Attn Hillcrest: Lie down with psychiatric dogs, get up with legal fleas
On KWGS this morning came an announcement that Hillcrest Medical Center is entering into an agreement with the Tulsa Center for Behavioral Health to use TCBH as a “psychiatric emergency center”. OMG, pity the poor patients. The TCBH standard of care for handling a psychiatric emergency is to make the patient believe that it was all his or her fault to begin with, and to get the patient to say the magic words, “I am not a danger to myself or others.” In other words, a magic cure with magical thinking.
Even worse, TCBH has acted in concert with the Tulsa City and County Mental Health Court to force an involuntary commitment through marsupial justice. And probably still does. In this standard of justice, uninvestigated and false hearsay accusations become proven fact, and medical records are falsified. The “witnesses” to alleged dangerous behavior might only come from TCBH and the Community Outreach Psychiatric Emergency Services. Original outside complainants need never appear to be cross-examined, or even to sign sworn statements. One suspects that they never saw a patient that they didn’t want to commit. A good way to dispose of people who can’t be accused of or prosecuted for actual crimes.
For example, on August 6, 2010, Judge of the District Court Theresa Dreiling filed a secret Order Setting Hearing and Directing Pre-Hearing Detention; and Order Releasing Confidential Records in case MH-2010-0404 for patient 237771I. Part of the fill-in-the-blanks Order reads: “WHEREAS, there is good cause for disclosure of the Respondent’s {involuntary patient} mental health and substance abuse records pursuant to 42 C.F.R. Part 2 (section) 2.64 in only the above-entitled matter and; WHEREAS, it appears further that the information sought {medical and mental health records} is not available elsewhere and can only be obtained from the detaining and/or treating facility or the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services;”
In other words, the only such information to influence the Judge’s decisions would be limited to TCBH. The fill-in-the-blank nature of this and other TCBH and Mental Health Court forms indicates standard operation procedure. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malfeasance_in_office, and other sources regarding judicial prejudice and favoritism.
There’s just one little problem with that; seven previous years of medical records for that patient from the O.U. Psychiatric Clinic, going back to 2003, according to retained appointment cards. And a “DMHSAS Designation of Treatment Advocate”, dated three days earlier, naming “Dr Beaman OU Psych Dept”. Never mind that the patient told TCBH that he had been taking his medications “religiously” in all that time, or that the patient had no significant history of physical violence going back decades.
In TCBH practice, there are apparently no second or outside opinions. The O.U. Psychiatric Clinic refused to help its patient with a second opinion and certification of pacific behavior, and TCBH refused to allow it, stating that the Clinic’s doctors were not admitted to TCBH practice. This, despite the TCBH “Bill of Rights” which states: “4. Each individual retains the right of confidential communication with their attorney, personal physician or clergy”, and “19. Each individual has the right to request the opinion of an outside medical or psychiatric consultant at his or her own expense or a right to an internal consultation upon request at no expense.” --As supported by Oklahoma State Code Title 43A-1-104, 43A-3-424.B, 43A-4-107a.B, 43A-5-401.C.9, 43A-5-401.D.1, 43A-5-411.B, 43A-5-411.D.1, and 43A-5-412.B.7.
TCBH “mental health professionals” have written, on the least possible data, the worst possible mental health evaluations, and then some. It considers surface appearances very important. For example, getting admitted there while in one’s grubby work clothes on a bad hair day is considered proof one is incapable of “caring for himself”. Never mind the daily baths and clean underwear.
Everything that one says is interpreted in the worst possible light. Nothing that one says that is exculpatory in defense of one’s self will be reported to the Mental Health Court, which denies one even the defense of telling one’s own side of the story. Because the TCBH “mental health professionals” have already written it.
Further, if one objects to one’s indictment with hearsay as proven fact, TCBH “professionals” claim one is “not self aware”. That mental crime rates confinement for up to two months. If you weren’t sick when you went it, you will be. Enough has been written about TCBH that any outside Doctor who commits a patient there has reason to know better, and can be liable for a malpractice suit.
A Lawyer is the one in court who doesn't have to swear or answer to God for seeking or finding the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. A Lawyer has a different agenda.
******************
A Public Defender in a mental health court is the person strictly trained never to utter the words, "objection" or "exception".
They really sold us a bill of goods on HDTV, didn’t they? Analog TV may have had some occasional snow, but at least you could pick up all the stations over the air, and the pictures didn’t stutter, show pixilation from compression artifacts, and have areas where similar colors all blurred together. It’s a bit like those old black and white movies “saved” on DVD for us by TGG Direct, Echo Bridge and Universal in magnificent low resolution, often with the original film scratches and sprocket skips.
The very definition of HD seems suspect, especially when you try to use an HDTV as a computer monitor through an HDMI cable, as I did recently. Compared to the VGA display port on both my new HDTV and my older computer monitor, HDMI looks awful. The text is blurry and if you don’t get the right video card settings, it will even have color bands.
As it happens, I bought an nVidia video card for a new computer, with HDMI, VGA and DVI outputs. The monitor has VGA and DVI inputs. The HDTV has TV, AV, Component, VGA and two HDMI inputs. The new Windows 7 computer display looks just as sharp on VGA or DVI as Windows 2000 on two other computers. But when you put a DVI-to-HDMI adapter on the video card’s DVI output to feed into either HDMI port on the HDTV, you get the same crappy output as HDMI to HDMI. VGA is “analog” and both DVI and HDMI are “digital”. So, in case you along with many others on Internet discussion forums were wondering, the problem is HDMI on the HDTV.
HD - it’s like calling a box with 30% less cereal in it the High Value package. And forcing you to buy it if you want to eat cereal.
“A lawyer should render public interest legal service” OSC 5-1, App3-A, Rule 6.1
Uh-huh. I’d say that works about as good as OSC 5-1, Appendix 4, Rule 1.1 in the Tulsa Mental Health Court. It all depends on lawyers having a sense of justice and shame. (So, what temperature was Hell when you were last there?) In my experience living on disability and Social Security and asking for such help and consideration, lawyers satisfy their obligation in the easiest manner possible, by taking only those simple cases that can be quickly settled. In all other cases, you usually get letter like the one I got from Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma, Inc., dated September 25, 2012, stating that with so many cases and so few resources, they just can’t do anything.
I debated with myself whether to appeal to the Managing Attorney, as the fine print at the bottom suggested, or to publicize it here. I think it bears on the quality of whatever pro bono services they do give to the poor. The letter includes the line, “I have also included a Motion to Terminate Guardianship that you may file on your own if you so choose.” Not only was no such form enclosed, it had nothing to do with my issues regarding the Mental Health Court.
It has taken me a long, long time to figure out how to express those issues calmly. They include matters of both State law and Constitutional rights, which the Mental Health Court Judge and a Federal Judge have dismissed as unnecessary, inconsequential and even “unintelligible”, due to the unpopular source of the complaint:
• Disparate and biased investigation by police and mental health authorities, on the basis of a disability; • Manufacture, suppression and falsification of medical evidence and records; • Denial of access to zealous counsel (replaced by potted plants); • Denial of access to outside medical evaluation, such as doctors and psychiatrists of long-standing; • Denial of consideration of the least restrictive alternative (such as simply helping one move one’s belongings and person out of a bad situation); • Transmutation of hearsay, as generated by habitual liars, into proven fact; • The actual and illegal use of “preponderance of the evidence”, instead of “clear and convincing evidence”; • Denial of the right of self-defense, including cross-examination of one’s accusers; • Limiting the “witnesses”, “evaluators” and “petitioners for commitment” to those “mental health professionals” who benefit from the incarceration; • Judicial rubber-stamping of the opinions of those same “professionals”; • Indefinite incarceration on the basis of a disability, for future acts that can’t be proven will occur, especially without a past history of such acts; • Retaliation for refusing to accept false hearsay as proven fact (incarceration for 66 days in my case); and • Psychological abuse, even of those with a history of trauma and abuse, resulting in physical and mental damage and deterioration.
Somehow, I don’t think that a motion to terminate guardianship would address those issues. It leads me to suspect that Legal Aid has the same motto as the Public Defender’s Office.
- e pluribus non sequitur plenarius
To which I say (in fractured Latin) – miseresco clientela.
I get the impression that when it comes to unpopular minorities, who can rarely if ever afford or become lawyers (like those in the NAACP), the ethics and pro bono concerns of the entire legal establishment are like one of those huge false fronts on a old Western store. Two stories high and a two-by-four deep. Where even the whorehouse had more substance. Ah, I guess that explains it; all their customers had to pay up by the hour.
It hasn’t yet arrived in the mail, but I got word yesterday that a higher court has affirmed the right of Tulsa’s U.S. District Court to treat people with mental illnesses, like depression and PTSD, as second-rate citizens who have no right to protest that status. Among other things, it reminds me of the day I left TCBH, the Tulsa “Center for Behavioral Health”, or “This Can’t Be Happening”.
They gave back only one of two sets of keys on rings that I had when I went in. This particular set had been given to some movers I had to hire to get my things out of my apartment, so that the Manager of Glenwood Apartments wouldn’t just throw them into the street. As she reportedly threatened to the moving company, in violation of Oklahoma Landlord-Tenant law. The movers had assured me that they had given the keys back to TCBH.
I was getting frustrated and irritated because the woman behind the TCBH intake counter put on a Freddy Prince “Ees not my yob” attitude. In other words, she couldn’t do anything if they didn’t have them, because it must have been someone else’s mistake. And of course, I had keys on that ring that no one else should have. As soon as I let that show in my voice, she threatened to call a Tulsa Sheriff’s Deputy to deal with me.
She let me know in no uncertain terms that people like me don’t have the right to be angry or upset at any frustration. That her first proper assumption should be that it signals the threat and intention to do violence. If it weren’t for the similar pale color of our skins, you might think she was having a problem with my race. That I don’t have any right to speak up at indifference and incompetence, because my kind don’t deserve any better. No offense meant to people of color.
When many if not most Judges deal with people who have mental illnesses, they have no problem with anyone taking advantage of us, just because we are vulnerable, we have few resources to fight back with, and they can. This kind of prejudicial judicial treatment goes all the way up to the Supreme Court of the United States; in the 1979 Addington v. Texas case, for example. So much for the Constitution; it doesn’t quite apply to the likes of us.
They act almost like the judicial equivalent of the white supremacists who want to euthanize all the kids with harelips. They behave as if they are wearing a second set of robes under their black ones – robes made up of white sheets.
The ruling from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver came in the mail today. It makes no sense to me at all. It seems that in every instance I have failed to “state a claim”. How is that possible? Obviously the professional jargon of lawyers and judges is so diametrically opposed to my understanding of the English language that there is no way for me to get justice in their courts, no matter what injustice others have done to me. From my point of view, it feels and smells like just another way to lie in my face and get away with it.
When I talk to ordinary people, and even some lawyers about this case, they usually get it. And often respond with that cynical laughter that comes from bitter experience with our justice system. Oh, I still believe in the law - mostly. Just not in our judges and courts. Lucky for them that like so many other ordinary people, it’s just not my style to take the law into my own hands. Or to respond with violence like some Hollywood-movie vigilante. Otherwise, parts of this country would look a whole lot more like parts of the Middle East. Lucky for them.
And no, U.S. Marshals, that’s just an observation, not a threat. After what I have been through, if I saw a Judge coming and knew it, I might just cross the street to avoid any such appearance, as well as a person I barely respect.
I’m not so pissed off at the fact that U.S. District and Court of Appeal decisions have gone against me, so much as their refusal to provide the necessary, honorable and ethical courtesy of full explanations of their reasoning. Take for example their rulings that I have failed to “make a claim”, or “state a case”. According to my 1988 Random House College Dictionary, the “claim” has ten very similar definitions, such as: 1. To demand by or as by a virtue of right; demand as a right or as due (to claim an estate by inheritance); 2. To assert and demand the recognition of (a right, title, possession, etc.); assert one’s right to (to claim a payment); 3. To assert or maintain as a fact (She claimed that he was telling the truth); 4. To require as due or fitting (to claim respect) 5. A demand for something as due; an assertion of a right or an alleged right (He made unreasonable demands on the Doctor’s time)
I did a lot of research and went into great detail. I cited laws, decisions and case law and explained how they applied to my case. I went over the actions of the defendants and explained how they violated the law, Supreme Court decisions, and the Constitution. I listed my civil rights, the damages done to me, and violations of my rights by the defendants. I laid claim to my rights as a human being and citizen of the United States. It stretches credulity beyond all belief to rule that in every single case I did not even make a claim.
If you read very many decisions, you find that when courts bother to perform their required functions, they go to considerable lengths to explain their reasoning. They explain what principles are involved, what elements are necessary to make a case, and how each party succeeded or failed to satisfy those elements. They do so because it is their ethical, fiduciary and Constitutional duty, and in everyone’s best interests, for them to be seen as places where justice can be fairly obtained.
In this case, the U.S. District court here in Tulsa, and the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver did not bother to perform these necessary functions. Instead they behaved like a country club refusing to explain their rules, reasoning and decisions to a non-member.
You know what I think Christ would have done with Romney’s 47%? He would have fixed their lazy wagon, all right. He would have made em eat bread and fish! Now that’s what I call a True Conservative.
Committing Psychiatrists – as infallible as Popes, as corruptible as slaveholders
The Supreme Court has put psychiatrists and their patients, voluntary or not, into a very special legal category, where in practice and despite all medical evidence to the contrary, the psychiatrists’ rights are supreme and the patients’ rights are almost zero. In the 1983 Barefoot v. Estelle decision, as well as others, the Supreme Court of the United States handed psychiatrists the dispensation of virtual infallibility. Knowing from research that psychiatric predictions of future dangerousness were wrong two out of three times, it stated, “There is no merit to petitioner's argument that psychiatrists, individually and as a group, are incompetent to predict with an acceptable degree of reliability that a particular criminal will commit other crimes in the future, and so represent a danger to the community.”
Why? Because “To accept such an argument would call into question predictions of future behavior that are constantly made in other contexts.” Resulting in, “psychiatric testimony predicting dangerousness may be countered not only as erroneous in a particular case but also as generally so unreliable that it should be ignored.” The High Court then held that there is no “convincing evidence that such testimony is almost entirely unreliable, and [convincing evidence] that the factfinder and the adversary system will not be competent to uncover, recognize, and take due account of its shortcomings.”
Further, “(b) Psychiatric testimony need not be based on personal examination of the defendant, but may properly be given in response to hypothetical questions. Expert testimony, whether in the form of an opinion based on hypothetical questions or otherwise, is commonly admitted as evidence where it might help the factfinder do its job. Although this case involves the death penalty, there is no constitutional barrier to applying the ordinary rules of evidence governing the use of expert testimony.”
This gave psychiatrists the legal status of Rumpole of the Bailey’s “She Who Must Be Obeyed”. And justified it in terms like saying a dead clock should be used to tell time because the courts are paranoid about keeping appointments, it’s the only clock they have, and it’s right twice a day. Further, the sun doesn’t have to be present in order for the dead clock to claim extreme accuracy in predicting that it is up.
Of course, the entire decision and the dissent are more complicated than that. But the High Court’s extreme deference to psychiatry, and its baseless claim that jurors won’t be overly impressed with “expert testimony”, which they don’t know to be generally unreliable, raised to new legal heights any shaman impressed with his or her own opinion. And those psychiatrists didn’t even have to have a crystal ball, just their professional “spidey-sense”. The High Court offered no opinion as to whether this paranormal insight could be obtained from radioactive spider bites.
I’m being this sarcastic about it because unlike a scientific or engineering discipline, clinical psychiatry does not bother often, if at all, to justify its inflated opinion of itself with experimental proof that its methods work and its “insights” are true. And because this kind of High Court decision engendered the horrific consequences to patients abducted into psychiatric institutions under fraudulent and incompetent mental evaluations, often to scam insurance companies. As the Houston Chronicle reported in a long series of articles in the 1990s.
Even though the High Court held in its 1981 Estelle v. Smith case that a prisoner must be given a Miranda warning that anything he says in a psychiatric evaluation can be used against him in a court of law, it seems not to have granted any right to actually remain silent in such an evaluation. Indeed, in the Court’s 1990 Washington v. Harper case, it held a prisoner had no right to counsel at a hearing to determine forced psychiatric medication because, “[I]t is less than crystal clear why lawyers must be available to identify possible errors in medical judgment.”
The thing is, it ceased to be medical judgment when the High Court made it heresy to question its accuracy and value. Blind faith is the province of religion, the “evidence of things not seen”. In contrast, medicine is demonstrated with double-blind experiments and scientific evaluation.
There’s a very good article in the July 2009 issue of The Gauntlet, The Law Journal of the Oklahoma Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, pp 57-71, by Dr. Shawn Roberson, the former director of Forensic Psychology at the Oklahoma Forensic Center, which I understand studies and evaluates criminal psychology. It’s “Interrogations and False Confessions – What Attorneys Should Know From the Social Sciences”, and cites 22 research authorities in legal and psychological issues. It shows how law-abiding, innocent, and even mentally stable, ordinary people are trapped into incriminating themselves or giving false confessions. It happens a lot. Perhaps because honest people will readily confess to minor sins which police, prosecutors, judges and lawyers will inflate and conflate into major wrongdoing.
If this can happen to an ordinary, innocent person, what chance does a harmless person with a mental illness have, when faced with interrogation by a mental inquisitor whose opinion that person may not legally dispute? Especially under the duress of being abducted into a mental institution, without any right to counsel. We have seen this kind of thing before. Just ask any Black historian. Or Dred Scott.
That begs the question: Would a U.S. Supreme Court Justice be satisfied always to fly in a plane, say one of the aging Soviet fleet, because it had not been proven to be entirely unreliable? Perhaps on the presumption that if something goes wrong, the pilot can always turn off the engines and glide it in for a landing. I’m sure if they wanted to prove the worth of that kind of argument, something could arranged to provide that kind of service for them.
If you wouldn’t let a surgeon who had not been proven to be entirely unreliable operate on you, leave your kids with a not entirely unreliable sitter, or take your dog to an NEU vet, why would you treat human beings that way? This must be one of those “let them eat cake” policies.
As NEU “expert witnesses”, psychiatrists are different from Doctors in other medical disciplines. First, the law effectively requires all the other doctors to use methods and treatments proven by scientific evidence to work. And second, they can be sued for malpractice if they don’t. That’s a critical difference that the Supreme Court should and might have recognized, perhaps if it had not been so blinded by its own fear and loathing of people with mental illnesses.
It’s like the difference between nutritional supplements and prescription drugs. Drug manufacturers are highly regulated and liable for their mistakes, as well as false and misleading claims. Makers of nutritional supplements, in large part, aren’t. Like the health food industry, psychiatry can claim almost anything about the benefits of its products, and doesn’t have to prove it. The Supreme Court, in its not entirely unreliable infinite wisdom, says so.
Of course, if anyone says that our NEU legislatures and courts treat people with mental illnesses like the Nazis treated Gypsy and Jews, they must be delusional. The Soviets were much more beneficent. They allowed Gypsies and Jews to serve in the Red Army, killing Germans and clearing land mines. Generally by marching into one and over the other. See now, that can be proven to work.
I submit that the Supreme Courts decisions effectively establishing the unquestionable infallibility of NEU psychiatry have led directly to horrific abuses against people both with and without mental illnesses. Go back, if you will, to my post in this series on about April 18th of this year, and use the links for the Houston Chronicle “profitable addiction” series. You will find that in the years following the Supreme Court decisions, psychiatric hospitals engaged in false and malicious practices that literally sent out bounty hunters to abduct even healthy people off the street, so that the hospitals could suck their insurance dry of psychiatric care benefits. About the same time, if I remember correctly, Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder held hearings looking into the matter, and found that military families were especially targeted, because of relatively rich benefits.
I contend that local organizations like the Tulsa Police Department, COPES, TCBH and the Mental Health Court have followed in this tradition, using flawed Oklahoma Mental Health Law to forcibly “treat” people, whether they need it or not, using methods that have not and cannot be proven with scientific experiment and evidence to be safe and effective. Perhaps the only difference is that they hit up taxpayers instead of insurance companies. Are you feeling grateful yet?
Yes, I know. I seem to have been monopolizing this space. You might think that I’ve been overdosing on Powder Milk Biscuits, but I don’t eat biscuits anymore. My spare tire turned into a spare Volkswagen, and I don’t want to encourage it. I’m afraid it might turn into a spare Chevy. Besides, I can’t and wouldn’t keep other people from writing here.
I think that some figures in authority have a problem with me because they just aren’t cancer. In the time I have left, due to personal and immediate family history, I may at some time be plagued with or struck down by one or more of cancer, or Alzheimer’s, or Parkinson’s, or some fatal infection, or something I don’t even know about yet. I’ve already had surgery looking for cancer. I got ready to die. When they didn’t find any and I lived, I was disappointed. My life sucked that bad.
If and when I get something like cancer, I hope I still have the wit and ability to make up ghastly jokes about it. Something along the lines of, “Oh look! Another bone exploded! Rover won’t have to chew his next toy so hard.”
Does a Federal Judge, or any other authority, want to put him or her self on that scale of intimidation and respect? Good luck with that. I’ve got one scar that if they had scooped out my intestines at the time, it would have accommodated a Federal Judge’s head. But maybe not his ego; I’m not nearly the size of a moose.
Some Judges, I’ve seen, will deny due process to anyone they don’t like or think is not giving them proper deference, regardless of what the Constitution says. They find ways to rationalize violating their Oath of Office in order to serve their egos and personal agendas. They even have a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure for it. They call it judicial discretion.
This betrays and subverts the Constitution, which is a choice they make, not something anyone forces them to do. One can hope that history will recall how well they served with honor.
Fear and Loathing is not a Constitutional Principle
But there are lots of people who seem to think so, no few of them in the Oklahoma Legislature and the Courts of the land. They include those people, whom I find mutually despicable, who beat their teenagers and kick them into the street because they come out gay, who see every Muslim as a potential terrorist, see every person with mental illness as a potential mass murderer, and then justify themselves with something along the lines of, “God wills it!” There’s at least one movie including that theme, starring Orlando Bloom and titled “Kingdom of Heaven”.
The Supreme Court of the United States has at times allowed this non-existent principle to guide some of its worst rulings. For example, those regarding prisoners and mental illnesses, like the 1983 Barefoot v. Estelle and 1990 Washington v. Harper cases. In its zeal to limit the legal rights of prisoners, it has again proven that old democratic principle that what you can do to people you don’t like, you can do to anyone. Since people with mental illnesses are such an unpopular minority, few worry about any injustice done to them. But the High Court’s decisions have not only affected prisoners, but damaged those with mental illnesses who have committed no crime, and even those who have had neither mental illness or a criminal record.
If you don’t thinks so then please read this article from the Houston Chronicle’s series on insurance scams by psychiatric hospitals, “Profitable Addictions”:
It relates how (after the Barefoot decision declared that psychiatric examinations were virtually infallible, or “not entirely unreliable”) “CHAMPUS mental health claims … more than doubled between 1985 and 1989”. A U.S. General Accounting Office report “found nearly two-thirds of the mental health claims … were for treatment considered medically questionable”.
It states, “Texas became the focus of a state and federal probe last year after a 14-year-old San Antonio youth, covered by CHAMPUS, was picked up by a private security firm and taken to a private psychiatric hospital. His admission to the facility was based on the diagnosis of a doctor the youth never saw. It took a court order to gain his release.”
The links below describe this incident and others in greater detail:
In the case of 14-year-old Jeramy Harrell, a doctor who had never seen him had him apprehended by a private security firm, calling itself “Sector One, Mobile Crisis Unit”, handcuffed, hospitalized and forcibly drugged. All on the false claims of Jeramy’s 12-year-old brother. Here in Tulsa, that function is performed by the Community Outreach Psychiatric Emergency Services, which exists to find reasons to have people committed to “treatment”, and the Tulsa Police Department, which does the public handcuffing, humiliating and transporting to a place of incarceration and drugging.
If you think this can’t happen to you or anyone you love, think again. You don’t even have to have a mental illness, just a hard time in your life, a bad day, or the allegation of one. Someone only needs to denounce you as mentally ill, and COPES will show up with a quick-on-the-trigger sworn certification that you need treatment. The State defines mental illness as whatever two “mental health professionals” say it is. According to one Dept of Mental Health Patient Advocate, their only standard is “state law”.
They only have to say that you are mentally ill, even if that’s how they benefit their own jobs, and you have virtually no recourse. Their opinions are not only infallible, but if they work for the State, they are protected from any lawsuit in State court regarding the “good faith” performance of their duties. If you try to dispute that, you have to go up against the State Attorney General, who absolves the State and its employees of any law they break. Violate your due process and civil liberties? Tough titties. And don’t expect a Federal Judge to give a damn, either.
Sets a fine example of being responsible for their own actions, doesn’t it? Not to mention a parallel to the secret police in a communist dictatorship. All this from the extra-legal, extra-constitutional Right to Fear and Loathing, so thoughtfully upheld by the not-entirely-unreliable infinite wisdom of the Supreme Court.
The Diane Rehm show discussed something not-entirely-unreliable this morning; a steroid shot for back pain contaminated with fungus.
I think someone should hold a contest to name all the things that are, in the words of the Supreme Court of the United States, not “almost entirely unreliable”, and thus should be allowed to stand as standards of evidence, or safe and effective procedure, under that standard of jurisprudence.
I’ll start – the o-rings on the solid rocket booster that blew up on launch and brought a Space Shuttle down out of the sky.
You see, the engineers responsible for certifying that the launch could proceed as safe didn’t want to, because they saw potentially serious problems with the o-rings, having witnessed excessive erosion by hot gasses in the ones recovered from previous launches and tests. But because the o-rings hadn’t failed yet, the managers of their employer and NASA contractor, Morton Thiokol, demanded that if they couldn’t prove the o-rings would fail, then they had to certify the launch. The engineers who gave in, and watched as seven or so astronauts died, including one who would have been the first schoolteacher in space, have borne the guilt of that ever since.
One can only speculate if that same Supreme Court standard of reliability set in the 1983 Barefoot v. Estelle case in any way influenced the Challenger disaster of 1986. Only such things as diet fads, health food claims, and witch-hunts allow such low standards of proof. If something went wrong, not only would any licensed professional engineer be sued with considerable justification for deviating to use them, any self-respecting engineer would be ashamed even to try.
On the other hand, politicians, legislators, judges and Morton Thiokol managers don’t seem to have that problem. Perhaps they lack a gene for a sense of shame that troubles us at times.
I don’t approve of racism. But lawyerism … look cavalierly how they treat the rest of us.
On the Diane Rehm show today, discussing the current whistleblower protection legislation in Congress, one of the commentators stated that most cases are dismissed because they are Pro Se. In other words, brought by people who cannot afford lawyers to present them according to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. If you are not a lawyer, have you ever tried to read and understand the FRCP? It might be as easy as a lawyer or judge trying to read an advanced engineering text.
Denying justice to people who cannot afford a lawyer, because they don’t know how to “state a case”, demonstrates jurisprudence at the same moral and Constitutional level as upholding a poll tax.
In its 1983 Barefoot v. Estelle decision, the Supreme Court justified the virtual infallibility of psychiatric predictions of “dangerousness” in part by quoting the California Supreme Court in People v. Murtishaw, 1981:
“The court distinguished cases, however, where "the trier of fact is required by statute to determine whether a person is dangerous,'" in which event, "expert prediction, unreliable though it may be, is often the only evidence available to assist the trier of fact." ”
Oh. You mean like the old test to determine if a woman was a witch. They tied her up and threw her into a deep enough body of water. If she floated, it meant that the water rejected her as unholy, and they could burn her. If she sank and drowned, well then, she was innocent and her soul was going to God. No harm, no foul.
Yup, the Court knows that the old justice is best.
In the movie Gothika, actress Halle Berry plays a psychiatrist in an institution. At the end of the movie, Berry’s character apologizes to a patient for not believing that the patient was being raped in her cell, for dismissing it as delusion. She even lets the patient go.
Oh yeah! Now I get it! That’s what you mean by fiction.
It only took near murder by the rapist to turn Berry’s character around. If the world as we know it really does end in 2012, maybe we can get the same deal.
Because I belong to a minority, people with mental illnesses, many if not most people are satisfied never to demand an accounting for what may happen to the likes of me in our justice system or a mental institution. So it doesn’t matter if the Supreme Court of the United States has elevated psychiatry up to a virtually unaccountable, allegedly medical discipline, which usually can be sued for malpractice only in the very rare instance that a psychiatric patient hurts someone. Sue a psychiatrist for a bad diagnosis that hurts a patient? Out of all the medical disciplines, unaccountable psychiatry has the right to define that as delusion. In order to be sued successfully, a psychiatrist literally has to beat or rape a patient. Otherwise, anything goes.
Many if not most people seem to think that this can never affect them, only those whom they fear and loath. That Psychiatrists Know Best. After all, the Supreme Court said so, emphasizing time and again that lawyers and judges have no business getting in the way of “medical decisions”. As if, despite all evidence to the contrary, such doctors could never, possibly, in a million years, make mistakes or put their personal benefit over the patient’s. And if such things should happen, the Supreme Court, which has stacked the deck by ruling in its not entirely unreliable infinite wisdom that judges and lawyers should stay out of the way, tells us that the adversarial process will fix surely them. As if there are no consequences to judicial hubris.
Life must look a bit different to people on a high mountaintop than it does to the rest of us down here. Down here, psychiatrists are just as human and venal as anyone else. Just as ready to take advantage of legislated unaccountability. Just as capable of damaging even people who think it can only happen to those they don’t like.
In the case of 14-year-old Jeramy Harrell and his grandmother, Marianne, http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1991_808777/profitable-addictions-captured-and-held-against-wi.html bad psychiatry left lasting scars. I recall reading that either Jeramy or a similar young boy went into a psychiatric hospital scam a vivacious, talkative kid, and came out withdrawn and almost non-verbal, but I can’t find the reference for you. The one just above reports that Marianne Harrell, who had been a child in Nazi Germany, and had been [perhaps publicly] accused of abusing Jeramy, came out of it unable to see a patrol car without cringing. “She now never leaves her doors unlocked – even when she is at home.”
The same article details other psychiatric abductions and assaults. One 51-year-old woman, Beverly Williams, “was dragged out of her bathroom by two security guards [clad only in her bathrobe, it seems] and handcuffed on an emergency apprehension and detention warrant.” The same kind used by the Tulsa Mental Health Court. “Beverly Williams, considered a “model employee” by her employer, said she was so embarrassed and humiliated by the experience that she has tinted the windows of her car so neighbors can’t see her when she leaves home.”
These people were nominally sane and without any criminal conviction, and they suffered lasting damage. How much self-absorbed stupidity does it take to presume that police, district attorneys, courts, mental institutions and government employees and contractors can do the same thing to those who already have lasting damage and not make it worse? My, how they justify and absolve themselves in their conceit and bigotry.
It’s the death of economic hope for those on the bottom. In the old Soviet system, for example, the food harvests were constantly behind targets and needs. Conservatives here rightly pointed out that it stemmed from the lack of incentive for farmers to profit in any way from the fruits of their labors. The State owned everything they did, and paid them all the same. So why work hard if it all pays the same?
Here, it’s a little different, but too often to the same effect. Here, people on the bottom tend to be those on the dole, and all get paid the same. Here, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, conservatives have a false narrative that says anyone can work their way out of their circumstances. Instead, if someone on the dole makes too much money, the State takes back more of the dole than the value of what the person made for him or her self. Sell a tee shirt, and the State can strip or claw back ten times as much or more.
To the people on the bottom living on State’s sufferance, the difference between communist and conservative systems is merely ideological, merely words. It still strips from them the practical ability to benefit from the fruits of their own ambition and labor. Many are living so close to the bone, losing the dole would mean homelessness. So those who would really like to work their way up, losing benefits as a fraction of their profits, have to stay where they are.
Economically, it all pays the same.
Communist or conservative, the politicians might as well be talking with the same forked tongue. Both are so blinded by the holy purity of their ideologies that they can’t address any of the real problems with solutions that work to everyone’s benefit. They aren’t really Saul on the road to Damascus, they just play him in the propaganda.
And no, I don’t think liberals are that much better. They have other intellect-blinding flaws. They certainly haven’t done any better in developing a path to independence.
Some decades ago, I worked summers in more than one Arkansas chicken processing plant. Fortunately, I didn’t like chicken to begin with. Otherwise the flies, overflowing urinals and meat dropped on the floor at one of them (under the empty noses of in-plant USDA inspectors), might have put me off.
If you want to enjoy sausage, don’t watch it being made. If you want to believe in justice, don’t read the opinions.
********
In a previous post, I missed a few of things that can get a psychiatrist in trouble. These include demonstrably driving a patient to suicide, stealing from petty cash, violating HIPPA regulations by releasing medical files to the wrong people, and bilking the government for services not rendered. The last two are the only things that ever seem to cause Federal judges and prosecutors any concern, outrage or distress. Violating HIPPA regulations by falsifying, manufacturing or suppressing medical information doesn’t appear to be a Federal concern.
Please allow 4-6 weeks for processing. No refunds are issued. Back issues are available for $10/copy.
We accept Visa, M/C, checks and money orders. Call to charge by phone 918-592-5550. Enter your contact information in the form below and we will contact you.
If ordering by mail, make checks and money orders payable to Urban Tulsa Weekly. Send your payment along with your complete postal delivery address to Urban Tulsa Weekly, Attn: Samantha, PO Box 50499, Tulsa, OK 74150
Address:
Address2:
City:
State:
Zip Code:
Email:
Phone:
Comments:
Urban Tulsa Weekly
1924 E. 6th St.
Tulsa OK 74104
Phone: (918) 592-5550
Fax: (918) 592-5970
e-mail: Subscriptions
COMMENTS
Posted by: Don B
208 comments total
Sort Comments: Most Recent | Oldest First
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
On KWGS this morning came an announcement that Hillcrest Medical Center is entering into an agreement with the Tulsa Center for Behavioral Health to use TCBH as a “psychiatric emergency center”. OMG, pity the poor patients. The TCBH standard of care for handling a psychiatric emergency is to make the patient believe that it was all his or her fault to begin with, and to get the patient to say the magic words, “I am not a danger to myself or others.” In other words, a magic cure with magical thinking.
Even worse, TCBH has acted in concert with the Tulsa City and County Mental Health Court to force an involuntary commitment through marsupial justice. And probably still does. In this standard of justice, uninvestigated and false hearsay accusations become proven fact, and medical records are falsified. The “witnesses” to alleged dangerous behavior might only come from TCBH and the Community Outreach Psychiatric Emergency Services. Original outside complainants need never appear to be cross-examined, or even to sign sworn statements. One suspects that they never saw a patient that they didn’t want to commit. A good way to dispose of people who can’t be accused of or prosecuted for actual crimes.
For example, on August 6, 2010, Judge of the District Court Theresa Dreiling filed a secret Order Setting Hearing and Directing Pre-Hearing Detention; and Order Releasing Confidential Records in case MH-2010-0404 for patient 237771I. Part of the fill-in-the-blanks Order reads:
“WHEREAS, there is good cause for disclosure of the Respondent’s {involuntary patient} mental health and substance abuse records pursuant to 42 C.F.R. Part 2 (section) 2.64 in only the above-entitled matter and;
WHEREAS, it appears further that the information sought {medical and mental health records} is not available elsewhere and can only be obtained from the detaining and/or treating facility or the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services;”
In other words, the only such information to influence the Judge’s decisions would be limited to TCBH. The fill-in-the-blank nature of this and other TCBH and Mental Health Court forms indicates standard operation procedure. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malfeasance_in_office, and other sources regarding judicial prejudice and favoritism.
There’s just one little problem with that; seven previous years of medical records for that patient from the O.U. Psychiatric Clinic, going back to 2003, according to retained appointment cards. And a “DMHSAS Designation of Treatment Advocate”, dated three days earlier, naming “Dr Beaman OU Psych Dept”. Never mind that the patient told TCBH that he had been taking his medications “religiously” in all that time, or that the patient had no significant history of physical violence going back decades.
In TCBH practice, there are apparently no second or outside opinions. The O.U. Psychiatric Clinic refused to help its patient with a second opinion and certification of pacific behavior, and TCBH refused to allow it, stating that the Clinic’s doctors were not admitted to TCBH practice. This, despite the TCBH “Bill of Rights” which states:
“4. Each individual retains the right of confidential communication with their attorney, personal physician or clergy”, and
“19. Each individual has the right to request the opinion of an outside medical or psychiatric consultant at his or her own expense or a right to an internal consultation upon request at no expense.”
--As supported by Oklahoma State Code Title 43A-1-104, 43A-3-424.B, 43A-4-107a.B, 43A-5-401.C.9, 43A-5-401.D.1, 43A-5-411.B, 43A-5-411.D.1, and 43A-5-412.B.7.
TCBH “mental health professionals” have written, on the least possible data, the worst possible mental health evaluations, and then some. It considers surface appearances very important. For example, getting admitted there while in one’s grubby work clothes on a bad hair day is considered proof one is incapable of “caring for himself”. Never mind the daily baths and clean underwear.
Everything that one says is interpreted in the worst possible light. Nothing that one says that is exculpatory in defense of one’s self will be reported to the Mental Health Court, which denies one even the defense of telling one’s own side of the story. Because the TCBH “mental health professionals” have already written it.
Further, if one objects to one’s indictment with hearsay as proven fact, TCBH “professionals” claim one is “not self aware”. That mental crime rates confinement for up to two months. If you weren’t sick when you went it, you will be. Enough has been written about TCBH that any outside Doctor who commits a patient there has reason to know better, and can be liable for a malpractice suit.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
******************
A Public Defender in a mental health court is the person strictly trained never to utter the words, "objection" or "exception".
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
They really sold us a bill of goods on HDTV, didn’t they? Analog TV may have had some occasional snow, but at least you could pick up all the stations over the air, and the pictures didn’t stutter, show pixilation from compression artifacts, and have areas where similar colors all blurred together. It’s a bit like those old black and white movies “saved” on DVD for us by TGG Direct, Echo Bridge and Universal in magnificent low resolution, often with the original film scratches and sprocket skips.
The very definition of HD seems suspect, especially when you try to use an HDTV as a computer monitor through an HDMI cable, as I did recently. Compared to the VGA display port on both my new HDTV and my older computer monitor, HDMI looks awful. The text is blurry and if you don’t get the right video card settings, it will even have color bands.
As it happens, I bought an nVidia video card for a new computer, with HDMI, VGA and DVI outputs. The monitor has VGA and DVI inputs. The HDTV has TV, AV, Component, VGA and two HDMI inputs. The new Windows 7 computer display looks just as sharp on VGA or DVI as Windows 2000 on two other computers. But when you put a DVI-to-HDMI adapter on the video card’s DVI output to feed into either HDMI port on the HDTV, you get the same crappy output as HDMI to HDMI. VGA is “analog” and both DVI and HDMI are “digital”. So, in case you along with many others on Internet discussion forums were wondering, the problem is HDMI on the HDTV.
HD - it’s like calling a box with 30% less cereal in it the High Value package. And forcing you to buy it if you want to eat cereal.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Uh-huh. I’d say that works about as good as OSC 5-1, Appendix 4, Rule 1.1 in the Tulsa Mental Health Court. It all depends on lawyers having a sense of justice and shame. (So, what temperature was Hell when you were last there?) In my experience living on disability and Social Security and asking for such help and consideration, lawyers satisfy their obligation in the easiest manner possible, by taking only those simple cases that can be quickly settled. In all other cases, you usually get letter like the one I got from Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma, Inc., dated September 25, 2012, stating that with so many cases and so few resources, they just can’t do anything.
I debated with myself whether to appeal to the Managing Attorney, as the fine print at the bottom suggested, or to publicize it here. I think it bears on the quality of whatever pro bono services they do give to the poor. The letter includes the line, “I have also included a Motion to Terminate Guardianship that you may file on your own if you so choose.” Not only was no such form enclosed, it had nothing to do with my issues regarding the Mental Health Court.
It has taken me a long, long time to figure out how to express those issues calmly. They include matters of both State law and Constitutional rights, which the Mental Health Court Judge and a Federal Judge have dismissed as unnecessary, inconsequential and even “unintelligible”, due to the unpopular source of the complaint:
• Disparate and biased investigation by police and mental health authorities, on the basis of a disability;
• Manufacture, suppression and falsification of medical evidence and records;
• Denial of access to zealous counsel (replaced by potted plants);
• Denial of access to outside medical evaluation, such as doctors and psychiatrists of long-standing;
• Denial of consideration of the least restrictive alternative (such as simply helping one move one’s belongings and person out of a bad situation);
• Transmutation of hearsay, as generated by habitual liars, into proven fact;
• The actual and illegal use of “preponderance of the evidence”, instead of “clear and convincing evidence”;
• Denial of the right of self-defense, including cross-examination of one’s accusers;
• Limiting the “witnesses”, “evaluators” and “petitioners for commitment” to those “mental health professionals” who benefit from the incarceration;
• Judicial rubber-stamping of the opinions of those same “professionals”;
• Indefinite incarceration on the basis of a disability, for future acts that can’t be proven will occur, especially without a past history of such acts;
• Retaliation for refusing to accept false hearsay as proven fact (incarceration for 66 days in my case); and
• Psychological abuse, even of those with a history of trauma and abuse, resulting in physical and mental damage and deterioration.
Somehow, I don’t think that a motion to terminate guardianship would address those issues. It leads me to suspect that Legal Aid has the same motto as the Public Defender’s Office.
- e pluribus non sequitur plenarius
To which I say (in fractured Latin) – miseresco clientela.
I get the impression that when it comes to unpopular minorities, who can rarely if ever afford or become lawyers (like those in the NAACP), the ethics and pro bono concerns of the entire legal establishment are like one of those huge false fronts on a old Western store. Two stories high and a two-by-four deep. Where even the whorehouse had more substance. Ah, I guess that explains it; all their customers had to pay up by the hour.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
It hasn’t yet arrived in the mail, but I got word yesterday that a higher court has affirmed the right of Tulsa’s U.S. District Court to treat people with mental illnesses, like depression and PTSD, as second-rate citizens who have no right to protest that status. Among other things, it reminds me of the day I left TCBH, the Tulsa “Center for Behavioral Health”, or “This Can’t Be Happening”.
They gave back only one of two sets of keys on rings that I had when I went in. This particular set had been given to some movers I had to hire to get my things out of my apartment, so that the Manager of Glenwood Apartments wouldn’t just throw them into the street. As she reportedly threatened to the moving company, in violation of Oklahoma Landlord-Tenant law. The movers had assured me that they had given the keys back to TCBH.
I was getting frustrated and irritated because the woman behind the TCBH intake counter put on a Freddy Prince “Ees not my yob” attitude. In other words, she couldn’t do anything if they didn’t have them, because it must have been someone else’s mistake. And of course, I had keys on that ring that no one else should have. As soon as I let that show in my voice, she threatened to call a Tulsa Sheriff’s Deputy to deal with me.
She let me know in no uncertain terms that people like me don’t have the right to be angry or upset at any frustration. That her first proper assumption should be that it signals the threat and intention to do violence. If it weren’t for the similar pale color of our skins, you might think she was having a problem with my race. That I don’t have any right to speak up at indifference and incompetence, because my kind don’t deserve any better. No offense meant to people of color.
When many if not most Judges deal with people who have mental illnesses, they have no problem with anyone taking advantage of us, just because we are vulnerable, we have few resources to fight back with, and they can. This kind of prejudicial judicial treatment goes all the way up to the Supreme Court of the United States; in the 1979 Addington v. Texas case, for example. So much for the Constitution; it doesn’t quite apply to the likes of us.
They act almost like the judicial equivalent of the white supremacists who want to euthanize all the kids with harelips. They behave as if they are wearing a second set of robes under their black ones – robes made up of white sheets.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
The ruling from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver came in the mail today. It makes no sense to me at all. It seems that in every instance I have failed to “state a claim”. How is that possible? Obviously the professional jargon of lawyers and judges is so diametrically opposed to my understanding of the English language that there is no way for me to get justice in their courts, no matter what injustice others have done to me. From my point of view, it feels and smells like just another way to lie in my face and get away with it.
When I talk to ordinary people, and even some lawyers about this case, they usually get it. And often respond with that cynical laughter that comes from bitter experience with our justice system. Oh, I still believe in the law - mostly. Just not in our judges and courts. Lucky for them that like so many other ordinary people, it’s just not my style to take the law into my own hands. Or to respond with violence like some Hollywood-movie vigilante. Otherwise, parts of this country would look a whole lot more like parts of the Middle East. Lucky for them.
And no, U.S. Marshals, that’s just an observation, not a threat. After what I have been through, if I saw a Judge coming and knew it, I might just cross the street to avoid any such appearance, as well as a person I barely respect.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
I’m not so pissed off at the fact that U.S. District and Court of Appeal decisions have gone against me, so much as their refusal to provide the necessary, honorable and ethical courtesy of full explanations of their reasoning. Take for example their rulings that I have failed to “make a claim”, or “state a case”. According to my 1988 Random House College Dictionary, the “claim” has ten very similar definitions, such as:
1. To demand by or as by a virtue of right; demand as a right or as due (to claim an estate by inheritance);
2. To assert and demand the recognition of (a right, title, possession, etc.); assert one’s right to (to claim a payment);
3. To assert or maintain as a fact (She claimed that he was telling the truth);
4. To require as due or fitting (to claim respect)
5. A demand for something as due; an assertion of a right or an alleged right (He made unreasonable demands on the Doctor’s time)
I did a lot of research and went into great detail. I cited laws, decisions and case law and explained how they applied to my case. I went over the actions of the defendants and explained how they violated the law, Supreme Court decisions, and the Constitution. I listed my civil rights, the damages done to me, and violations of my rights by the defendants. I laid claim to my rights as a human being and citizen of the United States. It stretches credulity beyond all belief to rule that in every single case I did not even make a claim.
If you read very many decisions, you find that when courts bother to perform their required functions, they go to considerable lengths to explain their reasoning. They explain what principles are involved, what elements are necessary to make a case, and how each party succeeded or failed to satisfy those elements. They do so because it is their ethical, fiduciary and Constitutional duty, and in everyone’s best interests, for them to be seen as places where justice can be fairly obtained.
In this case, the U.S. District court here in Tulsa, and the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver did not bother to perform these necessary functions. Instead they behaved like a country club refusing to explain their rules, reasoning and decisions to a non-member.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
The Supreme Court has put psychiatrists and their patients, voluntary or not, into a very special legal category, where in practice and despite all medical evidence to the contrary, the psychiatrists’ rights are supreme and the patients’ rights are almost zero. In the 1983 Barefoot v. Estelle decision, as well as others, the Supreme Court of the United States handed psychiatrists the dispensation of virtual infallibility. Knowing from research that psychiatric predictions of future dangerousness were wrong two out of three times, it stated, “There is no merit to petitioner's argument that psychiatrists, individually and as a group, are incompetent to predict with an acceptable degree of reliability that a particular criminal will commit other crimes in the future, and so represent a danger to the community.”
Why? Because “To accept such an argument would call into question predictions of future behavior that are constantly made in other contexts.” Resulting in, “psychiatric testimony predicting dangerousness may be countered not only as erroneous in a particular case but also as generally so unreliable that it should be ignored.” The High Court then held that there is no “convincing evidence that such testimony is almost entirely unreliable, and [convincing evidence] that the factfinder and the adversary system will not be competent to uncover, recognize, and take due account of its shortcomings.”
Further, “(b) Psychiatric testimony need not be based on personal examination of the defendant, but may properly be given in response to hypothetical questions. Expert testimony, whether in the form of an opinion based on hypothetical questions or otherwise, is commonly admitted as evidence where it might help the factfinder do its job. Although this case involves the death penalty, there is no constitutional barrier to applying the ordinary rules of evidence governing the use of expert testimony.”
This gave psychiatrists the legal status of Rumpole of the Bailey’s “She Who Must Be Obeyed”. And justified it in terms like saying a dead clock should be used to tell time because the courts are paranoid about keeping appointments, it’s the only clock they have, and it’s right twice a day. Further, the sun doesn’t have to be present in order for the dead clock to claim extreme accuracy in predicting that it is up.
Of course, the entire decision and the dissent are more complicated than that. But the High Court’s extreme deference to psychiatry, and its baseless claim that jurors won’t be overly impressed with “expert testimony”, which they don’t know to be generally unreliable, raised to new legal heights any shaman impressed with his or her own opinion. And those psychiatrists didn’t even have to have a crystal ball, just their professional “spidey-sense”. The High Court offered no opinion as to whether this paranormal insight could be obtained from radioactive spider bites.
I’m being this sarcastic about it because unlike a scientific or engineering discipline, clinical psychiatry does not bother often, if at all, to justify its inflated opinion of itself with experimental proof that its methods work and its “insights” are true. And because this kind of High Court decision engendered the horrific consequences to patients abducted into psychiatric institutions under fraudulent and incompetent mental evaluations, often to scam insurance companies. As the Houston Chronicle reported in a long series of articles in the 1990s.
Even though the High Court held in its 1981 Estelle v. Smith case that a prisoner must be given a Miranda warning that anything he says in a psychiatric evaluation can be used against him in a court of law, it seems not to have granted any right to actually remain silent in such an evaluation. Indeed, in the Court’s 1990 Washington v. Harper case, it held a prisoner had no right to counsel at a hearing to determine forced psychiatric medication because, “[I]t is less than crystal clear why lawyers must be available to identify possible errors in medical judgment.”
The thing is, it ceased to be medical judgment when the High Court made it heresy to question its accuracy and value. Blind faith is the province of religion, the “evidence of things not seen”. In contrast, medicine is demonstrated with double-blind experiments and scientific evaluation.
There’s a very good article in the July 2009 issue of The Gauntlet, The Law Journal of the Oklahoma Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, pp 57-71, by Dr. Shawn Roberson, the former director of Forensic Psychology at the Oklahoma Forensic Center, which I understand studies and evaluates criminal psychology. It’s “Interrogations and False Confessions – What Attorneys Should Know From the Social Sciences”, and cites 22 research authorities in legal and psychological issues. It shows how law-abiding, innocent, and even mentally stable, ordinary people are trapped into incriminating themselves or giving false confessions. It happens a lot. Perhaps because honest people will readily confess to minor sins which police, prosecutors, judges and lawyers will inflate and conflate into major wrongdoing.
If this can happen to an ordinary, innocent person, what chance does a harmless person with a mental illness have, when faced with interrogation by a mental inquisitor whose opinion that person may not legally dispute? Especially under the duress of being abducted into a mental institution, without any right to counsel. We have seen this kind of thing before. Just ask any Black historian. Or Dred Scott.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
As NEU “expert witnesses”, psychiatrists are different from Doctors in other medical disciplines. First, the law effectively requires all the other doctors to use methods and treatments proven by scientific evidence to work. And second, they can be sued for malpractice if they don’t. That’s a critical difference that the Supreme Court should and might have recognized, perhaps if it had not been so blinded by its own fear and loathing of people with mental illnesses.
It’s like the difference between nutritional supplements and prescription drugs. Drug manufacturers are highly regulated and liable for their mistakes, as well as false and misleading claims. Makers of nutritional supplements, in large part, aren’t. Like the health food industry, psychiatry can claim almost anything about the benefits of its products, and doesn’t have to prove it. The Supreme Court, in its not entirely unreliable infinite wisdom, says so.
Of course, if anyone says that our NEU legislatures and courts treat people with mental illnesses like the Nazis treated Gypsy and Jews, they must be delusional. The Soviets were much more beneficent. They allowed Gypsies and Jews to serve in the Red Army, killing Germans and clearing land mines. Generally by marching into one and over the other. See now, that can be proven to work.
I submit that the Supreme Courts decisions effectively establishing the unquestionable infallibility of NEU psychiatry have led directly to horrific abuses against people both with and without mental illnesses. Go back, if you will, to my post in this series on about April 18th of this year, and use the links for the Houston Chronicle “profitable addiction” series. You will find that in the years following the Supreme Court decisions, psychiatric hospitals engaged in false and malicious practices that literally sent out bounty hunters to abduct even healthy people off the street, so that the hospitals could suck their insurance dry of psychiatric care benefits. About the same time, if I remember correctly, Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder held hearings looking into the matter, and found that military families were especially targeted, because of relatively rich benefits.
I contend that local organizations like the Tulsa Police Department, COPES, TCBH and the Mental Health Court have followed in this tradition, using flawed Oklahoma Mental Health Law to forcibly “treat” people, whether they need it or not, using methods that have not and cannot be proven with scientific experiment and evidence to be safe and effective. Perhaps the only difference is that they hit up taxpayers instead of insurance companies. Are you feeling grateful yet?
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Yes, I know. I seem to have been monopolizing this space. You might think that I’ve been overdosing on Powder Milk Biscuits, but I don’t eat biscuits anymore. My spare tire turned into a spare Volkswagen, and I don’t want to encourage it. I’m afraid it might turn into a spare Chevy. Besides, I can’t and wouldn’t keep other people from writing here.
I think that some figures in authority have a problem with me because they just aren’t cancer. In the time I have left, due to personal and immediate family history, I may at some time be plagued with or struck down by one or more of cancer, or Alzheimer’s, or Parkinson’s, or some fatal infection, or something I don’t even know about yet. I’ve already had surgery looking for cancer. I got ready to die. When they didn’t find any and I lived, I was disappointed. My life sucked that bad.
If and when I get something like cancer, I hope I still have the wit and ability to make up ghastly jokes about it. Something along the lines of, “Oh look! Another bone exploded! Rover won’t have to chew his next toy so hard.”
Does a Federal Judge, or any other authority, want to put him or her self on that scale of intimidation and respect? Good luck with that. I’ve got one scar that if they had scooped out my intestines at the time, it would have accommodated a Federal Judge’s head. But maybe not his ego; I’m not nearly the size of a moose.
Some Judges, I’ve seen, will deny due process to anyone they don’t like or think is not giving them proper deference, regardless of what the Constitution says. They find ways to rationalize violating their Oath of Office in order to serve their egos and personal agendas. They even have a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure for it. They call it judicial discretion.
This betrays and subverts the Constitution, which is a choice they make, not something anyone forces them to do. One can hope that history will recall how well they served with honor.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
But there are lots of people who seem to think so, no few of them in the Oklahoma Legislature and the Courts of the land. They include those people, whom I find mutually despicable, who beat their teenagers and kick them into the street because they come out gay, who see every Muslim as a potential terrorist, see every person with mental illness as a potential mass murderer, and then justify themselves with something along the lines of, “God wills it!” There’s at least one movie including that theme, starring Orlando Bloom and titled “Kingdom of Heaven”.
The Supreme Court of the United States has at times allowed this non-existent principle to guide some of its worst rulings. For example, those regarding prisoners and mental illnesses, like the 1983 Barefoot v. Estelle and 1990 Washington v. Harper cases. In its zeal to limit the legal rights of prisoners, it has again proven that old democratic principle that what you can do to people you don’t like, you can do to anyone. Since people with mental illnesses are such an unpopular minority, few worry about any injustice done to them. But the High Court’s decisions have not only affected prisoners, but damaged those with mental illnesses who have committed no crime, and even those who have had neither mental illness or a criminal record.
If you don’t thinks so then please read this article from the Houston Chronicle’s series on insurance scams by psychiatric hospitals, “Profitable Addictions”:
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1992_1052024/profitable-addictions-abuses-in-mental-health-prog.html
It relates how (after the Barefoot decision declared that psychiatric examinations were virtually infallible, or “not entirely unreliable”) “CHAMPUS mental health claims … more than doubled between 1985 and 1989”. A U.S. General Accounting Office report “found nearly two-thirds of the mental health claims … were for treatment considered medically questionable”.
It states, “Texas became the focus of a state and federal probe last year after a 14-year-old San Antonio youth, covered by CHAMPUS, was picked up by a private security firm and taken to a private psychiatric hospital. His admission to the facility was based on the diagnosis of a doctor the youth never saw. It took a court order to gain his release.”
The links below describe this incident and others in greater detail:
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1991_808777/profitable-addictions-captured-and-held-against-wi.html
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1993_1141866/profitable-addictions-doctor-who-triggered-probe-c.html
http://www.cchr.org/sites/default/files/CCHR_Pamphlet_Massive_Fraud_1.pdf
http://www.amazon.com/Coronary-True-Story-Medicine-Gone/dp/product-description/0743267540
http://www.questia.com/library/1G1-14800954/rip-offs-depress-mental-health-care
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/1998/jan/24/several-claim-theyve-been-institutionalized-agains/
In the case of 14-year-old Jeramy Harrell, a doctor who had never seen him had him apprehended by a private security firm, calling itself “Sector One, Mobile Crisis Unit”, handcuffed, hospitalized and forcibly drugged. All on the false claims of Jeramy’s 12-year-old brother. Here in Tulsa, that function is performed by the Community Outreach Psychiatric Emergency Services, which exists to find reasons to have people committed to “treatment”, and the Tulsa Police Department, which does the public handcuffing, humiliating and transporting to a place of incarceration and drugging.
If you think this can’t happen to you or anyone you love, think again. You don’t even have to have a mental illness, just a hard time in your life, a bad day, or the allegation of one. Someone only needs to denounce you as mentally ill, and COPES will show up with a quick-on-the-trigger sworn certification that you need treatment. The State defines mental illness as whatever two “mental health professionals” say it is. According to one Dept of Mental Health Patient Advocate, their only standard is “state law”.
They only have to say that you are mentally ill, even if that’s how they benefit their own jobs, and you have virtually no recourse. Their opinions are not only infallible, but if they work for the State, they are protected from any lawsuit in State court regarding the “good faith” performance of their duties. If you try to dispute that, you have to go up against the State Attorney General, who absolves the State and its employees of any law they break. Violate your due process and civil liberties? Tough titties. And don’t expect a Federal Judge to give a damn, either.
Sets a fine example of being responsible for their own actions, doesn’t it? Not to mention a parallel to the secret police in a communist dictatorship. All this from the extra-legal, extra-constitutional Right to Fear and Loathing, so thoughtfully upheld by the not-entirely-unreliable infinite wisdom of the Supreme Court.
The Diane Rehm show discussed something not-entirely-unreliable this morning; a steroid shot for back pain contaminated with fungus.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
I think someone should hold a contest to name all the things that are, in the words of the Supreme Court of the United States, not “almost entirely unreliable”, and thus should be allowed to stand as standards of evidence, or safe and effective procedure, under that standard of jurisprudence.
I’ll start – the o-rings on the solid rocket booster that blew up on launch and brought a Space Shuttle down out of the sky.
You see, the engineers responsible for certifying that the launch could proceed as safe didn’t want to, because they saw potentially serious problems with the o-rings, having witnessed excessive erosion by hot gasses in the ones recovered from previous launches and tests. But because the o-rings hadn’t failed yet, the managers of their employer and NASA contractor, Morton Thiokol, demanded that if they couldn’t prove the o-rings would fail, then they had to certify the launch. The engineers who gave in, and watched as seven or so astronauts died, including one who would have been the first schoolteacher in space, have borne the guilt of that ever since.
One can only speculate if that same Supreme Court standard of reliability set in the 1983 Barefoot v. Estelle case in any way influenced the Challenger disaster of 1986. Only such things as diet fads, health food claims, and witch-hunts allow such low standards of proof. If something went wrong, not only would any licensed professional engineer be sued with considerable justification for deviating to use them, any self-respecting engineer would be ashamed even to try.
On the other hand, politicians, legislators, judges and Morton Thiokol managers don’t seem to have that problem. Perhaps they lack a gene for a sense of shame that troubles us at times.
I don’t approve of racism. But lawyerism … look cavalierly how they treat the rest of us.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
On the Diane Rehm show today, discussing the current whistleblower protection legislation in Congress, one of the commentators stated that most cases are dismissed because they are Pro Se. In other words, brought by people who cannot afford lawyers to present them according to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. If you are not a lawyer, have you ever tried to read and understand the FRCP? It might be as easy as a lawyer or judge trying to read an advanced engineering text.
Denying justice to people who cannot afford a lawyer, because they don’t know how to “state a case”, demonstrates jurisprudence at the same moral and Constitutional level as upholding a poll tax.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
In its 1983 Barefoot v. Estelle decision, the Supreme Court justified the virtual infallibility of psychiatric predictions of “dangerousness” in part by quoting the California Supreme Court in People v. Murtishaw, 1981:
“The court distinguished cases, however, where "the trier of fact is required by statute to determine whether a person is dangerous,'" in which event, "expert prediction, unreliable though it may be, is often the only evidence available to assist the trier of fact." ”
Oh. You mean like the old test to determine if a woman was a witch. They tied her up and threw her into a deep enough body of water. If she floated, it meant that the water rejected her as unholy, and they could burn her. If she sank and drowned, well then, she was innocent and her soul was going to God. No harm, no foul.
Yup, the Court knows that the old justice is best.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Oh yeah! Now I get it! That’s what you mean by fiction.
It only took near murder by the rapist to turn Berry’s character around. If the world as we know it really does end in 2012, maybe we can get the same deal.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Because I belong to a minority, people with mental illnesses, many if not most people are satisfied never to demand an accounting for what may happen to the likes of me in our justice system or a mental institution. So it doesn’t matter if the Supreme Court of the United States has elevated psychiatry up to a virtually unaccountable, allegedly medical discipline, which usually can be sued for malpractice only in the very rare instance that a psychiatric patient hurts someone. Sue a psychiatrist for a bad diagnosis that hurts a patient? Out of all the medical disciplines, unaccountable psychiatry has the right to define that as delusion. In order to be sued successfully, a psychiatrist literally has to beat or rape a patient. Otherwise, anything goes.
Many if not most people seem to think that this can never affect them, only those whom they fear and loath. That Psychiatrists Know Best. After all, the Supreme Court said so, emphasizing time and again that lawyers and judges have no business getting in the way of “medical decisions”. As if, despite all evidence to the contrary, such doctors could never, possibly, in a million years, make mistakes or put their personal benefit over the patient’s. And if such things should happen, the Supreme Court, which has stacked the deck by ruling in its not entirely unreliable infinite wisdom that judges and lawyers should stay out of the way, tells us that the adversarial process will fix surely them. As if there are no consequences to judicial hubris.
Life must look a bit different to people on a high mountaintop than it does to the rest of us down here. Down here, psychiatrists are just as human and venal as anyone else. Just as ready to take advantage of legislated unaccountability. Just as capable of damaging even people who think it can only happen to those they don’t like.
In the case of 14-year-old Jeramy Harrell and his grandmother, Marianne,
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1991_808777/profitable-addictions-captured-and-held-against-wi.html
bad psychiatry left lasting scars. I recall reading that either Jeramy or a similar young boy went into a psychiatric hospital scam a vivacious, talkative kid, and came out withdrawn and almost non-verbal, but I can’t find the reference for you. The one just above reports that Marianne Harrell, who had been a child in Nazi Germany, and had been [perhaps publicly] accused of abusing Jeramy, came out of it unable to see a patrol car without cringing. “She now never leaves her doors unlocked – even when she is at home.”
The same article details other psychiatric abductions and assaults. One 51-year-old woman, Beverly Williams, “was dragged out of her bathroom by two security guards [clad only in her bathrobe, it seems] and handcuffed on an emergency apprehension and detention warrant.” The same kind used by the Tulsa Mental Health Court. “Beverly Williams, considered a “model employee” by her employer, said she was so embarrassed and humiliated by the experience that she has tinted the windows of her car so neighbors can’t see her when she leaves home.”
These people were nominally sane and without any criminal conviction, and they suffered lasting damage. How much self-absorbed stupidity does it take to presume that police, district attorneys, courts, mental institutions and government employees and contractors can do the same thing to those who already have lasting damage and not make it worse? My, how they justify and absolve themselves in their conceit and bigotry.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
It’s the death of economic hope for those on the bottom. In the old Soviet system, for example, the food harvests were constantly behind targets and needs. Conservatives here rightly pointed out that it stemmed from the lack of incentive for farmers to profit in any way from the fruits of their labors. The State owned everything they did, and paid them all the same. So why work hard if it all pays the same?
Here, it’s a little different, but too often to the same effect. Here, people on the bottom tend to be those on the dole, and all get paid the same. Here, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, conservatives have a false narrative that says anyone can work their way out of their circumstances. Instead, if someone on the dole makes too much money, the State takes back more of the dole than the value of what the person made for him or her self. Sell a tee shirt, and the State can strip or claw back ten times as much or more.
To the people on the bottom living on State’s sufferance, the difference between communist and conservative systems is merely ideological, merely words. It still strips from them the practical ability to benefit from the fruits of their own ambition and labor. Many are living so close to the bone, losing the dole would mean homelessness. So those who would really like to work their way up, losing benefits as a fraction of their profits, have to stay where they are.
Economically, it all pays the same.
Communist or conservative, the politicians might as well be talking with the same forked tongue. Both are so blinded by the holy purity of their ideologies that they can’t address any of the real problems with solutions that work to everyone’s benefit. They aren’t really Saul on the road to Damascus, they just play him in the propaganda.
And no, I don’t think liberals are that much better. They have other intellect-blinding flaws. They certainly haven’t done any better in developing a path to independence.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Some decades ago, I worked summers in more than one Arkansas chicken processing plant. Fortunately, I didn’t like chicken to begin with. Otherwise the flies, overflowing urinals and meat dropped on the floor at one of them (under the empty noses of in-plant USDA inspectors), might have put me off.
If you want to enjoy sausage, don’t watch it being made.
If you want to believe in justice, don’t read the opinions.
********
In a previous post, I missed a few of things that can get a psychiatrist in trouble. These include demonstrably driving a patient to suicide, stealing from petty cash, violating HIPPA regulations by releasing medical files to the wrong people, and bilking the government for services not rendered. The last two are the only things that ever seem to cause Federal judges and prosecutors any concern, outrage or distress. Violating HIPPA regulations by falsifying, manufacturing or suppressing medical information doesn’t appear to be a Federal concern.