Thanksgiving message from PsychRights

As we in the United States get ready to sit down for Thanksgiving to the blessings in our lives, and the holiday season is coming up for us here and many around the world, I thought I would report on PsychRights®' efforts in 2012 on behalf of those who are enduring psychiatric drugs and electroshock being forced upon them.

This is discussed in detail below, but I want to make sure you are aware of the Occupy Psychiatry effort and if you are on Facebook to (1) go to the Occupy Psychiatry Facebook Page and "Like" it, (2) support Occupy Psychiatry Events and (3) "share" postings on Occupy Psychiatry's Timeline. Now, on to PsychRights' 2012 Report . . .

 Focus on Public Attitudes/PublicEducation 

At the beginning of the year a few things converged to cause PsychRights to focus on the Public Attitudes or Public Education part of what I think of as the transformation triangle: Transformation Triangle The approach is that addressing three spheres: Public Attitudes/Public Education, Alternatives/Other Choices, and Honoring Legal Rights/Strategic Litigation, can reinforce each others in ways that can bring about meaningful change in the Mental Illness System. I gave a talk about this approach last May in Philadelphia, which has been uploaded to YouTube as, A Strategic Approach to Mental Health System Change. This video is currently unlisted, because it is directed at people interested in this struggle, rather than the general public. I also wrote a paper about, How the Legal System Can Help Create a Recovery Culture in Mental Health Systems, presented at Alternatives 2005: Leading the Transformation to Recovery, Phoenix, Arizona, October 28, 2005. The title was selected to get past the censors at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the government sponsor of the annual Alternatives conference.

PsychRights only sends out a of couple messages a year and this one has tons of awesome links HERE

Children being medicated for behavioral problems is a moral issue

Marianna, Kahlil's Sister. Painting by Kahlil Gibran

Kahlil Gibran             

On Children

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of 

Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them,

but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children

as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,

and He bends you with His might

that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies,

so He loves also the bow that is stable.

The proliferation of psychotropic drugs prescribed to alter children's behavior, is something that must be drastically reduced, at the very least.  Karim aptly calls this practice, "meducating our children," in a recent article on Somatosphere about children without ADD or ADHD who are being prescribed amphetamines to enhance school performance. It is deeply disturbing how carelessly teratogenic drugs that have harmful adverse effects are being used. Even worse, the right to prescribe the drugs off label is being vehemently defended by psychiatrists. Apparently, defending a right that is being abused with impunity is more important than helping those patients who are harmed or calling for a stop to off label prescriptions which are not supported with empirical data, drugs prescribed for no valid medical reason.  If patients and the ethical prescribing practices are important, they are obviously not as important as maintaining the illusion of psychiatry, i.e. the drugs effectively and safely treat symptoms of whatever psychiatric diagnosis they have been given, if they have been given a diagnosis... 

Most of the off label prescriptions for poor children on Medicaid and are paid for illegally by fraudulently billing the cost of the drugs to Medicaid. It is an ongoing fraud, that no one, (that I know of) except for Jim Gottstein, of the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights has put any effort into stopping. The American taxpayers are footing the bill for drugs being prescribed off label, i.e. a non-FDA approved, to poor children on Medicaid. In reality, when there is no ethically valid medical reason for the prescription to be written, it is not medical treatment; it is unethical medical experimentation.  

It is simply immoral.

via Jim Gottstein:

The online program to learn about psychotropic drugs for people who work with children Critical Think Rx, at the School of Social Work at Florida International University: here.

via Somatosphere
Meducating Our Children: The Moral Influence of Adderall on Education, Parenting, and Treatment
By Tazin Karim

"Allan Schwarz’s recent New York Times article “Attention Disorder or Not, Pills to Help in School” presented some controversial testimonials on the prescription of attention deficit and hyperactivity (ADHD) medications to low-income children. As science writer Emily Willingham points out, this article is part of a two decade long debate over the merits of medicating our nation’s children..." read here.

Somatosphere on twitter

Tazin Karim on twitter

Drugging Our Children: Legal and Moral Issues

via Jim Gottstein, founder of Psychrights