Uncivil Commitment: Psychiatry May Deprive You of Civil Rights

​Americans take considerable pride in our Constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties, yet our government and institutions often abridge or ignore those rights when it comes to certain classes of people.

According to a National Council on Disability report, people with psychiatric illnesses are routinely deprived of their civil rights in a way that no other people with disabilities are. This is particularly so in the case of people who are involuntarily committed to psychiatric wards.

Selling Sickness—How Big Pharma “Sells” Diseases to Move Drugs

Recently some of the nation’s top researchers, clinicians and scientists convened in Washington D.C. for the first annual Selling Sickness conference–examining how Pharma “sells” diseases to move the medications intended to treat them. Examples of Pharma’s disease-mongering business model abound, especially since direct-to-consumer advertising began in the late 1990’s.

Newtown mother fights for release of toxicology tests of alleged Newtown school shooter Adam Lanza

A mother who is an advocate certified under the state General Assembly, Sabato suspects Lanza may have been taking psychiatric drugs that triggered the mass shooting. She’s organized a petition drive and garnered more than 200 signatures in two days around Newtown calling for the state to release Lanza’s autopsy/toxicologyrecords. She’s also testified before a state legislative sub committee studying mental health services in the wake of the Dec. 14 shooting.

“Adam Lanza wasn’t born evil,” Sabato said. “We want the records before they ask for more money for mental health, which could be dangerous. We want the records to know what kind of mental health treatment he was receiving. We need to know what he was taking.”

Disordering Normal—Here comes the new DSM

Towards the end of May, the fifth version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), the iconic bible of psychiatry, is coming off the presses after much revision and delay. It’s bound to keep people asking, “Am I normal or do I have a mental illness?”

If you think most diseases are established with objective criteria and rigorous debate, you’d be somewhat wrong. The DSM has a strong track record of taking clusters of symptoms and wrapping labels around them, which lead to the accelerated use of some of the most toxic medications on the planet. How does this happen?

New York to pull students from the Judge Rotenberg Center?

In light of recent developments, Councilman Vincent J. Gentile, a long-time advocate for New York’s most vulnerable, is calling on New York City Department of Education Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott to remove all New York children from the infamous Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton, Massachusetts once and for all.

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