This letter was written by Stan, author of Is Something Not Quite Right with Stan a mental health blog
Monday, June 14, 2010
Kendra's Law - Letter to the NY Times Editor in response to op-ed article by E Fuller Torrey
To editorial@nytimes.com
Dear Editor:
I am responding to an Op-Ed article written by E. Fuller Torrey of TAC published on May 28, 2010
I would like to reply here refuting Torrey's erroneous claims and scare tactics presented by his TAC organization, which they are using in supporting Kendra's Law, and other similar oppressive and poorly constructed laws throughout America.
Some would seriously question who this law could target, and how effective the forced treatment paradigm really is in protecting the public and those labeled mentally unstable. A more intrusive government and further reaching laws have seldom produced in actual real world results the lofty achievements they to often loudly proclaim. In reading this bill I see a lot of bureaucracy, some disturbing overreaching details, and not much comment sense.
We are a nation of laws. Yet, forcing drug treatment, and to use obligatory compliance methods/threats runs completely counter productive to taking a more effective and humane therapeutic approach toward this already stigmatized, labeled, & ostracized segment of our population.
This poorly constructed law really does open the door to lots of abuses way beyond just a few and quite rare deemed potentially dangerous mentally compromised offenders, and does very little to truly protect both the public and those suffering in emotional turmoil.
This law was based on those rare incidences of violence under taken by those few individuals under extreme mental distress (even though in the actual “Kendra” case the perpetrator was actively seeking intervention and help on his own to no avail or success prior to becoming unraveled into a violent and psychotic state which ended with tragic consequences).
We are fooling ourselves into a false sense of security/safety when we use the "Fuller Torrey" brand of fear mongering as a basis to validate forced treatment measures being burdened upon populations that are least able to legally represent themselves and their wishes. All these measures only secure into the law consequences before we even have any proof or the conviction of any actual crime being committed.
If you carefully read the bill being presented for permanent status and further extending the parameters of this law, I believe you will find some disturbing conclusions and factors written in this bill that are not based in scientific/medical fact or reality. What you will find is more intrusion into the lives of those inflicted with emotional disorders. I believe you will also find in this law an overwhelming emphasis on a forced drugging modality and long term outside control/intrusion into the lives of citizens that are only guilty of the non-crime of being at one time or another in emotional crisis, and then labeled mentally unhygienic as stated in this bill's text structure.
I will offer just two of many examples here of why we should be questioning the very foundations this bill and law are built upon.
From psychiatrist and author Dr. Danial Carlat - Carlat Psychiatry
"few laypeople realize how little we actually know about the underpinnings of [psychiatric] disorders....In virtually all of the psychiatric disorders--including depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and anxiety disorders--the shadow of our ignorance overwhelm the few dim lights of our knowledge."
"Our diagnostic process is shallow and is based on an elaborate checklist of symptoms, leading us sometimes to over-diagnose patients with disorders of questionable validity, or, conversely, to miss the underlying problems in our rush to come up with a discrete diagnostic label that will be reimbursed by the insurance company. We tend to treat all psychological problems the same way--with a pill and a few words of encouragement. Because of this rote approach to treatment, patients are often misdiagnosed and medications are over prescribed. In the end, we misserve our patients, failing to offer them psychotherapies that are sometimes more effective than drugs"
"The resulting frenzy of psychiatric diagnoses has damaged the credibility of everyone in the field."
"We like to see ourselves as neuroscientists, rationally manipulating levels of neurotransmitters like serotonin in order to get patients better. But the fact is that we have no clear evidence that chemical imbalances are at the root of any mental disorder....we don't know if changing levels of serotonin [by prescribing Zoloft or Celexa, or any other drug] is the actual curative mechanism. Nonetheless, we give patients elaborate explanations of how the drugs work chemically. It makes us feel more scientific, and gives patients a feeling of confidence in us, but it's little more than made up neurobable."
"The fact is that psychopharmacology is primarily trial and error, a kind of muddling through different candidate medications...." depending upon which company's sales rep or which academic "Hired Gun" recently made a pitch for one or another drug. Indeed, "when our most esteemed colleagues have essentially joined the marketing teams, it makes it that much harder for us to practice our craft responsibly."
And from Robert Whitaker award winning journalist and author - Mad In America - Robert Whitaker Blog
( The NY Times should as they say "Man Up" and at least review his newest book )
"Anatomy of an Epidemic"
"In this astonishing and startling book, award-winning science and history writer Robert Whitaker investigates a medical mystery: Why has the number of disabled mentally ill in the United States tripled over the past two decades? Every day, 1,100 adults and children are added to the government disability rolls because they have become newly disabled by mental illness, with this epidemic spreading most rapidly among our nation’s children. What is going on?
Anatomy of an Epidemic challenges readers to think through that question themselves. First, Whitaker investigates what is known today about the biological causes of mental disorders. Do psychiatric medications fix “chemical imbalances” in the brain, or do they, in fact, create them? Researchers spent decades studying that question, and by the late 1980s, they had their answer. Readers will be startled—and dismayed—to discover what was reported in the scientific journals.
Then comes the scientific query at the heart of this book: During the past fifty years, when investigators looked at how psychiatric drugs affected long-term outcomes, what did they find? Did they discover that the drugs help people stay well? Function better? Enjoy good physical health? Or did they find that these medications, for some paradoxical reason, increase the likelihood that people will become chronically ill, less able to function well, more prone to physical illness?
This is the first book to look at the merits of psychiatric medications through the prism of long-term results. Are long-term recovery rates higher for medicated or unmedicated schizophrenia patients? Does taking an antidepressant decrease or increase the risk that a depressed person will become disabled by the disorder? Do bipolar patients fare better today than they did forty years ago, or much worse? When the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) studied the long-term outcomes of children with ADHD, did they determine that stimulants provide any benefit?
By the end of this review of the outcomes literature, readers are certain to have a haunting question of their own: Why have the results from these long-term studies—all of which point to the same startling conclusion—been kept from the public?
In this compelling history, Whitaker also tells the personal stories of children and adults swept up in this epidemic. Finally, he reports on innovative programs of psychiatric care in Europe and the United States that are producing good long-term outcomes. Our nation has been hit by an epidemic of disabling mental illness, and yet, as Anatomy of an Epidemic reveals, the medical blueprints for curbing that epidemic have already been drawn up."
Whether you choose to agree or disagree with this law, we all should consider the far reaching ramifications of laws like this one, before pulling the permanent trigger on them.
I would hope the NY Times would want to offer a balanced approach, and allow other opinions to be expressed in their op-ed editorial columns regarding this issue.
Sincerely Yours,
Stan
---
Read the E.Fuller Torrey letter HERE, on Stan's blog.
Keep in mind that TAC only hypes the negative mental health stories, and all represented by TAC (Treatment Advocacy Center)have one-sided opinions, are pro-drug and fearmongering people who are backing a significant law, to remove rights from innocent people, civil liberties, and this broad scope of the law can apply to just about anyone who has a run in with a psychiatric ward....TAC also hypes statistics for 'dangerous mentally ill' and yet has no real statitistic to back there idea.
ASK yourself, why there was not a comment section in the NYTimes for the Torrey Opinion letter, and ask why Judith Warner's book got a review and Whitaker's didn't.Judith Warner is a NYTimes columnist, paid to write a book, and Whitaker is an award winning journalist.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment