit news headlines in 2000 when it was revealed that a surgeon in Scotland had amputated a healthy leg from two patients with the disorder.

At the time, appalled Scottish politicians called the procedure "obscene" and tried to ban such operations.

Restraint of foster kids questioned

A report from the Miami Herald

Last month, a 16-year-old Broward County girl was brought into Circuit Judge John A. Frusciante's courtroom for a hearing. She was handcuffed, her legs shackled with cloth restraints, with two armed deputies leading her by the arm.

Her offense? She's never been charged with one. A mentally ill foster child who was neglected by her mother and wound up in a psychiatric center, the teen was being restrained to keep her from running away, her attorney said.

The girl, who is not being identified to protect her privacy, is among scores of foster children in locked psychiatric centers in Florida recovering from abuse and neglect.

Now, the practice of restraining mentally ill foster children in court is prompting questions in both Broward and Miami-Dade counties.

In Fort Lauderdale, Walter Honaman, the 16-year-old's lawyer and an advocate for foster kids, is working with Frusciante and court officials to develop a voluntary policy to discourage deputies from handcuffing mentally ill foster kids who come to court.

And in Miami, a nurse practitioner who worked briefly as a director of patient care at Jackson Memorial Hospital's mental health center filed complaints with state regulators seeking to end the practice of restraining children who leave JMH's residential treatment center, or RTC.

''We bring these kids into the courtroom in handcuffs with armed deputies,'' said Honaman, who works for Legal Aid Service of Broward County. 'That's nuts. We don't maintain these kids' dignity, and we send the message that they are being punished. They are being treated like criminals. These are kids that need serious help.''

Administrators at Jackson have defended the use of ''walking restraints'' when children from their treatment center leave the facility, arguing many kids run away, which can endanger them.

The treatment center ''uses walking restraints for safety and prevention of elopement when clients are sent to an urgent medical appointment or court hearings that they can't miss early in their admission,'' Helga Mayrgundter, a program director for one of JMH's children's psychiatric units, wrote in an April e-mail.

Lorraine N. Nelson, a JMH spokeswoman, said the children's psychiatric unit uses walking restraints on less than 1 percent of its patients when they are being transported outside the facility, and follows all regulatory agency guidelines.

''The fabric restraints are only used when a patient is determined to be a flight risk and are removed immediately after a patient has returned safely to the facility,'' Nelson said. ``A board-certified psychiatrist with extensive experience in childhood trauma and behavioral management must write an order for the use of restraints.''

Jackson's use of foot restraints came under scrutiny beginning in April, when a new nurse administrator questioned the practice. The nurse, Lisa Burton, later filed complaints, including one to the Miami-Dade County Commission on Ethics and Public Trust.

The ethics commission ''conducted a thorough investigation of the allegations and ultimately dismissed the complaint,'' said JMH's Nelson. The commission findings, ''speak for themselves,'' she said.

In an April em-ail with other JMH administrators, risk manager Tish Batchelder wondered whether halting the restraints would lead to more escapes, thus ''putting patients in danger.'' But she also acknowledged: ``I hate the idea that we do it.''

Real leg shackles -- the metal kind -- routinely have been used for delinquent children who appear in court, though several public defender offices mounted a statewide campaign two years ago to end the practice. In most counties, shackling continues, said Miami-Dade Public Defender-elect Carlos Martinez, but The Florida Bar is lobbying for a new rule requiring hearings before restraints can be used.

Some judges say there is even less justification for restraining mentally ill foster kids who have not been accused of delinquency.

''It's a horrible stigma,'' said Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman, who heads Miami's juvenile courts. ``These kids already have mental health problems. I would imagine this would exacerbate them. . . . These are not bad children, and they have not done anything wrong. They are just ill.''

Frusciante said he has been asking questions of treatment center and courthouse staff members who bring children to court in restraints. Among them: Do we have to do this?

''It was very disturbing,'' said Frusciante, who oversees child welfare cases in Broward. He said he wasn't disturbed enough to outright ban the practice at the courthouse, but he is working with Honaman to find ways to limit the use of restraints.

Most treatment centers elsewhere in the state have abandoned the use of restraints, according to internal JHM e-mails obtained by The Miami Herald.

''We do not use them here when we transport children,'' said Robyn Baskin, a children's program director at Personal Enrichment Through Mental Health Services in Pinellas County. If a child is too great a risk, Baskin said, travel will be postponed or additional staff is provided to ensure safety.

A Case of American Political Psychiatry: Susan Lindauer's Story

Looks like the politicians have figured out that getting your whistleblowers declared crazy solves everything. Now, if it wasn't for those pesky witnesses and documentations ... Sadly this reminds me of a psychiatrist joke we featured last year, except that is has come true in real life.

We have also put a link to this story on DIGG and on Reddit, so vote this story up, please, if you have an account there.

As seen in the New Zealand news site the Scoop

Also check out previous "Scoop" coverage of Susan Lindauer's ordeal by Michael Collins:

• Bush Political Prisoner Gets Her Day in Court 11 June 2008
  
• American Cassandra: Susan Lindauer's Story 17 October 2007

---

Michael Collins "Scoop" Independent News
Washington, D.C.

This article may be reproduced in part or in whole with attribution of authorship and a link to the original article.

On March 11, 2004, Susan Lindauer was shocked to find FBI Agents pounding on the door of her Takoma Park house in Maryland with a warrant for her arrest. She was more shocked to discover that she was accused of acting as an "unregistered agent" of the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein.

It's been four years since her federal indictment. On June 17, Lindauer will have her first pre-trial hearing, where she will be allowed to call witnesses to disprove the allegations.

Lindauer has never been tried in a court of law—nor allowed any pre-trial hearing to call witnesses to validate claims that she worked as an Asset supervised by U.S. intelligence for 9 years. Instead, she was forced to submit to a psychological evaluation inside a prison on a Texas military base, where she was held for seven months before getting transferred to New York. In all, she was detained for 11 months without a conviction or a guilty plea. Pro se motions for a hearing to prove the authenticity of her claims were ignored.

The psych evaluation culminated in a finding that she was incompetent to stand trial, on the grounds that she was "deluded" into believing that she had worked as a U.S. asset or would not get convicted. The coup de gras was a formal request by federal prosecutors to forcibly drug Lindauer with Haldol in order to cure her of those claims and beliefs, so that she could stand trial. She would be formally cured when she stopped declaring that witnesses would substantiate her story.

This interview follows an article yesterday summarizing the case to date and the critical June 17, 2008 hearing in federal court, Southern District, Manhattan before Judge Preska. The hearing is open to the public at the defendant's request.

---

Collins: When you were indicted there was a broad range of media covering your story. After about a month, things seemed to go dark with the mainstream media. How has your story stayed alive?

Lindauer: I am shocked and disappointed that the mainstream media has failed to cover developments in this story. I hope that's going to change after this hearing, because a functional media is vital to protecting citizens from arbitrary and tyrannical government decisions. By contrast, the bloggers, have kept me alive. During my incarceration, friends like JB Fields (now deceased) smoked the blogs with outrage. He urged folks to write Judge Mukasey. To his own credit, Judge Mukasey actually called a court meeting when JB's readers sent letters and papers to the Court contradicting the official Psych evaluations. Judge Mukasey wanted to know why that documentation was available on the internet but not in his courtroom. He demanded a formal explanation from the Prosecutor and my own attorney, accounting for the discrepancies in their psych reporting. JB Fields blog – and all the other bloggers who picked it up-- saved my life and my freedom. No question.

Collins: You've been in court at least 15 times over four years regarding this case. What's different about this hearing?

Lindauer: The other meetings are called "status meetings." It's a formality to show that I'm still in the system. This is the first time I have been granted the right to call witnesses into court to authenticate my story. The Prosecutor has said that I am incompetent to stand trial because I am convinced of my innocence and cannot grasp that I might be convicted. Specifically, the Prosecution has used psychiatry to argue that my belief that I worked as an Asset for the U.S. Government constitutes delusional thinking. In a bizarre legal twist, the Prosecutor has argued that since I am delusional, I should be denied the right to call witnesses to prove that I am telling the Truth. Allegedly, my belief in the existence of witnesses is a function of my delusional belief in my innocence. Is that crazy or what? Talk about Kafkaesque!

Carswell's report was significant in one way that must be noted: Their staff testified that I suffer no depression, no bipolar disorder, no schizophrenia, no hallucinations or hearing voices. They said that I was socially interactive and my behavior was appropriate to the detention. Dr. Vas testified before Judge Mukasey, "that he looked really hard, but he couldn't find anything" after 7 months incarceration.

Collins: Of all the affronts and stress you've experienced in this open ended prosecution, what's been the most offensive element?

Lindauer: I am furious about the abuse that I have suffered. I regard this as a Soviet-style attack on my rights to dissent from the government. After my arrest, I was ordered to attend weekly psych meetings for a year, during which we discussed articles in the Washington Post—and nothing else. After Carswell, I spent another year in court-ordered psych meetings. The only point of conversation was how psychology has grievously harmed my life, depriving me of freedom, damaging my reputation, and terrorizing me by interfering with my rights to call participatory witnesses, who could straighten out the matter within minutes. Beyond that, the court quack surfed the internet looking for clothes and weekend entertainment for her daughter. Since August, 2007, I have refused to go back. I told the Court the game is over. Go to trial or drop the charges, which are ridiculous anyway. They don't have a case, and they know it..

Psychiatry was corrupt enough to help the Bush White House out of a jam, which says a lot. Forensic psychiatry is a profitable business. In my opinion they are charlatans and court prostitutes who are abusing their access to the Courts in order to get money out of the state and federal budgets. They have little or no value. For myself, I have never engaged in therapy or counseling. I would never confide personal affairs to them, or listen to anything they have to say. In a weird twist, anything I say could get reported to pre-trial services. It's not private. They were a huge waste of my time, burning the clock on my 6th Amendment rights.

Collins: How do you react to your treatment by the prosecution and their mental health experts?

Lindauer: Psychiatrists are terrified of witness testimony to the point of psychotic reaction. They're so insecure as to be deeply threatened that reality will impose limitations on their phony authority in the courtroom.

The consequence for due process of law is quite terrifying. One horrific shrink—Dr. Robert L. Goldstein, a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University-- actually testified that the depth of my belief in witness testimony confirmed the "seriousness of my mental illness." He said the Court must be patient and tolerant of my requests to call witnesses. He said it showed I was still very sick, and the Court should pity me for not understanding that these people were a figment of my imagination.

I was a prisoner in shackles at the time. I experienced a total state of shock that this corrupt quack could actual testify that my requests for due process demonstrated my incompetence to stand trial. As a "professional psychiatrist"—who had never spoken to me OR my witnesses, Goldstein nonetheless assured the Court that he would stake his professional reputation on their non-existence.

It was the most terrifying and Kafkaesque experience of my life. Truly it proves that psychiatry is out of control in the Courts. They invent and fabricate, and if the truth contradicts them, they don't even care. As Dr. Vas at Carswell put it, "we'll just tell the Court you made it up. Who do you think the Judge is going to believe? You or me? I am a doctor!"

I am firmly convinced that Congress must change the laws so that defendants can file for punitive damages against this sort of quackery. Judges should have the right to file sanctions against psychiatrists who blatantly lie to the Court—which would have to be reported to other Judges, if they testify in other cases. In the most extreme cases of outright perjury, wherein the psychiatrist verifies the truthfulness of a defendant's story and then lies about it as a so-called expert witness, then the matter should be turned over to a grand jury for indictment. I have no mercy for this garbage.

Collins: The wheels of justice grind slowly for you. It's been almost four years and there hasn't even been an evidentiary hearing. How could the process have been simplified?

Lindauer: If the Court wanted to know if my witnesses would validate my story, the Judge could very easily have set a hearing date & called everybody into Court to answer questions. Authenticity would have been established, one way or the other, within the first 15 minutes of testimony. Then the question would be answered. Finished. That's Due Process 101.

What does this say about psychology in the court-room???

In my experience, court psychology is rife with corruption and fraud. Immediately after my arrest four years ago, the psychologist referred me to himself, and then was shocked to find out that I was wholly disinterested in anything he had to say. I told him that I had no intention of changing anything about myself. In one year I intended to be exactly the same person that I was when I walked into his office.

I took a cook-book to the first meeting and forced him to listen to recitations of recipes, sans commentary. When he asked if I intended to cook any of the recipes, I assured him that I would never do such a thing. I said that I consider his insights to be as useless as a recipe that I would never bake.

He had the sense to be embarrassed. From that day on, he always had a copy of the Washington Post, and we discussed news articles and current affairs. That continued for a year. He might have enjoyed it. I didn't. I don't recall that we discussed anything except my complaints about how our court-ordered psych meetings interfered with my employment, since the bail order stopped me from working full time. I had to take a part-time job, which killed me financially. I made perfectly clear that he was wasting my time.

After almost a year of this, I told him point blank that I refused to continue. I told him that he contributed nothing to my life, except to stop me from buying groceries, paying my utilities, and forcing me to borrow money to pay my mortgage and my property taxes-- because he was so selfish as to persist in interfering with my employment, so he could make money off the court.

Collins: What happened after this period of "freedom" after your initial hearings.

Lindauer: Life got to be good again until the fateful day when i was ordered to go to Carswell.

I was told that I would be held for no more than 120 days. That's 4 months. And Judge Mukasey's clerk assured my uncle, who attended the court date, that more likely I would be home within 60 days, because the Judge expected the psych evaluation to be finished rapidly. Then it would be over. Ok, I could do that. I'm a pretty tough lady.

I went in on October 3, 2005 and waited for my release. I got tons of letters of encouragement from friends. I stayed active, walking four to six miles a day on the track, reading lots of books, working at the law library and entertaining myself with NYT crossword puzzles.

Only the prison staff on the Texas military base had other plans. They didn't want to let me go home. They actually argued for the right to detain me indefinitely, and forcibly drug me until I could be cured of claiming that I had ever worked as a U.S. asset.

I was released after 11 months. Judge Mukasey retired on the day of my release. I want to be clear that the man is my hero. Though I was detained, he issued a lengthy and well considered decision that blocked the Prosecution from forcibly drugging me. It's a decision that deserves to be considered in other cases in the future. I am profoundly grateful to Judge Mukasey. He has a great and formidable legal mind.

To this day, I am still pre-trial. I have never been convicted of a crime, nor accepted a guilty plea. All of my most fundamental rights under the precious Constitution of the United States have been revoked because a crooked psychiatrist made up a bullshit story & lied to a federal judge.

Collins: What did you do to get things moving with the court?

In August, 2007, I refused to go back to the Court-ordered meetings. Judge Loretta Preska is now hearing the case. In August I stopped attending the meetings, and told the Court that it's time to drop the charges or go to trial. If the Prosecutor wants to pretend that I'm delusional, I would gladly call witnesses for a pre-trial hearing on competency, at the earliest possible date, to smash his arguments all to hell.

In September, October and November, the Prosecutor desperately tried to get my bail revoked and get me sent back to Carswell. That motivated friends to cough up the legal fees for my new attorney. Everybody was terrified that he might prevail and the Court might actually send me back to Carswell.

I refused to let them intimidate me into backing down.

My mother would be proud if she was still alive.

Collins: What will you try to prove in court on June 17, 2008 and where do you go from there?

I am confident that my witnesses will establish that I most definitely worked as long-time asset supervised by individuals in U.S. intelligence. At that point, I hope the Justice Department would seize the opportunity to end the case before we have to go into the specifics of my work. It would be hugely embarrassing for politicians in Washington, if a trial exposes how badly the politicians have mismanaged opportunities to engage the U.S. in counter-terrorism. They are not the innocent of bystanders of intelligence failures that they pretend to be. They made serious mistakes in leadership that they have refused to acknowledge. Assets like me are just the scapegoats for bad policy decisions.

ENDS

This article may be reproduced in part or in whole with attribution of authorship and a link to this article.

Patient's suicide raises questions about psychiatrist's ethics

As reported in the Pioneer Press

When people enter drug studies at the University of Minnesota, they're supposed to be protected by a safety net keeping watch that the vulnerable are not coerced, that standards of conduct are met and that researchers aren't tangled in conflicts that might influence their decision-making.

That system was supposed to protect Dan Markingson.

A schizophrenic, Markingson killed himself in 2004 while enrolled in a study at the U comparing anti-psychotic drugs. Documents surfacing the past year in a lawsuit over his death have raised questions about whether the U psychiatrist running the study followed university ethical guidelines. They also raise questions about why the Institutional Review Board, the internal group charged with protecting people in university studies, didn't intervene.

University officials say their nationally accredited review board — a volunteer panel of 57 experts in medicine and other disciplines — works well and rigorously reviews studies. They would not talk specifically about the Markingson case to the Pioneer Press. A judge ruled in February that as a state agency, the university and its IRB are immune from the lawsuit.

The legal ruling didn't allow questions to be explored about who's ultimately responsible for the safety of research subjects and whether the university did everything reasonable to protect Markingson from harm.

According to the U's human subjects protection guide, the IRB's first charge is "to protect human subjects involved in research at the university from inappropriate risk."

In reality, the IRB operates largely on trust. Trust that researchers will follow the rules. Trust that people will speak up when a safety plan is violated, even if they have professional or financial pressures to stay quiet.

"It's the people who implement the plan who are responsible for protecting the subjects," said Moira Keane, the U's director of research subjects protection programs.

The IRB approves all clinical research — modifying safety rules when necessary — and samples study records every year or so to make sure its conditions are met. It also has the power to shut down projects that aren't complying with safety requirements or have caused "unexpected serious harm" to subjects.

Keane recalled four studies out of thousands at the U over the past two decades that the IRB stopped.

The lawsuit by Markingson's mother, Mary Weiss, alleged that the IRB's trust was misplaced in the so-called CAFE study, led by Dr. Stephen Olson, a U psychiatrist.

A central allegation was whether Olson had too much power over Markingson, and too many conflicts that obscured his clinical judgment. Olson recruited Markingson into the study at the same time he served as Markingson's treating doctor and advised a Dakota County judge on whether Markingson should be committed to a psychiatric hospital.

Had the IRB followed its own guidelines, it would have discouraged Olson from recruiting his own patient. The IRB Web site states that "doctor-patient relationships between the investigator and participants should be avoided, when possible, to eliminate any power-based coercion."

It's impossible to know whether Markingson would have killed himself if he hadn't enrolled in the research study. He was in a sensitive early stage of his schizophrenia diagnosis, during which the suicide risk is greatest. Even so, the study's rigid guidelines meant that Markingson received only one anti-psychotic drug to help control his delusions.

Experts hired by Weiss' attorneys said in court depositions that the IRB missed opportunities to make the study safer.

Dr. Harrison Pope from Harvard Medical School called the IRB's role an "essential link in the chain of causation that improperly admitted Mr. Markingson into the CAFE study, improperly held Mr. Markingson within the CAFE study, prohibited effective treatment of Mr. Markingson, and thus became a substantial, proximate cause of Mr. Markingson's death."

The IRB could insist researchers turn over all complaints about their studies, which might have raised concerns in this case. Weiss had complained in letters to Olson and Dr. Charles Schulz, head of the U's Department of Psychiatry, that her son wasn't getting better and was at risk for harm. She had requested that the doctors try other treatments, even if he had to be withdrawn from the study.

The U hired its own national IRB expert to refute Pope's claims. The IRB had no legal obligation to require someone other than Olson to evaluate Markingson's competency or his ability to consent to research, said Ernest Prentice, associate vice chancellor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Nor is there a requirement that complaints such as Weiss' letters be forwarded to the IRB unless there is some unanticipated risk. Had the IRB received complaints, it could have investigated, he said.

Weiss said she'd never heard of an IRB.

The CAFE study was fairly prominent, involving 26 academic institutions and 400 schizophrenic patients. Financed by the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, it was worth up to $327,000 to the U, with some of those funds going to Olson's salary and other study personnel.

U officials said the IRB acted ethically and within its obligations and federal regulations to protect human subjects in this study.

After the suicide, the IRB sought information from Olson on how Markingson consented to the study. But IRB officials said in depositions for the lawsuit that the review board never formally investigated Markingson's death.

The IRB investigates when there is evidence of misconduct. There was no evidence of that in the Markingson case, said Dr. Richard Bianco, a U physician who oversaw the U's research subjects program at the time Markingson participated in the study.

Bianco declined a Pioneer Press interview request. But in a court deposition, he acknowledged that the U has some 8,000 studies involving humans — research he estimated was worth about $15 million — but that the IRB doesn't track the number of people enrolled in U research, only the number of projects approved.

Bianco agreed with Keane that the IRB system operates largely on self-disclosure by researchers.

The U's top research official says researchers and IRB reviewers "are aware and understand their ethical and moral obligations to do the right thing.

"If people write with concerns and issues, they will be reviewed," said Tim Mulcahy, the U's vice president of research. "If the IRB were to become aware of a suggestion of coercion or heavy handedness," he added, "we have an obligation to act promptly and very directly."

Olson declined to talk to the Pioneer Press about Markingson's care.

He said it would be difficult for any researcher to get away with violating research rules because they are observed by so many medical students, residents, nurses and others. However, a 2006 internal audit of the U's psychiatry department challenges the notion that those workers would speak up.

Nearly 40 percent of the psychiatry department staff responding to the auditor survey said they did not believe they would be protected from retaliation for blowing the whistle on a suspected violation in the department.

Some experts believe the nation's system of review boards is dysfunctional and in need of reform.

"We have a very haphazard way of overseeing (IRBs) and collecting data on adverse events," said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, bioethics chair at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health and a national expert on institutional review boards.

"There's no one in America who can tell you how many people are enrolled in clinical research," he said. "No one can tell you how many people died in (ways) attributable to clinical research. No one can tell you how many people got injured, and no one can tell you over time whether the system is getting less safe."

Women in mental wards face grave risk of abuse

From The Age (an Australian Newspaper), as seen on the Psych Observer Website

NEARLY two-thirds of female patients surveyed in psychiatric wards in Victoria have been sexually abused or harassed by male patients, new figures show.

A report by the Victorian Women and Mental Health Network has also revealed that 70% of mental health staff surveyed by the group knew the abuse and harassment was occurring in public hospital wards. A further 30% of the 42 staff surveyed said the abuse, usually perpetrated by sexually disinhibited male patients, happened frequently.

Network convener Heather Clarke said the report, Nowhere to be safe: Women's experiences of mixed-sex psychiatric wards, showed that 61% of the 75 female patients surveyed about their experiences in psychiatric wards had been abused or harassed in some way and did not feel safe.

"These women are being admitted to hospital to get well and then they are being subjected to harassment and abuse that has an adverse effect on their health," she said.

"The situation is most concerning in areas of wards where staff are not always present, or in cases where patients are heavily medicated, making them more vulnerable to abuse."

Ms Clarke said any form of abuse in psychiatric facilities had great potential to retraumatise women. "Evidence suggests that up to 70% of women admitted to psychiatric inpatients units have experienced past sexual abuse," she said. "These women are at risk of having that trauma retriggered in a place where they should be safe."

During inpatient meetings last year, some women said they had been sexually assaulted or had seen women engaging in sexual activity with men when they did not seem well enough to consent. One woman fled from a high-dependency unit after a male patient sexually assaulted her in her bedroom. When she returned to the unit days later, the offender was still there.

Monash University psychiatrist Jayashri Kulkarni said most of Victoria's public inpatient units became mixed wards in the 1960s, creating the potential for men to assault women.

"It's a system that is a recipe for problems," she said. "There are lots of minor incidents occurring all the time that can have quite an impact on vulnerable female inpatients. Unfortunately, there are major incidents occurring as well. The framework of the inpatient settings has allowed this to happen."

Professor Kulkarni said that while some units tried to separate men and women when they could, ward design often hindered their efforts.

"A lot of wards have very rabbit-warren-like structures so there are lots of pockets staff can't see. Some of the designs are better with smaller bedrooms now, but you can often still have common bathrooms, which means both sexes traipsing around from bathroom to bedroom and so on … It's a situation where women can be assaulted too."

She said she knew of two cases now before the courts involving a public and a private hospital.

Ms Clarke and Professor Kulkarni said Australia needed to follow British policy to segregate new wards for patient safety.

"What's happening at the moment is a dereliction of that duty (of care), which could lead to litigation if nothing is done about it," Professor Kulkarni said.

A spokesman for the Department of Human Services said the Government was looking at ways to increase women's safety in new hospitals, which "may involve creating spaces that are for women only".

The department gave some centres a $20,000 grant to promote gender sensitive practices last year, which included the development of separate outdoor garden areas, he said.

But Ms Clarke said it was not enough. "At the end of the day, this is about people's safety. If the UK can introduce segregation, we should at least be able to start talking about it here," she said. "The safety of vulnerable people in hospital should be paramount."