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| | Survivor
Concerns about Mental Health Bills
Subject: comments on Bazelon's bills (click
to see Bazelon Alert)
Since I'm sure you will all get this from other sources which urge you to
support this, I'm issuing a cautionary note. I have posted to these lists about
problems with these bills before but this is just to remind you in case you are
thinking that Bazelon is a spokesperson for people with disabilities, they are
not they are a legal think tank that anti-psych abuse, survivor organizations
often have disagreements with.
- Parity: some of us think it's better not to support it at all because
parity gives legitimacy to the biopsych unscientific "chemical
imbalance" propaganda. (This position is especially supported by the
fact that a lot of parity laws specify the diagnoses that NAMI likes to call
"brain disorders," and that the shrinks particularly and
prejudicially impose forced treatment for: schizophrenia, bipolar,
depression, & a few others.) Personally I believe that people who want
psych treatment should be able to get it. At the same time I think it is
vital, crucial, urgent, that our right to avoid psych torture not be
sacrificed to support drug companies' big global moneymaking. Please if you
are inclined to write on parity, specify that you only support parity that
is limited to non-coercive, voluntary treatment with informed consent. (The
word "non-coercive" is important, not just "voluntary,"
since there is bizarre legal manipulation of the "voluntary"
language as in NY's civil commitment law.)
- Medicaid expansion for children: Look a little closer at what is being
covered with reference to mental disabilities. Is this going to make it
easier for parents to put kids on ritalin, give them shock treatments or
neuroleptic drugs?
- Jail Diversion: The mental health agencies have not shown themselves to be
sufficiently trustworthy to users of their services to entrust them with
more power and responsibilities for dealing with prisoners. Until a
user-controlled system is developed that ensures flexible, non-coercive,
freely available, no strings attached, responsive to consumer needs, mental
health services, combining mental health with prison is always going to be a
bad idea: it will give two authoritarian systems even more power over people
who are vulnerable because of both socioeconomics and disability.
- Consumer-run Services: This sounds good, but look at the language:
"evidence-based practices". In environmental law, especially
international environmental law at the WTO, this kind of language is used
when they want to limit applicability to people who have had enough funding
to develop a study, which the overseeing body can then further evaluate to
pick & choose whether the scientific methodology was "good
enough," whether it was done at the right time, i.e. lots of
nitpicking. NAMI supports this by the way, and NAMI earlier this year was
exposed as having an agenda to create a blacklist of psychiatric survivor
organizations that should not get funding.
- Intensive Case Management: sounds like federal support for PACT/ACT, which
Dendron/MindFreedom Journal has repeatedly exposed as a program that imposes
"medication compliance" i.e. forced drugging, on people in their
own homes. Shrinks like the idea of a "continuum of coercion," if
they can get you to do what they like without taking you to court it's so
much easier for them.
- Medicare: this one shows its colors more directly, moving to include
"assertive community treatment" ("ACT") as something
that is covered. Do we really want additional coverage for residential
treatment in substance abuse facilities - when these facilities have gone
over to the psych "dual diagnosis" model, that means "my
drugs are better than your drugs" - get off street drugs & take
neuroleptics & other psych drugs that make you a zombie? Sounds like
they want to shift costs for people who aren't covered for this now or if
medicaid has to take over in such cases.
In sum, please investigate these bills carefully. Some of them are directly
contrary to survivor of psych abuse agendas and interests. We hope our allies in
the cross-disability community will stand with us.
- Tina Minkowitz |
