What Public Defenders in the Mental Illness section ought to be doing
I came across this in Google, searching on the term: mental illness zealous counsel
[PDF] Working with Clients - Indigent Defense Services www.ncids.org/other%20manuals/.../Appendix%20C_new.pdf File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat Even though we are trained to zealously advocate for our clients, we are only ... procedures, is designed to require that the prosecuting attorney must make the .... evidence and conclusions regarding mental illness and danger, thereby
For some reason, Google now makes it hard to extract a clean URL.
It was a little sickening to download and read, because it shows what we don't get here in Oklahoma.
My family didn't abandon me physically after the car wreck. My parents gave me a place to stay while I was on the walker and not released to go back to work. And when I came back to Tulsa, she came with me to help out, because I couldn't drive. I couldn't even walk down stairs at Pelican's Wharf. I had to bump down on my butt. Carefully.
The way PTSD works, if you can't talk it out, then according to medical research, it stands a good chance of becoming permanent. Every time I tried to, my family refused to hear about it, often claiming that by doing so I was only hurting myself. Some even jeered.
I forgave Mom because she's given me so much other love and support. But it hurt. And the others ... I don't have the kind of family that necessarily demonstrates the love and values I've read that Christ asked of his followers.
Now imagine someone in a schoolroom skilled with a sword or machete. You can always find a bogeyman to justify something you want to do, that makes a criminal out of someone else who has not done and will not do anything to hurt you. It's called propaganda. It's what is bad when directed at you, but good when directed elsewhere, especially if it serves as a shield to prove that you are "reasonable" to your detractors.
Especially detractors who have misused power over you. People who have or are fighting for the rights of people with mental illnesses to be free of bigotry have blamed "high-capacity magazines" for the deaths in Connecticut. The NRA has, just as wrongfully and stupidly in my opinion, directed criticism away from magazines and onto people with mental illnesses, asking for an expansion of the NICS.
I'm not sure I have enough personal courage to go around wearing black triangles or six-pointed stars in protest. Although in the large majority, Jews weren't the only ones to die by gassing or in the Nazi camps. Black would have been my color. On January 1st, I wrote to the people on the Yarrow Campus in Tulsa asking for help with a legal problem on that basis. No response. Perhaps it's fear of association.
Consider all the laws in different places that have been passed on this kind of reasoning: you can't tell which Jew will cheat you; you can't tell which Arab will throw a bomb; you can't tell which Black will rape a white woman; you can't tell which person with mental illness will go postal; you can't tell which "assault weapon" or "high capacity magazine" will be used to kill. Guilt by association, without need of individual proof. Somewhere I read that our Constitution is supposed to be against that.
You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think. - Dorthy Parker
So you can coexist with people who have guns and mental illnesses, and don't have to worry about someone with the combination going postal, especially at school. Then stop child abuse, and give everyone a valued productive place in society of which they can be proud, whatever their abilities. Until you have done that, you haven't yet done much of anything.
There was a time when I was living in hell and needed someone to come see about me. I'd been maimed and disabled by a drinking driver, and given the kind of hospital experience you might wish on Sadaam Hussein. I got the impression that Baptist thinking at the time concluded that it would only weaken people with cancer (my departed Aunt, among others) and crushed bones to give them enough painkiller to rest comfortably, and tempt them onto the road to addiction. My job had gone away when I couldn't take a vain Zebco executive's verbal abuse. I had gone back to graduate school in Colorado to work on physical therapy and getting my life back together, but was reliving that hospital experience every night.
I'd hear from Mom about family going to the ski slopes almost every winter, often in the same state. But no one came to visit me. Well, why see about a brother in hell when you can Praise His Name on the slopes. Maybe it was a Christian family values package tour. I really learned to hate Christmas then. Job might have understood, but he had the advantage of a good family life before God let Satan put him on the ash heap.
At the end of the 1960s, I forget exactly what the chief environmental concern was, probably acid rain. But I met this hippy dude who had the answer to it all. Somehow I doubted that he could explain the chemistry or physics, exactly what was affecting what how, the amplitude, frequency or type: particle, acoustic or electromagnetic. But he knew what was causing it all. It was what those jet airplanes high up in the atmosphere were putting out. It was Vibrations.
Now I hear that other people have the answer to the cause of all our economic woes. They may not be able to tell you which ones affect businesses and families how. They may not be able to tell you which ones are good and which are bad, or why. But they know that it's what government puts upon the marketplace. It's Regulations.
Wait a minute. Wasn't the shovel that dug this hole the unaccountable, unwise and unethical excesses of mortgage lenders and investment firms? Those Ponzi schemes and banks "to big to fail"? Those byzantine derivative trades in imaginary financial value? And less regulation would have helped us avoid that how, exactly? Will the people with all the answers kindly explain, in detail, with evidence that can be confirmed, exactly how we got from the budget surpluses under Clinton to our current fine mess. Not that I would credit any President for budget surpluses, but didn't we have a conservative Republican anti-regulation administration between then and now?
Whether it's a long-haired bearded hippy or a short-haired Tea Party partisan spouting them, I don't see how, without some deeper thought, mere buzzwords give us much hope for something better.
So my dear brother in Christ now agrees that Mom shouldn't be climbing my stairs. Unlike the stairs at his home, they aren't padded and are open between the treads. If she slipped and a leg went through, you could almost guarantee a broken one. So he generously offers to let me spend two hours with her this afternoon at his house, or drag he out of his comfortable home to a mall or library to play dominoes.
Christian family values. I've never to my recollection put any condition on how the rest of my family can see her. I'd be ashamed to be that kind of jerk. I don't think that's what Jesus meant us to do. Nice guy, Jesus, to most accounts. If you weren't a money changer or a Pharisee. Not to proud to associate with prostitutes and publicans. Unlike some of his professed followers.
Before this problem with Mom's heart came up, my brother and his family were pushing her to move to Tulsa into an assisted living complex. A lot more expensive than just renting an apartment, for someone who still did her own laundry and meals. Why they didn't want her to live with them, I might not be able to say. Now that their own kids have families, they don't lack for space. And their house is a lot nicer than anything I've ever been able to afford.
I offered once to let Mom move in with me, if she could help me get set up with a home and mortgage I can afford. She has credit and I don't, having gone through bankrupture after surgery looking for cancer. And her reply was that she couldn't, because "then some people wouldn't come to visit", and she wants to see all her family. And these are all professing Christians who regularly attend church. Go figure. Must be those Christian family values. They sure make an impression on me.
Ah, the joys of Christian family values. My Mother had a heart problem while visiting my brother and his family for Christmas, and ended up in St. Francis. They took her to Warren Clinic Urgent Care first, and my brother tried to keep me from going to be with her, telling me that they would take care of it and let me know what happened. I told him, "Thanks for the attitude", and went anyway. I forget just how many days she was in the hospital, but I went to stay with her every afternoon. Which was better than I usually get when she's in town - just one afternoon.
Last weekend, I had called to ask her if she wanted me to visit. I heard her tell my brother and his wife that she wanted me to come visit and asked when they weren't doing anything. So I said I'd come over that afternoon, after lunch. That afternoon, I walked in, found her, set up dominoes on one of the dining tables, and played quietly with her for maybe four hours. I left before dinner that evening so as not to impose in a place where I'm not exactly welcome.
This morning, Saturday, I called her there at the same time we usually talk on the phone every week, and asked if she wanted me to visit. This time I heard her say that I wanted to come over and ask when it would be convenient. Apparently, an entire afternoon playing dominoes was too much for them - I could come between 2 and 4 PM. Somehow I didn't take well to rationing my time with my own Mother, and told her to ask them what they wanted to do. I would call her back.
The next I heard, she was going to come over to my place. And climb a flight of stairs to my apartment with bad knees and a leaky heart valve. I thought about that a while and left a message on their phone asking what kind of people would make her do that. Then went out for groceries.
When I got back, I found a message on machine, my dear Christian explaining how the problem was with me being a poor "guest", coming in without knocking, "any time you want, to spend as long as you want". I could come visit her, but I had to let them know ahead of time when I would come and when I would leave. I really have no interest in their silverware, just playing dominoes and visiting with my Mother.
I may not have the sequence of events just right, but at any rate called my brother to remind him that I had been invited that last time, and listened to him play the aggrieved and put-upon involuntary host. Whereupon I suggested that we could discuss in in family court and hung up while he was still ranting.
That is the mentally stable and Christian part of my family. As opposed to me, who takes medication for depression and doesn't go to church anymore. It might have something to do with the way I've been treated. So tomorrow Mom is coming over to climb my stairs and spend an afternoon with me. As opposed to the rest of the week with my betters. The ones with the Christian family values.
She thinks that she can climb the stairs. But then she didn't want to bother anyone about her arrhythmia until she started to collapse, and no heart doctor or G.P. has released her to climb stairs. I hope she's right, and am ready to call 911 if she isn't. I really hate this nonsense. I think that one of us is so full of himself, it's a wonder he can get it back out to take a leak. The Jesus I recall reading about wasn't like that.
"Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears."
"Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."
- Justice Louis D. Brandeis, Whitney v. California, 1927
Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 89 S.Ct. 1827, 23 L.Ed.2d. 430 (1969): The Supreme Court established the modern version of the "clear and present danger" doctrine, holding that states only could restrict speech that "is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action, and is likely to incite or produce such action."
from http://www.ala.org/offices/oif/firstamendment/courtcases/courtcases
By what procedure does one redress grievances against the Court itself, without appeal of a lower court case? When the Court makes a series of god-awful bad calls, which damage tens of thousands of innocent lives, particularly military families, and cost hundreds of millions of dollars in waste and abuse, and lead to Jim-Crow-like laws against a significant minority of people who will never be a realistic threat to anyone or become criminal, how does one ask the Court to review its own decisions?
The 1983 Barefoot v. Estelle decision in particular raised psychiatrists up to a near-infallible priesthood and set up a moral hazard for the subsequent insurance scams by psychiatric hospitals that did all of that. All to kill just one prisoner. Witness the 1990s "Profitable Addictions" series by the Houston Chronicle, and other sources.
When no lawyer will take on such a case, how does one Pro se, in forma pauperis petitioner get the Court to take responsibility for the bad and perhaps unintended consequences of its own actions and decisions? If the only answer is a terse "follow the Rules", then one gets the idea that the Court has abandoned any pretense of justice and accountability. That it simply does not care what kind of hell it wreaks upon the rest of us.
Getting such a petition thrown back in one's face certainly makes that point. This problem has festered for decades up to this day. Did the Founding Fathers and their Constitution really intend for a Court to be so haughty and arbitrary that no one can ever ask it directly to reconsider the horrendous results of its own bad decisions, in the face of such continuing suffering and injustice?
I may not agree with everything AndyB believes, but at least he stepped up and said something. I've been uncomfortable with my "monopoly" in these pages and wish others would make use of this space. The people at TCBH with medical and counseling training do not so much lack training as they are trained is a system of belief as to who needs their help and intervention. To a people with a Diagnostic Manual, everyone looks like someone who needs their help. In the same manner as a man with a hammer sees everything as a nail.
I don't think you can paint everyone at TCBH with the same brush. Many of those who serve in a technical capacity were once inmates themselves, often with prior substance abuse problems. They appear to have honestly found some salvation in the system and have returned to help others. Their motivation seems much less questionable than those higher up who will go so far as to falsify medical records and evaluations to assure that they have involuntary patients.
Post cites Chapter 5 of "Sharing the Dream: Is the ADA Accommodating All?"
That chapter includes statistics indicating the number of ADA filings for pscyhiatric disorders doubled in 7 years from 1992 to 1999 while the number of back injuries as basis for disability complaint under ADA dropped by about 30 percent. Why?
"This increase in charges reflects, in part, the prevalence of psychiatric disorders in our society," the authors claim.
Bogus claim. Did psychiatric disorders double in 7 years when the number of such claims doubled, or did savvy advocates learn to work the new law, at the same time recognizing through experience that value of back problem claims proved to be somewhat less?
The claim exemplifies a pseudo-religious belief in the efficacy of current psychiatric treatment modalities, and in the validity of current diagnostic regimes. The claim supports the widespread practice of doping away symptoms while ignoring the inexorable effect of complex social relationships that frequently fail to meet individual needs.
The jump to fallacious conclusions about causes of psychiatric symptoms masks a bifurcated treatment system in which individuals are routinely doped in clinical settings, then derided as the cause of their own disorders in pseudo-scientific, quasi-clinical "behavioral health" boot camps.
This behavior on the part mentally disordered employees and managers of these "behavioral health bootcamps" betrays the prevalence of pathological authority relationships in our society. Confused by abuses of authority in their own childhoods, these mental health workers -- like so many cops, prosecutors, politicians (on every side) and church workers -- seek out situations where they can model the abusive authority under which they suffered at the hands of their primary childhood caregivers.
The abuse of authority and reliance on popular "spiritual" beliefs among "behavioral health" workers was noted in this forum in a post by antlion (2/16/2011 - 10:19am) in which the writer cited the behavior of a part of a licensed "treatment" counselor:
"Over at the Tulsa Center for Behavioral Health, TCBH, they have State-licensed treatment Counselors. Let’s call one of them Trudy Sting, not her real name. She has one answer for everything – no matter what bad things in your life have and continue to upset you, you just have to realize and accept that You are the common denominator, and take responsibility for Your actions.
"You got raped and continue to be upset whenever you hear comments that sound like the rapist? You are the common denominator. You got abused as a child and still cringe whenever you hear that tone of voice? You are the common denominator."
This solipsist approach to "behavioral" health is essentially an effort on the part of unqualified individuals to practice psychotherapy without the training, skill or resources. The primary goal of "behavioral" health is to modify behaviors -- not primarily help people understand and overcome the psychological and physiological effects of trauma. The naive, faith-based approach (not Xtian faith based - more like humanist-faith-based) fails to realize the strong effect of subconscious and emotive memories, instead treating all behavior as if it is a product of cerebral thought processes.
The very notion of "behavioral health" arose primarily from legal contexts -- not medical contexts. The primary "behavior" these merchants seek to modify relates to consumption of illegal substances. These agencies depend for their economic survival not on research and clinical success, but rather on a stream of clients court ordered to buy their services after violating pharmaceutical laws passed by legislators with no knowledge of pharmacology, mental health, neurology or even formal training in public administration. They don't care if their policies are not validated by research - they seek their validation from voters who likewise lack any specific knowledge of pharmacology, mental health, neurology or even formal training in public administration.
The left is screaming "More guns won't fix the problem." Those of us who don't get swept into left or right camps counter "More behavioral health and psuedo-scientific approaches to mental distress won't fix the problem."
Until the U.S. mental health system collapses, and those of us who want to return to our quiet rural lifestyles are allowed access to land where we can rebuild a sense of serenity and place, it's a safe bet that we will continue to need to arm ourselves to protect ourselves and our loved ones against the wounded souls who were doped up, derided then spit out by the mental health system.
Mr. Wayne LaPierre, Exec. V.P. Mr. Chris W. Cox, NRA-ILA Exec. Dir. American Rifleman Letters Editor National Rifle Association 11250 Waples Mill Road Fairfax VA 22030
RE: Your December 21, 2012 Press Statement on recent school shootings
Gentlemen,
As a Life Member of the NRA since about 1982, I want to express just how much your statement sickens me. Oh, not the part about protecting school children. I agree wholeheartedly with that. No, it’s the part where you state:
“A dozen more killers? A hundred? More? How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation's refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?”
Excuse me, but instead of being put into a national list of undesirables, couldn’t we just wear those six-pointy yellow stars? Then everyone would know who to spit upon, and round up along with all the usual suspects, when some other person with some superficial resemblance commits some god-awful twisted and terrible act. And then there’s all those innocent people over the years who have a mental health record because psychiatric hospitals had them dragged off to be falsely committed, so their medical insurance could be drained. Not to mention anyone who sought help for nightmares, PTSD or depression, because of abuse, death threats, assaults, maiming injuries by drinking drivers, cancer surgery, natural disasters and other things. Or anyone with a mental illness who was falsely accused of making threats, and then committed by state psychiatrists willing to suppress and fabricate medical information to achieve the commitment and force someone into their care to justify their jobs.
And let’s not forget war. Are you aware that many of the psychiatric hospital scams were directed at military families because of their relatively rich medical benefits? Isn’t that all just a terribly special way to treat those whom you send off to be damaged in wars, fighting for you.
I note with irony your concern for creating soft targets for evil people to exploit. I’m sure you are aware the BATF has opined that anyone with any record of commitment at any time for any reason, no matter how transitory, is saddled with a permanent disability in the civil right to possess firearms and ammunition. And that Congress has refused funding to process appeals (at least for felons, who get even more legal protections for due process rights than anyone in a civil commitment hearing). Under your recommendation, any criminal can create soft-target prey by simply setting up a trauma or assault so bad that the target has to seek help, thus becoming ineligible to use self-defense in the future.
I can tell you that living with a legacy of repeated violence and trauma is quite difficult, especially when one has to turn any temptation to commit violence inward upon one’s self. But who would ask for help if they know that they will be made permanently into second-class citizens, and subject to suspicion, hatred, contempt and bigotry in their society? Even handcuffed in front of their neighbors and friends and locked up in the local loony bin for saying the same things about self defense that anyone else may say? A place where, if one protests false charges, one will be kept for months longer than those who actually assaulted others, fought with or threatened police, or attempted suicide.
If I had known that this would be the price of asking for help, I would have kept my mouth tightly shut, even if it meant my death. The same way that liberals create a run on gun shops every time they start blaming people and tools that had no direct participation in or intention to perpetrate evil tragedies, you and they create barriers to any kind of help for mental illness when you make a public and permanent loss of civil liberties and social acceptance the price of asking for it. Small wonder so many kill themselves rather than ask for the kind of help you would prescribe.
I’m enclosing a CD with a set of references describing the Supreme Court’s poorly-reasoned decisions on mental illness issues, and how they created the moral hazards that allowed psychiatric hospitals to engage in scams. With reportage of their acts to entice and drag innocent people off the street into false commitments, and the resulting cost to society. Perhaps you should read it before making any further pronouncements in this area of your unexpertise, sacrificing innocent people on the alter of ugly, bigoted and expedient politics.
In one of the NPR.org forums, a loud and obvious gun-control Obama liberal wished he could have an ATF swat team knock on my door in the middle of the night. What is it about liberals that makes them think that if they have people with guns and badges violently suppress those who disagree with them, none the violence and hatefulness attaches to them? That they are civilized humanitarians if they just get someone else to do their dirty, violent work, under the color of law. As ALF said when he watched a toilet flush, "Interesting concept."
For those suffering long-term emotional damage from the Sandy Hook shootings, the shootings themselves are not the last obscenity they will have to face. Current psychiatric models hold that anyone who has a history of trauma and mental health issues is more likely to be violent. Current legal models and practices in many state mental health codes and courts hold that anyone with such a history is dangerous until proven otherwise, if that person is merely accused by another claiming to have a "reasonable fear" of threat from the person with a mental health issue. So any baby involved in and affected by a school shooting will in the future be suspected as another potential babykiller. And in order to keep itself safe from such people, society has set up a mental health judicial system whereby no one who is so accused can be assured even of zealous legal counsel, or the right to remain silent when examined.
This is hardly new. Soon after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the EEOC's March 1997 Enforcement Guidance one the Americans with Disabilities Act and Psychiatric Disabilities, businesses and news editors started opposing it on the basis that the ADA would require crazy people, such as ax murderers according to one cartoon. See http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/psych.html, Part 30, Example C and Part 31. See http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/ada/ch5.htm
It all had an effect. For example, in the 2000 Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law [Vol. 21, page 248], in their article on workplace violence and psychiatric disabilities, Laden and Schwartz cite a report that, "in 1998 a postal worker was fired merely for telling co-workers about his nightmares that involved a shooting at work—a shooting in which he, himself, was a victim." Footnote 10: "10. See generally Georgia Pabst, Man Fired over Dreams Presaging Shooting, Postal Service says his Dreams, Gestures Threatened Others, MILWAUKEE J. SENT., Dec. 15, 1998, at A1. Ironically, the dreams turned out to be correct; another worker did in fact attack that office." See https://litigation-essentials.lexisnexis.com/webcd/app?action=DocumentDisplay&crawlid=1&doctype=cite&docid=21+Berkeley+J.+Emp.+%26+Lab.+L.+246&srctype=smi&srcid=3B15&key=7277eddb51fc6910b1014f5921cc3320
It's a bit like some Kluxer afraid that black will rub off on him. Or that a black male whistling at a white woman is a sure sign of an eminent sexual assault. Ain't political correctness grand? It's amazing what even liberals can rationalize when they have assured themselves of its righteousness, the unpopularity of the target group, and their inability to organize and fight back.
What bigoted fool thinks that people with mental illnesses can't cry over dead children? Nobody knows exactly why such killings happen, but the Demoncrats are getting out their humanitarian white sheets and soaking their gun control crosses in politically correct gasoline. They're going to "do something!" I bet there are a lot of parents of collaterally dead children in Pakistan and Afghanistan that would like to ban Mr. Obama's drones. Aren't they something that is "only good for killing people"? Aren't their dead children the price of Mr. Obama's concept of freedom? Well, what better way to assuage one's conscience than to point the bigots at innocent people who never hurt anyone, but still "look suspicious". Kill children in the Middle East, pretend to save them in America. Ain't politics grand?
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COMMENTS
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
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Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
I came across this in Google, searching on the term: mental illness zealous counsel
[PDF] Working with Clients - Indigent Defense Services
www.ncids.org/other%20manuals/.../Appendix%20C_new.pdf
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
Even though we are trained to zealously advocate for our clients, we are only ... procedures, is designed to require that the prosecuting attorney must make the .... evidence and conclusions regarding mental illness and danger, thereby
For some reason, Google now makes it hard to extract a clean URL.
It was a little sickening to download and read, because it shows what we don't get here in Oklahoma.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
My family didn't abandon me physically after the car wreck. My parents gave me a place to stay while I was on the walker and not released to go back to work. And when I came back to Tulsa, she came with me to help out, because I couldn't drive. I couldn't even walk down stairs at Pelican's Wharf. I had to bump down on my butt. Carefully.
The way PTSD works, if you can't talk it out, then according to medical research, it stands a good chance of becoming permanent. Every time I tried to, my family refused to hear about it, often claiming that by doing so I was only hurting myself. Some even jeered.
I forgave Mom because she's given me so much other love and support. But it hurt. And the others ... I don't have the kind of family that necessarily demonstrates the love and values I've read that Christ asked of his followers.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Now imagine someone in a schoolroom skilled with a sword or machete. You can always find a bogeyman to justify something you want to do, that makes a criminal out of someone else who has not done and will not do anything to hurt you. It's called propaganda. It's what is bad when directed at you, but good when directed elsewhere, especially if it serves as a shield to prove that you are "reasonable" to your detractors.
Especially detractors who have misused power over you. People who have or are fighting for the rights of people with mental illnesses to be free of bigotry have blamed "high-capacity magazines" for the deaths in Connecticut. The NRA has, just as wrongfully and stupidly in my opinion, directed criticism away from magazines and onto people with mental illnesses, asking for an expansion of the NICS.
I'm not sure I have enough personal courage to go around wearing black triangles or six-pointed stars in protest. Although in the large majority, Jews weren't the only ones to die by gassing or in the Nazi camps. Black would have been my color. On January 1st, I wrote to the people on the Yarrow Campus in Tulsa asking for help with a legal problem on that basis. No response. Perhaps it's fear of association.
Consider all the laws in different places that have been passed on this kind of reasoning: you can't tell which Jew will cheat you; you can't tell which Arab will throw a bomb; you can't tell which Black will rape a white woman; you can't tell which person with mental illness will go postal; you can't tell which "assault weapon" or "high capacity magazine" will be used to kill. Guilt by association, without need of individual proof. Somewhere I read that our Constitution is supposed to be against that.
You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think. - Dorthy Parker
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
So you can coexist with people who have guns and mental illnesses, and don't have to worry about someone with the combination going postal, especially at school. Then stop child abuse, and give everyone a valued productive place in society of which they can be proud, whatever their abilities. Until you have done that, you haven't yet done much of anything.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
There was a time when I was living in hell and needed someone to come see about me. I'd been maimed and disabled by a drinking driver, and given the kind of hospital experience you might wish on Sadaam Hussein. I got the impression that Baptist thinking at the time concluded that it would only weaken people with cancer (my departed Aunt, among others) and crushed bones to give them enough painkiller to rest comfortably, and tempt them onto the road to addiction. My job had gone away when I couldn't take a vain Zebco executive's verbal abuse. I had gone back to graduate school in Colorado to work on physical therapy and getting my life back together, but was reliving that hospital experience every night.
I'd hear from Mom about family going to the ski slopes almost every winter, often in the same state. But no one came to visit me. Well, why see about a brother in hell when you can Praise His Name on the slopes. Maybe it was a Christian family values package tour. I really learned to hate Christmas then. Job might have understood, but he had the advantage of a good family life before God let Satan put him on the ash heap.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
At the end of the 1960s, I forget exactly what the chief environmental concern was, probably acid rain. But I met this hippy dude who had the answer to it all. Somehow I doubted that he could explain the chemistry or physics, exactly what was affecting what how, the amplitude, frequency or type: particle, acoustic or electromagnetic. But he knew what was causing it all. It was what those jet airplanes high up in the atmosphere were putting out. It was Vibrations.
Now I hear that other people have the answer to the cause of all our economic woes. They may not be able to tell you which ones affect businesses and families how. They may not be able to tell you which ones are good and which are bad, or why. But they know that it's what government puts upon the marketplace. It's Regulations.
Wait a minute. Wasn't the shovel that dug this hole the unaccountable, unwise and unethical excesses of mortgage lenders and investment firms? Those Ponzi schemes and banks "to big to fail"? Those byzantine derivative trades in imaginary financial value? And less regulation would have helped us avoid that how, exactly? Will the people with all the answers kindly explain, in detail, with evidence that can be confirmed, exactly how we got from the budget surpluses under Clinton to our current fine mess. Not that I would credit any President for budget surpluses, but didn't we have a conservative Republican anti-regulation administration between then and now?
Whether it's a long-haired bearded hippy or a short-haired Tea Party partisan spouting them, I don't see how, without some deeper thought, mere buzzwords give us much hope for something better.
Could you be a little more specific, please?
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Christian family values. I've never to my recollection put any condition on how the rest of my family can see her. I'd be ashamed to be that kind of jerk. I don't think that's what Jesus meant us to do. Nice guy, Jesus, to most accounts. If you weren't a money changer or a Pharisee. Not to proud to associate with prostitutes and publicans. Unlike some of his professed followers.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
I offered once to let Mom move in with me, if she could help me get set up with a home and mortgage I can afford. She has credit and I don't, having gone through bankrupture after surgery looking for cancer. And her reply was that she couldn't, because "then some people wouldn't come to visit", and she wants to see all her family. And these are all professing Christians who regularly attend church. Go figure. Must be those Christian family values. They sure make an impression on me.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Last weekend, I had called to ask her if she wanted me to visit. I heard her tell my brother and his wife that she wanted me to come visit and asked when they weren't doing anything. So I said I'd come over that afternoon, after lunch. That afternoon, I walked in, found her, set up dominoes on one of the dining tables, and played quietly with her for maybe four hours. I left before dinner that evening so as not to impose in a place where I'm not exactly welcome.
This morning, Saturday, I called her there at the same time we usually talk on the phone every week, and asked if she wanted me to visit. This time I heard her say that I wanted to come over and ask when it would be convenient. Apparently, an entire afternoon playing dominoes was too much for them - I could come between 2 and 4 PM. Somehow I didn't take well to rationing my time with my own Mother, and told her to ask them what they wanted to do. I would call her back.
The next I heard, she was going to come over to my place. And climb a flight of stairs to my apartment with bad knees and a leaky heart valve. I thought about that a while and left a message on their phone asking what kind of people would make her do that. Then went out for groceries.
When I got back, I found a message on machine, my dear Christian explaining how the problem was with me being a poor "guest", coming in without knocking, "any time you want, to spend as long as you want". I could come visit her, but I had to let them know ahead of time when I would come and when I would leave. I really have no interest in their silverware, just playing dominoes and visiting with my Mother.
I may not have the sequence of events just right, but at any rate called my brother to remind him that I had been invited that last time, and listened to him play the aggrieved and put-upon involuntary host. Whereupon I suggested that we could discuss in in family court and hung up while he was still ranting.
That is the mentally stable and Christian part of my family. As opposed to me, who takes medication for depression and doesn't go to church anymore. It might have something to do with the way I've been treated. So tomorrow Mom is coming over to climb my stairs and spend an afternoon with me. As opposed to the rest of the week with my betters. The ones with the Christian family values.
She thinks that she can climb the stairs. But then she didn't want to bother anyone about her arrhythmia until she started to collapse, and no heart doctor or G.P. has released her to climb stairs. I hope she's right, and am ready to call 911 if she isn't. I really hate this nonsense. I think that one of us is so full of himself, it's a wonder he can get it back out to take a leak. The Jesus I recall reading about wasn't like that.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
"Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."
- Justice Louis D. Brandeis, Whitney v. California, 1927
Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 89 S.Ct. 1827, 23 L.Ed.2d. 430 (1969): The Supreme Court established the modern version of the "clear and present danger" doctrine, holding that states only could restrict speech that "is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action, and is likely to incite or produce such action."
from http://www.ala.org/offices/oif/firstamendment/courtcases/courtcases
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
By what procedure does one redress grievances against the Court itself, without appeal of a lower court case? When the Court makes a series of god-awful bad calls, which damage tens of thousands of innocent lives, particularly military families, and cost hundreds of millions of dollars in waste and abuse, and lead to Jim-Crow-like laws against a significant minority of people who will never be a realistic threat to anyone or become criminal, how does one ask the Court to review its own decisions?
The 1983 Barefoot v. Estelle decision in particular raised psychiatrists up to a near-infallible priesthood and set up a moral hazard for the subsequent insurance scams by psychiatric hospitals that did all of that. All to kill just one prisoner. Witness the 1990s "Profitable Addictions" series by the Houston Chronicle, and other sources.
When no lawyer will take on such a case, how does one Pro se, in forma pauperis petitioner get the Court to take responsibility for the bad and perhaps unintended consequences of its own actions and decisions? If the only answer is a terse "follow the Rules", then one gets the idea that the Court has abandoned any pretense of justice and accountability. That it simply does not care what kind of hell it wreaks upon the rest of us.
Getting such a petition thrown back in one's face certainly makes that point. This problem has festered for decades up to this day. Did the Founding Fathers and their Constitution really intend for a Court to be so haughty and arbitrary that no one can ever ask it directly to reconsider the horrendous results of its own bad decisions, in the face of such continuing suffering and injustice?
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
The people at TCBH with medical and counseling training do not so much lack training as they are trained is a system of belief as to who needs their help and intervention. To a people with a Diagnostic Manual, everyone looks like someone who needs their help. In the same manner as a man with a hammer sees everything as a nail.
I don't think you can paint everyone at TCBH with the same brush. Many of those who serve in a technical capacity were once inmates themselves, often with prior substance abuse problems. They appear to have honestly found some salvation in the system and have returned to help others. Their motivation seems much less questionable than those higher up who will go so far as to falsify medical records and evaluations to assure that they have involuntary patients.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Post cites Chapter 5 of "Sharing the Dream: Is the ADA Accommodating All?"
That chapter includes statistics indicating the number of ADA filings for pscyhiatric disorders doubled in 7 years from 1992 to 1999 while the number of back injuries as basis for disability complaint under ADA dropped by about 30 percent. Why?
"This increase in charges reflects, in part, the prevalence of psychiatric disorders in our society," the authors claim.
Bogus claim. Did psychiatric disorders double in 7 years when the number of such claims doubled, or did savvy advocates learn to work the new law, at the same time recognizing through experience that value of back problem claims proved to be somewhat less?
The claim exemplifies a pseudo-religious belief in the efficacy of current psychiatric treatment modalities, and in the validity of current diagnostic regimes. The claim supports the widespread practice of doping away symptoms while ignoring the inexorable effect of complex social relationships that frequently fail to meet individual needs.
The jump to fallacious conclusions about causes of psychiatric symptoms masks a bifurcated treatment system in which individuals are routinely doped in clinical settings, then derided as the cause of their own disorders in pseudo-scientific, quasi-clinical "behavioral health" boot camps.
This behavior on the part mentally disordered employees and managers of these "behavioral health bootcamps" betrays the prevalence of pathological authority relationships in our society. Confused by abuses of authority in their own childhoods, these mental health workers -- like so many cops, prosecutors, politicians (on every side) and church workers -- seek out situations where they can model the abusive authority under which they suffered at the hands of their primary childhood caregivers.
The abuse of authority and reliance on popular "spiritual" beliefs among "behavioral health" workers was noted in this forum in a post by antlion (2/16/2011 - 10:19am) in which the writer cited the behavior of a part of a licensed "treatment" counselor:
"Over at the Tulsa Center for Behavioral Health, TCBH, they have State-licensed treatment Counselors. Let’s call one of them Trudy Sting, not her real name. She has one answer for everything – no matter what bad things in your life have and continue to upset you, you just have to realize and accept that You are the common denominator, and take responsibility for Your actions.
"You got raped and continue to be upset whenever you hear comments that sound like the rapist? You are the common denominator. You got abused as a child and still cringe whenever you hear that tone of voice? You are the common denominator."
This solipsist approach to "behavioral" health is essentially an effort on the part of unqualified individuals to practice psychotherapy without the training, skill or resources. The primary goal of "behavioral" health is to modify behaviors -- not primarily help people understand and overcome the psychological and physiological effects of trauma. The naive, faith-based approach (not Xtian faith based - more like humanist-faith-based) fails to realize the strong effect of subconscious and emotive memories, instead treating all behavior as if it is a product of cerebral thought processes.
The very notion of "behavioral health" arose primarily from legal contexts -- not medical contexts. The primary "behavior" these merchants seek to modify relates to consumption of illegal substances. These agencies depend for their economic survival not on research and clinical success, but rather on a stream of clients court ordered to buy their services after violating pharmaceutical laws passed by legislators with no knowledge of pharmacology, mental health, neurology or even formal training in public administration. They don't care if their policies are not validated by research - they seek their validation from voters who likewise lack any specific knowledge of pharmacology, mental health, neurology or even formal training in public administration.
The left is screaming "More guns won't fix the problem." Those of us who don't get swept into left or right camps counter "More behavioral health and psuedo-scientific approaches to mental distress won't fix the problem."
Until the U.S. mental health system collapses, and those of us who want to return to our quiet rural lifestyles are allowed access to land where we can rebuild a sense of serenity and place, it's a safe bet that we will continue to need to arm ourselves to protect ourselves and our loved ones against the wounded souls who were doped up, derided then spit out by the mental health system.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
An open letter to:
Mr. Wayne LaPierre, Exec. V.P.
Mr. Chris W. Cox, NRA-ILA Exec. Dir.
American Rifleman Letters Editor
National Rifle Association
11250 Waples Mill Road
Fairfax VA 22030
RE: Your December 21, 2012 Press Statement on recent school shootings
Gentlemen,
As a Life Member of the NRA since about 1982, I want to express just how much your statement sickens me. Oh, not the part about protecting school children. I agree wholeheartedly with that. No, it’s the part where you state:
“A dozen more killers? A hundred? More? How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation's refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?”
Excuse me, but instead of being put into a national list of undesirables, couldn’t we just wear those six-pointy yellow stars? Then everyone would know who to spit upon, and round up along with all the usual suspects, when some other person with some superficial resemblance commits some god-awful twisted and terrible act. And then there’s all those innocent people over the years who have a mental health record because psychiatric hospitals had them dragged off to be falsely committed, so their medical insurance could be drained. Not to mention anyone who sought help for nightmares, PTSD or depression, because of abuse, death threats, assaults, maiming injuries by drinking drivers, cancer surgery, natural disasters and other things. Or anyone with a mental illness who was falsely accused of making threats, and then committed by state psychiatrists willing to suppress and fabricate medical information to achieve the commitment and force someone into their care to justify their jobs.
And let’s not forget war. Are you aware that many of the psychiatric hospital scams were directed at military families because of their relatively rich medical benefits? Isn’t that all just a terribly special way to treat those whom you send off to be damaged in wars, fighting for you.
I note with irony your concern for creating soft targets for evil people to exploit. I’m sure you are aware the BATF has opined that anyone with any record of commitment at any time for any reason, no matter how transitory, is saddled with a permanent disability in the civil right to possess firearms and ammunition. And that Congress has refused funding to process appeals (at least for felons, who get even more legal protections for due process rights than anyone in a civil commitment hearing). Under your recommendation, any criminal can create soft-target prey by simply setting up a trauma or assault so bad that the target has to seek help, thus becoming ineligible to use self-defense in the future.
I can tell you that living with a legacy of repeated violence and trauma is quite difficult, especially when one has to turn any temptation to commit violence inward upon one’s self. But who would ask for help if they know that they will be made permanently into second-class citizens, and subject to suspicion, hatred, contempt and bigotry in their society? Even handcuffed in front of their neighbors and friends and locked up in the local loony bin for saying the same things about self defense that anyone else may say? A place where, if one protests false charges, one will be kept for months longer than those who actually assaulted others, fought with or threatened police, or attempted suicide.
If I had known that this would be the price of asking for help, I would have kept my mouth tightly shut, even if it meant my death. The same way that liberals create a run on gun shops every time they start blaming people and tools that had no direct participation in or intention to perpetrate evil tragedies, you and they create barriers to any kind of help for mental illness when you make a public and permanent loss of civil liberties and social acceptance the price of asking for it. Small wonder so many kill themselves rather than ask for the kind of help you would prescribe.
I’m enclosing a CD with a set of references describing the Supreme Court’s poorly-reasoned decisions on mental illness issues, and how they created the moral hazards that allowed psychiatric hospitals to engage in scams. With reportage of their acts to entice and drag innocent people off the street into false commitments, and the resulting cost to society. Perhaps you should read it before making any further pronouncements in this area of your unexpertise, sacrificing innocent people on the alter of ugly, bigoted and expedient politics.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
For those suffering long-term emotional damage from the Sandy Hook shootings, the shootings themselves are not the last obscenity they will have to face. Current psychiatric models hold that anyone who has a history of trauma and mental health issues is more likely to be violent. Current legal models and practices in many state mental health codes and courts hold that anyone with such a history is dangerous until proven otherwise, if that person is merely accused by another claiming to have a "reasonable fear" of threat from the person with a mental health issue. So any baby involved in and affected by a school shooting will in the future be suspected as another potential babykiller. And in order to keep itself safe from such people, society has set up a mental health judicial system whereby no one who is so accused can be assured even of zealous legal counsel, or the right to remain silent when examined.
This is hardly new. Soon after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the EEOC's March 1997 Enforcement Guidance one the Americans with Disabilities Act and Psychiatric Disabilities, businesses and news editors started opposing it on the basis that the ADA would require crazy people, such as ax murderers according to one cartoon.
See http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/psych.html, Part 30, Example C and Part 31.
See http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/ada/ch5.htm
It all had an effect. For example, in the 2000 Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law [Vol. 21, page 248], in their article on workplace violence and psychiatric disabilities, Laden and Schwartz cite a report that, "in 1998 a postal worker was fired merely for telling co-workers about his nightmares that involved a shooting at work—a shooting in which he, himself, was a victim." Footnote 10: "10. See generally Georgia Pabst, Man Fired over Dreams Presaging Shooting, Postal Service says his Dreams, Gestures Threatened Others, MILWAUKEE J. SENT., Dec. 15, 1998, at A1. Ironically, the dreams turned out to be correct; another worker did in fact attack that office."
See https://litigation-essentials.lexisnexis.com/webcd/app?action=DocumentDisplay&crawlid=1&doctype=cite&docid=21+Berkeley+J.+Emp.+%26+Lab.+L.+246&srctype=smi&srcid=3B15&key=7277eddb51fc6910b1014f5921cc3320
It's a bit like some Kluxer afraid that black will rub off on him. Or that a black male whistling at a white woman is a sure sign of an eminent sexual assault. Ain't political correctness grand? It's amazing what even liberals can rationalize when they have assured themselves of its righteousness, the unpopularity of the target group, and their inability to organize and fight back.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.