New Mad Pride Portal announced.

MindFreedom International has a new Mad Pride Portal

http://www.mindfreedom.org/campaign/madpride

Diagnoses are psychiatry’s star signs. Let’s listen more and drug people less

The biological approach to treating mental illness has been a lamentable failure argues Richard Bentall in an article published by the Guardian this week. He believes we must focus rather on a patient as a person

Surveying the history of psychiatry, the medical historian Edward Shorter remarked: “If there is one central intellectual reality at the end of the 20th century, it is that the biological approach to psychiatry – treating mental illness as a genetically influenced disorder of the brain chemistry – has been a smashing success.”

Far from being a success, there is compelling evidence that the biological approach has been a lamentable failure. Whereas last century saw dramatic improvements in the survival rates of patients suffering from heart diseases and cancer, so far as we can tell, outcomes for patients suffering from the severest forms of psychiatric disorder – the psychoses (disorders in which the patient experiences hallucinations or delusions, usually resulting in a diagnosis of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder) – have hardly changed since the Victorian period. Poor countries without well-resourced psychiatric services seem to do at least as well as the developed world. Therefore, although the perception is often different, there is little evidence that modern psychiatric services have had a global, positive impact on mental health.

At the beginning of the 21st century a new picture of severe mental illness is emerging, which shows that the genetically determined brain disease paradigm is not only ineffective but scientifically flawed. First, it seems that diagnoses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder do not identify discrete conditions analogous to, say, appendicitis or tuberculosis. Patients with a mixture of bipolar and schizophrenia symptoms are at least as common as patients who fit one or other diagnosis. The concept of schizophrenia is so broad that two patients can share the diagnosis while having no symptoms in common.

In the case of both types of symptoms, there appear to be many people whose experiences place them on the borderline between health and illness, so that we can think of a spectrum running from ordinariness, through eccentricity and creative thinking, to full-blown psychiatric disorder. Research has also shown that psychiatric diagnoses are poor predictors of response to treatment, giving little indication of which patients will respond to which drugs. They are therefore hardly more meaningful than star signs – another diagnostic system that is supposed to tell us something about ourselves and what will happen in the future, and which is widely embraced despite no evidence of its usefulness.

When new methods of molecular genetics have been used to study psychiatric patients, no genes of major effect have been found. The latest evidence suggests that many genes – possibly thousands – each make a tiny contribution to vulnerability to psychiatric disorder, and that these effects are highly non-specific (the same genes are implicated in patients with different diagnoses).

Some findings that were announced with enormous fanfare have not been replicated in subsequent studies. Much, for instance, has been made of the discovery of a variant of the 5-HTTLPR gene, which appears to make people liable to depression if they are exposed to unpleasant life events. A recently published analysis of the data available on this gene found no evidence that it directly causes depression, or that it makes people vulnerable to depression. However, it was found that negative life events had a direct impact on mood: as our mothers could have told us, bad things tend to make us miserable.

This last observation is consistent with other evidence that life experiences shape even the most severe forms of mental illness. Migrants have at least a four times greater risk of psychosis than other groups, and this effect is most pronounced if they live in areas in which they are in a minority. Early separation from parents has also been shown to increase the risk of psychosis, as have growing up in an urban environment and chronic bullying.

Many studies have also reported an association between trauma in early life and psychosis. These effects are large: one recent study estimated that individuals who had been sexually abused in childhood were 12 times more likely than others to suffer from serious mental illness, and another calculated that the population-attributable risk of a diagnosis of schizophrenia associated with an inner-city childhood was 15% (that is, there would be 15% fewer cases if we all grew up in the countryside). The risk associated with having a parent with the diagnosis is 7% (ie, there would be 7% fewer cases if patients stopped having children).

These effects are understandable in the light of psychological research. For example, early trauma seems to disrupt the process by which we distinguish between our own thoughts and our perceptions, leading to a specific risk of hallucinations. Disruption of early relationships with caregivers, coupled with victimisation, create a tendency to mistrust others and to anticipate threats, leading to paranoid delusions.

The cruel and ineffective treatments that characterised psychiatry in the mid-20th century – for instance, prefrontal leucotomy and insulin coma therapy – would not have been accepted had psychiatrists not been in thrall to the idea that mental illnesses are genetically determined brain diseases. Today, although mental health professionals are usually much more compassionate than in those dark times, psychiatric services continue to see their primary objective as ensuring that patients take their medication.

Legislation has been introduced allowing doctors to coerce patients to take their drugs with threats of a return to hospital if they do not comply. Patients often find that their own understandings of their troubles are ignored. A study of psychiatrists in London found that, when patients asked questions about the meaning of their experiences, the doctors typically changed the subject.

Meanwhile, research on the biology of severe mental illness continues to be prioritised over social and psychological research. Biological investigations into psychosis currently outnumber those on environmental factors by at least five to one, and are much more generously funded by the UK’s Medical Research Council. To date, about 30 trials of cognitive therapy for psychosis have been completed; by comparison, in the period 2001-3, nearly 400 drug trials were published in the five leading American psychiatric journals. There is therefore an urgent need to develop a less drug-based, more person-centred approach to understanding and treating mental illness, which builds on the recent scientific findings and which takes the experiences of patients seriously.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/31/psychiatry-psychosis-schizophrenia-drug-treatments

Australia’s human rights abuses in psychiatry

THE number of mental health patients forced to undergo electroconvulsive therapy in NSW has doubled in the past decade, and a lack of legal representation is leaving some of the state’s most vulnerable patients without a say over their own treatment.

The case of one 84-year-old pensioner who did summon legal help to avoid ECT has highlighted a situation that leaves involuntary patients – and their families – powerless to challenge psychiatrists.

In NSW, involuntary ECT requires the approval of the Mental Health Review Tribunal. All mental health patients are entitled to a lawyer, but only one in 10 patients is represented in the tribunal’s hearings.

The tribunal held 315 hearings for involuntary ECT in 1998. In 2007 there were 626 hearings. In that period legal representation in ECT hearings wavered between 4.9 and 8.9 per cent. Ninety-eight per cent of applications for involuntary ECT were approved.

The chief executive of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, Robin Banks, said the wishes of involuntary patients were given little consideration. She believed the absence of lawyers was “a serious loss of freedom” and a situation that undermined Australia’s commitment to human rights.

“A minimum protection within any decision-making process like this … should be that the person can have access to legal representation,” she said. “It’s a pretty basic right we’re talking about: the right to control your own body and what treatment you receive.”

The tribunal, too, would welcome more input.

“We can’t force Legal Aid to give legal aid to everybody,” said the tribunal’s president, Greg James, QC. “[But] patients, the public and the tribunal would be much better off if legal aid were available. The whole reason we do this monitoring of ECT is to make sure the public can feel protected. There is a distrust in the community of such psychiatric treatments.”

Mr James said lawyers supplied independent input to ensure the tribunal approved the least restrictive, safest and most effective treatment.

His predecessor, Duncan Chappell, called the low level of legal representation “unfortunate”. When the Mental Health Act was reviewed in 2006 he pushed to have legal help made mandatory but was unsuccessful.

The case that has highlighted the issue concerns an age pensioner who was diagnosed in late April as clinically depressed and urgently needing ECT but who was discharged after her hospital learned its proposed treatment was to be challenged in the Supreme Court. Mr James said such cases were “very, very rare”.

But Robert Wheeler, who specialises in mental health law for Legal Aid NSW, said even when lawyers appeared at ECT hearings their contributions were limited. Lawyers could not counter medical testimony; and, while they could seek a second opinion, it was costly.

“Unless we’ve got the money to arrange a second opinion for every one of these applications, then really there’s not much we can do,” he said. Given Legal Aid’s budget, he said: “I don’t think it’s worth it.”

Bill Lyndon, a clinician of more than 20 years who uses ECT for voluntary patients, attributed the therapy’s increase in the public system to a greater awareness among psychiatrists of how to use it and greater recognition of its effectiveness. Dr Lyndon described ECT as “the most powerful anti-depressant we have”.

Nationally, ECT was used 20,121 times on an unknown number of patients last year, Medicare says. Of those, 5174 were in NSW. Ten years ago the state figure was half that.

Research by Terry Carney, a Sydney University law professor who specialises in mental health law, found that in NSW and Victoria the time spent for all types of mental health reviews averaged 15 minutes. In Britain the average hearing lasts 2½ hours.

“By comparison with other parts of the world, we’re providing considerably less resources, and the quality of some decision-making somewhere must suffer,” Professor Carney said.

Source http://www.smh.com.au/national/shock-therapy-forced-on-patients-20090605-byi6.html

Free Anthony Milne from psychiatric slavery

Anthony Milne is one of the signatories of the Cape Town Declaration against forced and coerced psychiatric procedures, which calls for the development of alternatives to psychiatry. Anthony was detained by the authorities on March 20 earlier this year and has been in a lock-up ward without legal representation for the past months. Regardless of his status as a “disabled person” such a situation is clearly unlawful and illegal.

The issue, as far as we are able to determine is the flagrant denial of Anthony’s rights under article 12 of South Africa’s constitution guaranteeing freedom and security of the person:

1. Everyone has the right to freedom and security of the person,
which includes the right ­
1. not to be deprived of freedom arbitrarily or without just
cause;
2. not to be detained without trial;
3. to be free from all forms of violence from either public or
private sources;
4. not to be tortured in any way; and
5. not to be treated or punished in a cruel, inhuman or
degrading way.

2. Everyone has the right to bodily and psychological integrity,
which includes the right ­
1. to make decisions concerning reproduction;
2. to security in and control over their body; and
3. not to be subjected to medical or scientific experiments
without their informed consent.

Unfortunately, the Mental Health Care Act of 2002 was written in a vacuum, and makes no allowance for legal representation, and the only input on patients rights is before a board of inquiry made up of the same kind of “experts” that we have rejected as being hopelessly prejudiced. As far as we can see, there exists no independent review board on Mental Health in South Africa. In any event a patient should have a right to representation and self-determination whenever decisions are made which impact on /habeous corpus/ common law rights and rights granted by the constitution against detention without trial.

The recent Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), to which South Africa is a signatory, has affirmed such rights, but there appears to be no implementation and the necessary legislation has not been debated, let alone, drafted and passed.

As friend and acquaintances of Anthony, we are also extremely concerned about his health and welfare and future prospects, given that there has been no attempt to provide the most basic primary health care such as acceptable dental treatment. It is surely a violation of human rights to insist on extraction of teeth? Anthony deserves a fair hearing and recourse to the law, as well as humane dental treatment.

We therefore appeal to you to prevail upon the relevant authorities on Anthony’s behalf, as we appear to lack the means and resources to retain a lawyer and previous appeals have thus far come to naught. Despite this failing, a legal solution needs to be found, otherwise the Cape Town Declaration is doomed to bind all of us to psychiatric slavery instead of being a clarion call for action against oppression.

Germany passes new legislation against coercive psychiatry

After years of discussion, today a new law on the legal rules for advance directives has finally been adopted by the German parliament.

The legislature has clearly and with votes from all political parties agreed to make valid the will of the patient and by doing so also the self-determination in any situation against any medical and state paternalism, regardless of the type and stage of an illness.

The time finally belongs to the past that others – doctors and judges – define what the supposedly “objective” best interests of a person are and what should be undertaken or refrained from, against his/her declared will, with regard to these supposedly “objective” best interests of a person! This will have far-reaching effects with regard to court ordered guardianship: For the first time there is the chance that guardianship may no longer be enforced against the wishes and needs of the person in question and thus guardianship now has the potential to be transformed into a service that is loyal to the person in question.

The patient‘s will is now to be regarded as being legally binding in medical decisions, as already promised in the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany and for over 60 years in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Each case of “medical” treatment against the written and actual will of a “patient” thereby becomes bodily assault and incarceration in a locked ward becomes deprivation of liberty.

On this occasion we would therefore like to make known our specific form of an advance directive, the PatVerfue, with a built-in representation agreement, in which any torture-like bodily harm in the form of unwanted psychiatric treatment and any deprivation of liberty whatsoever due to a slanderous pseudo-medical psychiatric diagnosis is legally binding excluded. The associations publishing this form have joined forces to help this parliament´s promise to be accepted in the judiciary. It is this promise with which the validity of basic, civil and human rights for all, also for the psychiatrically slandered, hopefully becomes reality. By supporting and encouraging all those with a PatVerfue who would nevertheless be incarcerated and endure coercive treatment and/or are threatened with these acts, to create precedents at all judicial levels Germany, it is our aim to make the PatVerfue „watertight“ in the courts. Our aim is that in the future all judges be made to adhere to this new law, to accept the patient‘s will without restrictions and to implement it with their decisions.

Our proposed form of an advance directive prohibits all psychiatric diagnoses from the outset. We do not believe in the existence of these so-called “mental illnesses”, because there is no objective criteria to prove them. The PatVerfue thus ensures the self determination of the person against psychiatrists trying to deny his or her free will, by claiming that they have an illness-incurred lack of „insight or the ability to behave in the light of this insight “.

Today is for us a day of joy!

The rigid implementation of this law would mean the end of forced psychiatry in Germany.

An illogical fact remains, however, in that psychiatric diagnoses and treatment against the declared will of a person can only be staved off by a PatVerfue and – to the contrary – is not excluded at all.

Actually, each psychiatric – just as with any medical – treatment should only be made with the “informed consent” of the individual, i.e. it is explicitly a g r e e d to by the person after extensive consultation on the pros and cons thereof.

Thus, with the entry into force of the law, unfortunately a prior legally binding refusal of psychiatric coercive measures is only possible for those who already know that a PatVerfue is a loophole to prevent coercive psychiatry.

This is therefore the right occasion for a broad information campaign to make the PatVerfue public, so that increased use widens the loophole into a “door out of coercive psychiatry”.

At http://www.PatVerfue.de information and the appropriate form is now free to download for noncommercial users.

Publisher of the PatVerfue: Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Psychiatrie-Erfahrener: http://die-bpe.de, Irren-Offensive: antipsychiatrie.de, Landesverband Psychiatrie-Erfahrener Berlin-Brandenburg: http://psychiatrie-erfahren.de, Landesverband Psychiatrie-Erfahrener NRW: http://psychiatrie-erfahrene-nrw.de, Werner-Fuss-Zentrum: http://psychiatrie-erfahrene.de, Antipsychiatrische und betroffenenkontrollierte Informations- und Beratungsstelle: http://weglaufhaus.de/beratung.

To celebrate this day of joy, the Werner-Fuss-Center publicly invites everybody to a barbecue at 8 p.m. today on the kleinen Bunkerberg in the Volkspark in Friedrichshain in Berlin. Please bring something with to celebrate.

Canadian MP proposes Bill of Rights for “mental health”

Although South Africa’s constitution guarantees cognitive freedom and freedom from psychological coercion, our parliament has done nothing to implement rights under various sections, in particular article 12. In contrast, Canada which does not have a Bill of Rights, is in the midst of a debate about a “Mental Health Rights Bill”

Jon Gerrard, leader of the Liberal party in Manitoba, introduced a bill on December 2, 2008 in the Manitoba Legislature to provide a bill of rights for citizens with mental health disorders. He wrote on his blog, “It is imperative that people with mental illnesses receive services quickly, that their release from an institution such as a hospital be adequately planned, and that adequate support be available for them in the community on discharge.”

Dr. Jon Gerrard speaks about his bill, his reasons for introducing it, and its fate, now that the Manitoba Legislature has ended its sitting for the summer break, in a radio programme

You can also listen to  Karen Kellogg, a lawyer, research associate and project manager with the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

Mad Pride Interviews

Last month, Canadian radio station CHLY did a four-segment special on MAD PRIDE, including an interview with Ruth Ruth, chair of the MindFreedom International Mad Pride Campaign Committee. You can listen to the interviews here.

‘Mad Pride’ Fights a Stigma

By GABRIELLE GLASER

IN the YouTube video, Liz Spikol is smiling and animated, the light glinting off her large hoop earrings. Deadpan, she holds up a diaper. It is not, she explains, a hygienic item for a giantess, but rather a prop to illustrate how much control people lose when they undergo electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, as she did 12 years ago.

In other videos and blog postings, Ms. Spikol, a 39-year-old writer in Philadelphia who has bipolar disorder, describes a period of psychosis so severe she jumped out of her mother’s car and ran away like a scared dog.

In lectures across the country, Elyn Saks, a law professor and associate dean at the University of Southern California, recounts the florid visions she has experienced during her lifelong battle with schizophrenia — dancing ashtrays, houses that spoke to her — and hospitalizations where she was strapped down with leather restraints and force-fed medications.

Like many Americans who have severe forms of mental illness such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, Ms. Saks and Ms. Spikol are speaking candidly and publicly about their demons. Their frank talk is part of a conversation about mental illness (or as some prefer to put it, “extreme mental states”) that stretches from college campuses to community health centers, from YouTube to online forums.

“Until now, the acceptance of mental illness has pretty much stopped at depression,” said Charles Barber, a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. “But a newer generation, fueled by the Internet and other sophisticated delivery systems, is saying, ‘We deserve to be heard, too.’ ”

About 5.7 million Americans over 18 have bipolar disorder, which is classified as a mood disorder, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Another 2.4 million have schizophrenia, which is considered a thought disorder. The small slice of this disparate population who have chosen to share their experiences with the public liken their efforts to those of the gay-rights and similar movements of a generation ago.

Just as gay-rights activists reclaimed the word queer as a badge of honor rather than a slur, these advocates proudly call themselves mad; they say their conditions do not preclude them from productive lives.

Mad pride events, organized by loosely connected groups in at least seven countries including Australia, South Africa and the United States, draw thousands of participants, said David W. Oaks, the director of MindFreedom International, a nonprofit group in Eugene, Ore., that tracks the events and says it has 10,000 members.

MAD PRIDE is Theme of Next MindFreedom Live Web Radio

On MindFreedom Live Web Radio *This* Saturday, 13 June 2009

Guests:

*** Will Hall, recently featured in Newsweek.

*** Psychiatric survivor Lauren Tenney on “We The People” memorial
vigil for Esmin Green.

*** Psychologist Toby Tyler Watson, new director of International
Center for Study of Psychiatry and Psychology.

Host:

*** MindFreedom’s director and psychiatric survivor David W. Oaks,
also a psychiatric survivor.

HOW TO LISTEN AND CALL-IN LIVE:

WHEN: *This* Saturday, 13 June 2009

START TIME for the 90 minute show:

* USA: 11 am Pacific, 12 noon Mountain, 1 pm Central, 2 pm Eastern
* UTC/GMT: 6 pm [18:00]
* London/Dublin: 7 pm [19:00]
* Berlin: 8 pm [20:00]
* Auckland: 6 am.

CLICK HERE AT THAT TIME to listen and call in LIVE, or click later to
hear archive:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/davidwoaks

CALL-IN number: (646) 595-2125.

No computer to listen in that day? No problem. You may use the call-in
number just to listen!

More about show guests, who are Mad Pride activists and allies…

WILL HALL recently featured in Newsweek about mad pride. Will is a
widely-respected community organizer in the “Mad Movement.” He is co-
coordinator of The Icarus Project, co-founder of Freedom Center, host
of Madness Radio, and a consultant for Mental Disability Rights
International.

His website is http://www.willhall.net.

LAUREN TENNEY, psychiatric survivor activist from New York State will
discuss the upcoming “We The People” vigil to remember Esmin Green,
whose horrendous death in a psychiatric emergency waiting room was
captured on video and shown nationally. Lauren was first involuntarily
institutionalized at 15, and has been a psychiatric survivor activist
since 1992. Says Lauren, “My goal is to help stop forced psychiatric
procedures, detainment, and confinement, human rights violations,
psychiatric abuse and torture.”

More info: http://www.TheOpalProject.org and http://www.etrash.tv.

TOBY TYLER WATSON, Psy.D. of Wisconsin is the brand new International
Executive Director of the International Center for the Study of
Psychiatry and Psychology (ICSPP), a network of mental health
professionals, advocates and others reforming mental health care. Dr.
Watson is also a practicing psychologist, and a leader in providing
non-drug mental health alternatives.

More info: http://www.icspp.org.

And you! Your calls, questions, comments, are welcome.

Host is MindFreedom director DAVID W. OAKS psychiatric survivor, who
will report on recent Minnesota and San Francisco protests.

Remember, this free live call-in show is *this* Saturday, 13 June
2009. Please spread the word!

If you miss a show, you can listen to archives via the show web link:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/davidwoaks

More info on the show, with photos of guests, see:

http://www.mindfreedom.org/radio

And mark your calendar for every Second Saturday in 2009 for
MindFreedom Live Free Mad Pride Radio!

Listening to Madness – Why so-called mentally ill patients are rejecting their medication and making the case for ‘mad pride.’

They Don’t Want to Be Normal Artists embrace mental illness as creative force By  Alissa Quart | NEWSWEEK Published May 2, 2009 From the magazine issue dated May 18, 2009 *

We don’t want to be normal,” Will Hall tells me. The 43-year-old has been diagnosed as schizophrenic, and doctors have prescribed antipsychotic medication for him. But Hall would rather value his mentally extreme states than try to suppress them, so he doesn’t take his meds. Instead, he practices yoga and avoids coffee and sugar. He is delicate and thin, with dark plum polish on his fingernails and black fashion sneakers on his feet, his half Native American ancestry evident in his dark hair and dark eyes. Cultivated and charismatic, he is also unusually energetic, so much so that he seems to be vibrating even when sitting still.

I met Hall one night at the offices of the Icarus Project in Manhattan. He became a leader of the group—a “mad pride” collective—in 2005 as a way to promote the idea that mental-health diagnoses like bipolar disorder are “dangerous gifts” rather than illnesses. While we talked, members of the group—Icaristas, as they call themselves—scurried around in the purple-painted office, collating mad-pride fliers. Hall explained how the medical establishment has for too long relied heavily on medication and repression of behavior of those deemed “not normal.” Icarus and groups like it are challenging the science that psychiatry says is on its side. Hall believes that psychiatrists are prone to making arbitrary distinctions between “crazy” and “healthy,” and to using medication as tranquilizers.

“For most people, it used to be, ‘Mental illness is a disease—here is a pill you take for it’,” says Hall. “Now that’s breaking down.” Indeed, Hall came of age in the era of the book “Listening to Prozac.” He initially took Prozac after it was prescribed to him for depression in 1990. But he was not simply depressed, and he soon had a manic reaction to Prozac, a not uncommon side effect. In his frenetic state, Hall went on to lose a job at an environmental organization. He soon descended into poverty and started to hear furious voices in his head; he walked the streets of San Francisco night after night, but the voices never quieted. Eventually, he went to a mental-health clinic and was swiftly locked up. Soon after, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He was put in restraints and hospitalized against his will, he says. For the next year, he bounced in and out of a public psychiatric hospital that he likens to a prison. The humiliation and what he experienced as the failure of the medication were what turned him against traditional treatment. Since then, Hall has been asking whether his treatment was really necessary. He felt sloshily medicated, as if he couldn’t really live his life.