TAC rhetoric! Hands down the most mind-blown example of Orwellian doublethink going on in the national discourse.
Alison Hymes correctly identifies TAC as a political action committee that promotes wicked discrimination while claiming itself a leading advocate for the mentally ill. The following is from her post about TAC’s Craig’s List ad for a new director. Here I attempt to unpack their language and get to the bottom of it:
The Treatment Advocacy Center seeks a dynamic and passionate leader who can continue a commanding track record of success into its second decade.
The Treatment Advocacy Center (www.TreatmentAdvocacyCenter.org) is a national nonprofit based inside the Washington Beltway (Arlington, VA). TAC has an expert legal, communications, and support staff in place and a budget a little under $1,000,000. The legal advocacy center, which has Charity Navigator’s top 4-star rating, is dedicated to bringing needed care to people overwhelmed by the symptoms of severe mental illnesses.
TAC orchestrates and promotes legislative, program and policy reforms that remove barriers to the treatment of those most impacted by disorders like schizophrenia.
“Policy reforms” are the laws they want to change around confidentiality, the physical integrity of law-abiding citizens, privacy protections and the like.
The “barriers” are civil rights.
“Schizophrenia” signifies the horrifying Other, acting weird in tattered clothing, sleeping on benches and aggressively panhandling.
The center also supports the development of innovative treatments for and research into the causes of acute psychiatric illnesses through the Stanley Medical Research Institute, an independently funded supporting organization.
If TAC was truly honest and objective about finding the cause of psychic distress they would give equal support to NON-MEDICAL research that begins with the TRAUMA model of major mental illness. What they do instead is poison the well of debate by pretending trauma research doesn’t exist. If they have their way it won’t.
TAC has facilitated significant legal reforms in 17 states, including Kendra’s Law in New York. The organization has built a strong national media presence; pieces featuring TAC and its efforts have appeared in many of the nation’s largest newspaper, television, radio and internet venues.
Because all people living with mental illness are a hairsbreadth away from pushing another poor Kendra into the path of an oncoming train. You could be next! This is scapegoating pure and simple, making the innocent bear the blame for the actions of the guilty.
A chief focus is promoting lower thresholds for involuntary commitment to benefit those who are unable to help themselves because of the untreated symptoms of psychiatric disorders.
Sounds great. Let’s try that again:
A chief focus is promoting lower thresholds (read: statutory change) for involuntary (forced, over the individual’s objections) commitment to lock up, medicate, electroshock
benefitthose who are unwillingunableto renouncehelpthemselves because of their reasonable avoidance of dangerous state hospitals and total institutionsthe untreated symptoms of psychiatric disorders.
Fear-mongering:
These are individuals who in many cases cannot, under current law, be helped until they become a “danger to self or others.”
Under the law in many states, peeing in the street
being obviously psychoticand indisputably in need of toilet facilitiespsychiatric careis insufficient justification for courts to authorize families and mental health professionals to incarcerateintervene.The results of such laws and policies are evidenced by the nearly 300,000 Americans with serious mental illnesses in jail and prison and the 200,000 living in our streets.Non-treatment also results in thousands of suicides each year and acts of violence towards others.
Research shows the mentally ill are no more likely to commit violence than the general population. They are, however more likely to be killed by untrained police who are hyped up on the fear TAC promulgates and fury toward citizens the average police officer is incapable of communicating with.
TAC works to bring help and hope to this population of the most ill.
What TAC does not do is define their terms. What they do instead is bastardize meaning. Using feel good, legitimatizing words like “help”, “care”, “treatment”, and “advocacy” without explaining what they mean by these terms brings to my mind words like “agenda”, “deception”, “obfuscation”, and unrelenting “spin” into the land of ad nauseam.
Great post! I love the title, made me giggle to myself, better be careful not to do that in a meeting with these folks or I may end up being “helped” into a dangerous and oppressive psychiatric unit and thrown off the transplant list…. But better I be sane than alive, right? Not.
if i never hear/see the phrase “dangerous to oneself and others” again it will be too soon.
dangerous to oneself: like who? smokers? extreme sports athletes? boxers? greasy-food eaters? soldiers? joyriders? bungee-jumpers? long-distance drivers? high-pressure executives?
why do we suddenly become so damn concerned with stopping people from injuring themselves when they are “mentally ill?”
and dangerous to others? give me a break. there are so many very dangerous people who happily slap their feet on the concrete of our streets and get handshakes instead of “treatment.” kissinger? bush? alberto gonzales? how many dead people do these folks have on their conscience?
we have it all topsy turvy.
Good work Flawedplan. I remember when my father told me he was going to send me off somewhere to talk to some people, but then he’s a lawyer who does lots of civil commitment cases. As someone who has been the victim of a wrongful commitment, I’m still shuddering at the reports I read today liinked on Spikol’s site about Connecticutt and in the Atlanta journal about Georgia, two states where its been concluded that patients are killed, raped and restrained physically and chemically unnecessarily in overcrowed state hospitals. Both articles assured the public that patient release wouldn’t be ordered and noted that the United States Department of Justice is investigating whether the “patients’” civil rights have been violated. Lets see, being locked up against your will, restrained unnessarily, raped and murdered, and the government has to check and see whether that’s civil rights violation or help – oh and did I mention this, if you don’t want to submit yourself to this help by rape and murder, you’re well, uh, crazy and thus really need it.
Sometimes I wake up early, thinking I’m still haldoled to a bed in a mental institution in Alabama. Then I hear my basset hound snoring and know I’m safe (at least until the next time my family locks me up – what will happen to my dog and cats not to mention my home and credit rating when they do this again), so I get up and blog.
Thanks for unpacking this as promised. Here’s a little more. “The legal advocacy center, which has Charity Navigator’s top 4-star rating, is dedicated to bringing needed care to people overwhelmed by the symptoms of severe mental illnesses.”
needed care – forced drugging and physical imprisonment, needed, not because they/we are dangerous, but because without these things our families think we might “do something terrible.”
overwhelmed by the symptoms of severe mental illness – well since the policy forms TAC mentions involve commiting folks who are less than dangerous, but more than ummm well what, anyway, folks who are of no danger to themselves or others but are just “overwhelmed by the symptoms of severe mental illness” what symptoms are they talking about. In other words, if the symptoms aren’t dangerous, the mental illness isn’t severe so the people can’t be overwhelmed. Sort of like how some people are afraid to drive fast (or too slow) because it is dangerous, but they are not afraid to drive at the correct speed because it’s safe, so what TAC is really advocating is locking up people who are not dangerous, who are safe and bothering no one because they/we are overwhelmed by non dangerous symptoms so they/we won’t…..won’t what? I don’t get it.
It means getting clear on who is overwhelmed. I know what it’s like to feel unsafe and threatened by people in psychosis. I have been overwhelmed by other people’s deranged behavior, and felt relief when they were taken away against their wishes, they weren’t overwhelmed, they were having a blast. I don’t know why that’s so hard to admit; that it’s not the actor who is overwhelmed by their symptoms, but people who are minding their own business and are overwhelmed by being on the receiving end of the threatening gestures of someone in a manic episode.
I don’t see this kind of honesty in those who support the NAMI and TAC mindset, and for me, dishonesty makes their point of view dismissible in toto.
What I think TAC is creating, maybe unwittingly, is confusion in the public mind that conflates psychopathy with psychopathology. They’re not the same thing.
Evil (sadism) and madness can exist in the the same person, as it did in my mom and my brother, but not my sister, me or other brother, who are just vanilla and comorbid mentally ill. But psychopathy is about choice and psychopathology isn’t, and TAC is feeding that confusion. Whether they care or not is another story.
TAC are fear-mongers playing who play on the fear of mental illness and the lack of understanding that is found in the general public.
Even with all of the mental illness in my family, they too get sucked in by this fear. If I were to begin to hallucinate and merely mention it, they’d call the cops and have me carted off to the E.D. But if one of them were drunk or strung out on some drug, raving and outwardly violent- they wouldn’t fear THAT. They’d be right there to clean up the mess and cover all the damage, sweeping it under the rug. That kind of thing is understandable and acceptable to them.
A few years ago I was visiting Toronto with my aunt, my cousin and his friend (both were about 10 years old at the time). While we were waiting to get into Medieval Times, they were snickering about a homeless woman sitting on the bench out front with her bags. My aunt stated that there should be “places” for “those people”, and I was crushed, because I could’ve easily been one of those people under slightly different circumstances. The woman asked us what time it was, and no one answered her. They just looked at her, stunned that she would dare speak to them, so I asked my aunt what time it was and told the woman. (I wasn’t wearing a watch). When I told her, she got up and went across the street to another bench. I think she had to move when the place was opening for business, because a security guard came out to check. My aunt and cousin were appalled that I would speak to her, because she “looked crazy” and “might beg us for money…or who knows? try to attack us!!” So, even with having done nothing harmful, threatening or unreasonable- they chose to see her as “other” and a threat.
Later that night, we were in an elevator in the parking garage of the hotel with a disheveled man who was singing and talking to himself, but very happy with his conversation. The man had done nothing- said nothing to us, asked for nothing, did not even look at us, was not standing “too close”etc. , but my aunt practically ran off of the elevator, panting in fear and speaking in hushed tones about getting out of there quickly. I laughed at her even though I wanted to smack her in the head. “If he’s singing a happy song, he’s not about to go off on a rampage”, I told her. She giggled- maybe thinking to herself that I had some kind of valuable inside information.
I was more afraid of HER when she discovered that my cousin ate a $5 Reese’s peanut butter cup out of the hotel room candy basket and then lied when it showed up on the bill- but screaming, raving and threatening violence is okay for her, for them. These are the kind of people who swallow the lines fed by TAC. But it’s those “other” people- those “unpredictable” people behaving strangely who need to be “helped” and “treated” and controlled.
Thanks for the translation. It might be fun to translate the entire TAC blog too.
My feeling is that people labeled mentally ill and people not labeled mentally ill all get overwhelmed by other people’s behavior at times and all experience strong emotions. It’s just that it’s illegal for someone labeled mentally ill to express their feelings. One of the great tragedies of all of this mental illness bs is seeing people pathologize normal behavior. A poor kid posted on Furious Seasons this morning that she thought cheating on her boyfriend was a symptom of bipolar disorder. For TAC, if the identified patient in the family experiences strong emotions, they are acting crazy, if a family member of the identified patient acts crazy, it’s because they are victims of the identified patient. It’s all such terrible, evil nonsense.
I read that poor kid’s comment at Furious Seasons, stumped, but left a lame reply because I can’t stand that passification, and I know what it’s like to feel so desperate and blinded to options.
I’m all for civil liberties and neurodiversity. But I’ve seen plenty horrifying and disabling psychopathology. I think most people who pathologize normal human behavior have not seen the real deal, they have no reference point, but they do bear hang ups and neurotic fears about anger, excitation and the ordinary excesses of human behavior. So they label, discriminate and diagnose what’s just meh.
You can benefit and advocate for people living with psychotic disorders without denying psychopathology as such. Deranged minds come with the human condition, there’s no sin in it. That’s what needs to be confronted, the bullshit moralism applied to people who get in trouble because they’re not in control of their faculties.
I didn’t think your comment at Furious Seasons was lame. I’m not sure what you mean by “the bullshit moralism applied to people who get in trouble because….” I take the extreme point of view that being delusional is not the same as being dangerous. Plenty of folks are one without being the other and in fact most crimes are commited by people who have never had an auditory or visual hallucination.
I don’t disagree. I’m thinking about what happens with someone in a manic episode who jumps out of their car and starts directing traffic (don’t ask), or goes into the kitchen of a restaurant and insists they’re the better chef so get out of the way and let me handle the cooking, or barges into middle school and tries to give her child’s 7th grade class the correct version of civil war history, or sets up residence in the front yard of an old lover who broke up with them five years ago and is married and moved on, etc etc.
People experiencing delusion disrupt normal social function, and typically get furious with those who disagree and try to make them stop. That scares people and the fear gives internal permission to define the deluded person however they want (bad), and act upon them any way they see fit (arrest and detention).
That’s not okay. We all need to learn to recognize the difference between sinister behavior and confused, disorganized all fucked-in-the-head behavior. Both are scary, but the fear is no excuse to assume menace when there’s no evidence of menace whatsoever. Disruptive? Yes. Stubborn? Yes. Pain in the ass? Totally. But dangerous, where? How? Show me where the menace is in someone hellbent on alerting the public that our water supply’s been poisoned by the CIA?
Oh, but they scare me so much = moral license to do whatever I want to make them stop. Not.
(I apologise for preaching to the choir on a Saturday morning, but I think you’ve hit on something here that is crucial in understanding TAC’s message of hate, harm and destruction)
As someone whose family falsely accued her of being bipolar, I suppose its the sort of thing you mention that scares me. I’ve never been manic, and I don’t buy the idea that anyone, solely because of a chemical imbalance in their brain, jumps ouf of a car and starts directing traffic. If someone does this there’s a reason, it might not make sense to you or me, but its there somewhere under all of the seemingly bizarre behavior. If someone starts shooting people because he thinks they are invading space aliens, that’s dangerous, of course it’s never happened. There have been cases of completely sane people killing other people because they are angry and troubled, in fact that’s the reason for 99.9 percent of all murder (I think).
If someone starts directing traffic, they will probably need to be restrained so they don’t either a, get hit by a car, or b, cause an accident. It’s okay to arrest this person. Upon their arrest, it’s a pretty good idea to let them know that if they do this sort of thing again, they’ll be arrested again. I bet its already illegal for me to get out of my car and argue with the traffic cop (though considering the traffic cops around Dunwoody, it might be insane not to interfere with them). And I can even see where someone getting out of their car, heading to an intersection and beginning to direct traffic, without doing so, could be commited as a danger to himself or others because if left unchecked, his behavior really is dangerous. However, I think someone should at least investigate to see if the person getting out of his car to direct traffic is doing so because in the last month he’s seen several accidents caused by the negligence of the traffic cop or the improper setting of the traffic lights. TAC wants an concerned individual to be able to call the police and say, “my son won’t stop talking about the traffic accidents caused by the cop. He’s threatening to drive up to the intersection and direct traffic himself,” and on the basis of that testimony, have the son institutionalized at the expense of the state for the rest of his life.
Gracious. (Don’t ask) I say, so what are we going to talk about? All righty. I know what TAC is about, do you know what a psychotic break looks like?
Of course I was the one who jumped out of the car and started directing traffic and it’s fairly mild in comparison to other psychotic breaks I’ve witnessed. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, you don’t warn others or plan the behavior in advance, it’s the complete inability to filter normal experience, no *in between* time from stimulus to response. Speech, behavior, perceptions and reactions are all jumbled up and in the moment, it doesn’t feel bad or overwhelming, it feels like being on top of the whole world and in tune with what’s going on, which makes you extremely agitated that the rest of the world won’t get w/ the program and move their damn cars when the lights turn green.
I suppose I don’t know what a psychotic break looks like. I guess since my family accused me of having one, and bizarrely I can prove I didn’t, I face institutionilization for the rest of my life as soon as they can get me back in court. If you’ve had one, it makes me feel good to know that you are allowed to live free.
Whatever you think should, could, ought, has or might happen to my freedom is no longer available for discussion.
You’re looking at my story through the lens of your own experience.
The reason I liked Mary Z. better than anyone else at TAC, although I’m very glad she is gone because she was willing to fear monger and very good at it and didn’t have any respect for our rights at all, but the reason I don’t think she is evil is that she did know what psychosis looked like up close and personal and took personal responsiblity and much time and effort when no one else would for her family members, ironically, neither of her family members is a candidate for nor needed AOT.
Psychosis is real, I have problems when people tell me it’s not and don’t know what to say to them. I’m quite sure experts have the cause of it wrong, but I will not pretend it doesn’t exist. And yes, it scares the you know what out of folks around the person. Now personally I was never having a good time, they used to say mixed states or psychotic depression, now I think dissociation mixed in with agitation and confusion, but who knows? I was always terrified the whole time, that I know.
I stay on klonopin because I have not had a psychotic episode since I started it. I have also done a ton of work in therapy, but I don’t know the potential isn’t still there. In fact when I took one Ritalin for energy a few years ago I came very close to going over the edge and through them out but reminded myself I am not invulnerable no matter how long it has been. Klonopin is my only psychotropic, I know it has side effects but I can live with them better than I can live with the fear of psychosis hitting. And it doesn’t mess with my mind or my intelligence, plus it is great for kidney failure induced insomnia—at least half of my dialysis shift was on something for sleep I think.
I hope you aren’t too upset fp. Never know the right thing to say in these situations to try and make things better, know trying to make things better is often a bad idea anyway, but it’s what was trained into me…..
I think all of my psychotic episodes were medication induced, because I didn’t have one before that, nor since then- but during the years on med cocktails, it was happening several times a year. I don’t recall ever having much fun with it. It seems, looking back, that the behaviors I displayed while psychotic were quite anxiety and fear-driven.
There were times when I was dangerous to myself, because of delusions- but interestingly the delusions I would have were inextricably linked to my abuse experiences. My dangerous behavior while psychotic was, I think, more of self-preservation attempt gone awry in the midst of confusion and fear. That said, I believe that much of it was encouraged and provoked by those who tried to put me in the hospital or drug me further every time the symptoms popped up. I felt like a cornered animal.
People get afraid and immediately want to stop the process, but I think sometimes that puts everything more out of control. I know it did for me. Nothing like that has happened since being off meds, with the exception of extreme anxiety that caused depersonalization and dissociation recently- but that’s different. The scary thing is, I worry all the time about anything that seems to be a potentially psychotic symptom, because with my past psych history, I might be an AOT candidate. It’s only been three years since my last hospitalization, and the guidelines for who can be AOT’d go back as far as four years.
So, being someone who is not on any meds, I have to watch my ass all of the time and make sure I do everything I can to stay away from hospitals and psychiatrists. There are family members- particularly my mother who would take advantage of those laws in a heart beat. I can’t even take the chance of letting some of them know I’m having a bad time. It seems like that much of a risk. I do fear losing my freedom, but those meds made me sicker. So, I have to hold it together all of the time or just stay the hell away from people when I can’t.
I’m not mad at Sally, conflict has to happen if people are to get to know each other.
But I’m like you Hymes and TMA, a slavedriver when it comes to monitoring my mental health because I can’t put myself into the hands of the psychiatric system. Fear mongering works both ways, and I’m more scared of them than they’ve ever been of me. This is so wrong, that I can’t trust the people set up to help me when my mind breaks because they’ll HURT me.
TAC has made psychosis into a monster when it’s a common, everyday experience, we all see people in some degree of psychosis on a daily basis, but when I first heard about me, and found out by one doctor that my psychiatrist put “psychosis” in my notes I burst into tears and cried “Dr. Fuckhead would never say that about me!” and drove to his office and almost punched him out.
He, a forensic and neuropsychiatrist explained to me the old, pre-biological “vulnerability” or trauma model of psychosis, and spent 30 minutes connecting my behaviors to what I endured growing up, and I’m grateful as hell he did that.
It still took me a long time to accommodate the idea that getting into those escapades where I spend 400 dollars on a hat, start fights with strangers about their fucked up facial expressions, and ride my bike into oncoming trucks to see who dies was not “punk rock” but a serious failure of reality testing. Oh, and I would be terrified and overwhelmed in the end, but never in the moment, when I felt I could make the truck swerve if I concentrated enough.
I do have times when I feel I could be sliding into that state of mind, and that’s when I hit the anti-psychotics. I’ve taken 4 pills this year, and my last shrink agreed it was okay to use them on an as-needed basis, because he believed I know how to interrogate my thinking and intervene on my own behalf. And the pills knock me out and I can’t think on anything but a basic level for two days afterwards, but TAC wants to force me to take them on a daily basis because they’re perfectly at peace with my lower mental/emotional/creative functioning. What they think is okay to do with us is all upfront, written on the label; “Neuroleptic = “brain disabling.” I’ll look after my own brain, fuck you very much.
“Fear mongering works both ways, and I’m more scared of them than they’ve ever been of me.This is so wrong, that I can’t trust the people set up to help me when my mind breaks because they’ll HURT me.”
Yup, it’s more than wrong. It’s totally fucked up. I think about this issue a lot. It’s something that makes the process of staying stable even harder. Having a therapist who supports the effort to stay stable without meds has been crucial. She knew me on the meds and sees how I am now, and fully agrees that they make my problems worse. I’m scared as hell to lose her and end up in the hands of the pill pushers. She trusts me to look after my own brain too. I have a small Seroquel stash that’s probably going stale as we speak, and I think I’ve taken one 25 mg tablet twice inthe past two years just to knock myself out for a day or two to get through a crisis, but yeah, thinking is a chore for a couple of days. I don’t even know how I functioned on 900mgs of that everyday and along with everything else.
The militant stance on patients needing meds every day and for the rest of their lives is keeping some people disabled and probably creating disability where there isn’t any in some cases. All of the lovely talk about patient-centered treatment and having patients involved in their own treatment plans is, in most cases, a whole lot of talk and nothing else. When people are treated as capable of making choices and steps toward their own self-care, they begin to feel capable, they learn what works for them, they can begin to take responsibility for their well-being, and successes belong to them personally. There meeds to be more autonomy- not less, and I think it’s the fear of losing what little choice we have that keeps a lot of patients from engaging in treatment. Sometimes there’s more to lose in that. All of this current push for forced “treatment”… ahem… (drugs and incarceration)…is exactly the opposite of what helps people get well. It’s the kind of thing that can drive someone to drop out of society and head for the streets. That should tell NAMI and TAC something about why their efforts are so misguided.
I just want to comment that this is one of the best discussions in comments I think I’ve read yet. Keep on telling your stories, I truly mean this. It is what people need to hear. Thank you for sharing what I know is extremely difficult stuff to tap into and write about, and I appreciate it.
I’m not sure why fp would be made at me but then this is all new to me. My family is committed to having me institutionalized for the rest of my life or at the very least taking life destroying drugs. My psychosis as written in my chart was having a ‘psychotic delusion’ that there should have been a hearing before I was committed when in fact there was no hearing and there should have been one. I don’t think any treatment should ever be forced on anyone.
Sally, no one can have you committed for the rest of your life in any state, nor can they have you forced to take drugs for the rest of your life in any state. There are no life time commitments. I hope that is some relief to you.
Sadly, in Alabama, you can be commited for 150 days with no substantive notice and no substantive hearing and supposedly every 150 days from there on out you are entitled to a hearing, not to contact any one on the outside, not to have any witnesses other than the doctor and staff at the psych prison, and thus, you can be commited for life. Since almost anyone locked up in a psych hospital, a place where overcrowding, physical abuse, rape and filth are the norm, will deteriorate, no one is ever better after the first 150 days and so they don’t get out unless like me they are lucky enough to neither qualify for medicaid nor have a real problem the psych folks can bill the hospital for. (I did have a lawyer too, but if the hospital had thought they had a chance in hell of getting my insurance to pay, I’d still be there until I qualified for medicaid and then could stay forever). I’m a little extreme on this but I think anyone is better off being dropped on the street with no resources than being in a psych hospital. Maybe there are better “psych hospitals” out there than the one I was in, but confinement always makes a frightened person worse.
Vetereans in “psyhaitric hospitals” are often commited for life.
er, I meant “bill your insurance company for” in the 3rd to last sentence.
Hymes, If they believe you are acting criminally/dangerously they can keep you locked up. Only story I have to back that up is Rodney Yoder.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,300661-6,00.html
Those folks who we’ve mentioned who are being released from the “hospital” in Pittsburg, do you really think they’re either a) there voluntarily, b) there for a few weeks of “help” after a manic episode, or c) lifers. C – lifers which is why we all are wondering, even those of us who don’t think their incarceration in a snake pit is helping them, where the h*ll they’re going when they get out. If anyone thought they’d just been in a few weeks, we’d assume they had somewhere to go when they got out. Lifers are there because regardless of what it says on the books, most people when involuntarily commited spend the rest of their lives in the hospital (I theorize).
Sally,
Commitment laws and policies are different in every state, but one thing that is common among those with the kind of mental health issues that land people in long-term hospitals, is that they don’t often have any place else to go. Sometimes people get committed for just that reason alone.
In NY, every patient brought in under an MHA, must be brought to a general hospital facility first and is assumed involuntary and can be held for up to fifteen days for observation and “treatment”. They will only keep a patient a couple of months max on a unit like that. There are very strict criteria for sending a patient off to a state hospital here- usually multiple hospitalizations in a very short time frame and with very severe symptoms. Even before transfer to a state facility can happen, one has to be taken to court for a hearing to get a court order for commitment which is a six month minimum stay. They don’t do this very often, because there is a waiting list a mile long for state hospital care.
Most of the people who end up in those places are normally living in group homes and can lose their places during these months. Some who live at their own apartments can lose that too, because on SSI, if they are hospitalized for more than a month, they can’t collect their check and so cannot pay rent. Having nowhere to go when released from a closing state hospital is not necessarily because someone is a lifer. There are those other factors involved.
States have ways of getting around the court hearing for a six month minimum stay. It happened to me. What TAC is advocating, what NAMI fundraises on, the very Fuller Torrey quote you have on this website is all about that very thing, about exagerating dangerousness to obtain a judicial order for commitment, about liberty for people with psych labels being a violation of our civil rights. My case will settle and the commitment will be declared void, invalid and completely without cause, but still I’ll be at risk. I was only in a psych hospital for 7 days and my credit was destroyed. Had I not had friends to bail me out financially and emotionally, I would have had no place to go, so I agree that being in a psych hospital for a month leaves one with no place to go when one gets out, but I would say this is how one becomes a “lifer,” because as you have stated one criteria for sending a patient to a state hospital for the 6 months of torture is multiple hospitilizations in a short time, so someone already buys into the psych disability model enough to get ssi, they end up in a psych hospital for a few weeks, lose their section 8 housing, come out with no place to go, end up homeless distraught and are yep rehospitilized until they finally end up in a state home or on the streets.
Okay, Sally. Ever heard the saying, “preaching to the choir”? What are we arguing about here? I guess I’m missing something.
I’m sorry. I just hate it when anyone assumes that the current involuntary commitment system is anything but a hypocritical demeaning sham that destroys those unlucky enough to be pitched into its maws.
Comment threads are for discussion, you’re writing polemic. Where’s your blog, Sally?
Sorry, didn’t mean to get off topic. There really are no strict criteria for sending a patient off to a state hospital, none. I’m not sure why it would be suggested that there are by anyone, but I promise not to comment on this anymore.
I’m not sure why “anyone” would suggest that “anyone” is assuming anything about anything here. There is anecdotal experience and there is fact. The laws differ from state to state, the orders differ from court to court, judge to judge, patient to patient…
I understand your anger Sally, but no one here is arguing with you. If you need to do that right now, you’ll have to find someone else to target. This WAS a really good thread.
WordPress is great and blogs are free…
I’m just looking for people who carry around a similar assortment of thoughts in their heads as me. But I steer clear of the antipsychiatry blogs and forums, no receptivity, they’re totally alienated, averse to relational dynamics.
But funny enough I still believe I carry around in my head a similar assortment of thoughts as the folks at the antipsychiatry sites.
How do you indicate you’ve found people like that? We conversate. How do you show you haven’t? Indoctrinate.
It could be just a habit.
I’m bothered by the statement that there are no strict criteria for committing someone to a state hospital, it’s just not true, not a fact, incorrect. There is a lot to discuss and be upset by, but being inaccurate doesn’t help us, it makes us like TAC who will say anything to further their agenda.
I know you have had a tough time Sally, but so have we all, and several of us have spent a lot longer than 7 days in a hospital and aren’t going to get any kind of settlement for it. I lost my apartment, my job and a bunch of friends from a false allegation that led to an involuntary commitment and a lot worse happened I won’t go into even. That was years ago, but I’m still affected by it. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to go around saying things that aren’t true.
Yes, get a blog on wordpress, they’re free and easy even for technots such as myself. Then say whatever you want and need to say.
Yup, a LOT longer than seven days, more than seven days each of the 26 times I was hospitalized involuntarily, some times more than 27 days each time, including both times they considered making an application to commit me to the state hospital, but declined. I lost a job once, missed out on school many times and owe thousands for classes I never got to finish, nearly lost my home more than once, and have been assaulted violently by staff and security leaving permanent damage to my wrists. There are many bad stories to tell. But telling untruths or making up “facts” does not help our cause. It destroys our credibility. WE CAN rebuild our lives Sally. I’m doing it now even after all of that and more. My life is not over. None of us have to lie down and continue to roll in it. I am going back to school to finish my Psych degree starting Monday. Ive been working for over a year now as a volunteer for a reputable, world-reknowned national agency after having passed FBI and NCIC background checks. I am well-thought of and respected by many influential people in my community. Now. Yes, even after all of that. I have more now than I have ever had, and some of it I owe to learning the things I needed to learn to crawl out of the shit hole of the psychiatric system. So, puhleease, don’t tell me about the “hypocritical demeaning sham that destroys those unlucky enough to be pitched into its maws.” It’s not over ’til it’s over… and Sally….It’s not over.
Well shit, you think that’s bad, my dear Darius is visiting his Outpatient payee today to get his own damn money, contingent on the mandatory blood test to prove he’s taken his mandatory Lithium. About this terrible turn of events we will make even more terrible jokes.
Hymes, just look at the Torrey, about exagerating dangerousness, maybe we don’t agree about the definition of the word strict.
The Torreys believe in the divine right of Psychiatry to rule – that they are ordained by God. Whigs believe that Psychiatry is there at the request and goodwill of the patients of the country, so can only continue to rule at their approval.
Sally, do you have Aspergers? Your pain has been acknowledged with respect. Do you acknowledge the pain of others?
It’s beginning to look like your sense of ENTITLEMENT has been fucked with by psychiatry, which is very different from having actually ya know, suffered the breadth and scope of what others have shared in this thread. No warmth, generosity, or humor, just unrelenting outrage that someone as important as you has been fucked with, period.
Your privilege was a mirage. You could learn from that. You’ve lost the mirage, you are no longer among the privileged. Deal with it, show some respect to your equals.
Wow, that’s cruel, maybe I do have Aspergers. I’m crying and leaving yoy aloone. I certainly never had any privilege and don’t have any now. I don’t get how thinking people who are commited have gone through some sort of objective legal processes that is strict and standard and scientific helps anyone when it’s just not true. Please cut lose and hurl other hateful psych labels at me, I won’t be back here.
“Professional Victim.” Which is not a hateful psych label, is that better?
You promote discrimination in denying the reality of mental illness.
Can I be the rabbi on this thread too?
The Torrey says TAC are God’s Anointed Ones who will lead all peoples, both Psychotics and non-Psychotics, into the promised era of a time where the Torrey make the psych-laws of the world, and that the TAC would be the chief perpetrators of these Laws.
I want to be the Priest. The Priest says confess your second class citizensip, take the cup of lithium, eat the disintegrating neuroleptic wafer and you will be absolved but of course you can’t be a Priest because you have a disorder. (Shoot, can’t remember what the darn pope said gays and lesbians have but it ends with disorder?).
Sally, sorry you are upset, but you really are perseverating. Look it up. Also, look for a truth in between total evil and everything’s peachy keen. Saying you can’t be committed for life is in no way saying that people have fair hearings. It’s in between total evil and peachy keen, towards the total evil side. HTH. But really, seven days? Okay, now I’m perseverating.
Well, alright. I’ll confess my second class citizenship, but that disintegrating neuroleptic wafer had better be kosher. Are you taking about my genetic disorder- the two x chromosomes in my 23 pair?
But really Alison, if you’re going to be the priest, you must realize that their are no shades of grey. Things are either good or
Yes, seven days. On the seventh day He rested…
Alison, I was first acused of perseverating while in the mental hospital. I was peserverating that I should have had a hearing before I was commited. I didn’t tell anyone today what happened to me, a first,perhaps because everyone I see knows, my neighbors, the people at the dog park, my co-workers, the people in the office next door. If you go to dictionary.com and type in the word perserverate, spelled correctly, you will see that it’s a symptom of an organic brain disorder. Waitresses, bartenders and the guy in front of me in line at the post office know what happened to me. Every potential job reference I ever had knows because I called and told them about it. It’s all I think about, running constantly in my mind and still I finished law school after they did it to me with no medicine. I got a dog, I take really good care of him, my cats are safe, I pay my bills on time, I’ve avoided dating these four years and a week since I was in that place, August 8 – August 15th 2003, because as I told my friends I couldn’t date anyone without telling them about “what happened.” Turns out people have accepted me in spite of the commitment story and there are men who know about it might want to date me. Still I fear that before the settlement is approved by the judge, I fear I’ll have to go in front of him and if I peseverate there like I do here, I’ll be locked up. I don’t know how anyone can stand such a thing. I don’t know how any of you can blithely suggest that holding someone for 2 weeks of evaluation is a way of doing anything but driving them crazy, and I assure you I don’t deny the existence of mental illness, I challenge its cause, significance and incidence, but not its existence.
“I don’t know how any of you can blithely suggest that holding someone for 2 weeks of evaluation is a way of doing anything but driving them crazy”
Neither do I sally. So, if and when anyone here does that, we’ll be sure to ask.
I seem to have triggered you Sally. My apologies. But I’m not saying anything blithely about locking people up. Nor is anyone else here. We are not the enemy, we don’t even disagree with you. I’m confused as to why you keep thinking we are not in agreement about the lousy system of commitment hearings. I am working my butt off on a taskforce on that very issue because I care so much about it. And let me tell you it isn’t fun and all I get for it is a headache and a lot of triggers.
You are talking to someone else even though you are using my name.
ON FREAK FLAGS AND OVERSTATED ATROCITIES
“Sally” is another human being like all of us who needs at least one non-cat friend in this life. A “good thread” is probably the least important thing in the world.
I concure with the others that suggest Sally should make a webpage/weblog.
Maybe I’m just dense, but I’m not understanding either why you think we aren’t in agreement about the lousy system Sally. It seems like you’re here to argue a point with someone other than us. Alison is right. You are talking to someone else. We aren’t the enemy.
I’m going to ask you straight out, What is is that you want from this discussion? What are you trying to achieve here? What are you not getting that you think you should be getting? What are you hoping to hear? What do you want from us ?
Maybe if you can think about and answer those questions, you’ll also know for yourself.
Your baseless accusations towards us about our views on the system and the commitment process are being completely generated from your experiences with others outside of this here and your own feelings about it all. It’s extremely offensive to me to hear “I don’t know how anyone can stand it” blah, blah blah…
Well, you don’t know Sally, because you have not been through the hell of being in a hospital for two or three or four weeks straight and multiple times. You have no place to argue with me or anyone about what it does to a person to be held involuntarily for two weeks, because that has never even happened to you. So, I don’t want to hear the self-righteous, pearl clutching dismay. Got it?
You wrote:
“States have ways of getting around the court hearing for a six month minimum stay. It happened to me.”
When Sally when did that happen to you? Seven days is not more than six months. It’s also less than two weeks. This happened to you once four years ago Sally?!!!!! Okay, it’s a traumatic thing, but you are NOT going to get locked up for life and without notice. They couldn’t even put you in AOT at this point for that. So, I think this is all a big dramatization that you need to go act out somewhere else.