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Are People Being Thrown In Psychiatric Wards For Their Political Views?
Many psychologists and psychiatrists are good people, who are only trying to help their patients.
But the Nazi government substantially supported psychologists … many of whom, in turn, espoused extermination of the people they considered to be “racially and cognitively compromised”.
Soviet psychiatrists famously aided Stalin in applying fake insanity diagnoses to political dissenters. The official explanation was that no sane person would declaim the Soviet government and Communism.
American psychologists created the American program of torture which was specially-crafted to produce false confessions to justify U.S. military policy. And see this.
And authoritarian American psychologists are eager to label anyone “taking a cynical stance toward politics, mistrusting authority, endorsing democratic practices, … and displaying an inquisitive, imaginative outlook” as worthy of a trip to the insane asylum. (Those traits may also get one labeled as a potential terrorist.)
As prominent forensic psychiatrist James Knoll - psychiatry professor at SUNY-Syracuse and director of a forensic fellowship program - writes in the Psychiatric Times:
When psychiatric science becomes co-opted by a political agenda, an unhealthy alliance may be created. It is science that will always be the host organism, to be taken over by political viruses…. [P]sychiatry may come to resemble a new organism entirely -- one that serves the ends of the criminal justice system.
Even psychologists with good intentions can erroneously label people delusional simply because they themselves make bad assumptions.
There is even a label for this – the “Martha Mitchell Effect” – defined as:
The process by which a psychiatrist, psychologist, or other mental health clinician mistakes the patient’s perception of real events as delusional and misdiagnoses accordingly.
The authors of a paper on this phenomenon (Bell, V., Halligan, P.W., Ellis, H.D. (2003) Beliefs About Delusions. The Psychologist, 6 (8), 418-422) conclude:
Sometimes, improbable reports are erroneously assumed to be symptoms of mental illness [due to a] failure or inability to verify whether the events have actually taken place, no matter how improbable intuitively they might appear to the busy clinician.
In other words, psychologists who haven’t taken the time to examine for themselves the claims of their patients will tend to label as delusional anything which they “intuitively” feel is improbable. As such, psychologists and psychiatrists are just as prone to acting out their irrational prejudices as anyone else … unless they take the time to investigate and educate themselves.
Governments Indefinitely Detaining Citizens In Psychiatric Wards Without Due Process of Law
As such, detention in psych wards on mere “suspicion” of posing a danger – without due process of law – is troubling.
For example, former marine Brandon Raub was just carted off and locked in a psychiatric ward for his allegedly “anti-government” Facebook posts.
AP reports today:
Police – acting under a state law that allows emergency, temporary psychiatric commitments upon the recommendation of a mental health professional – took Raub to the John Randolph Medical Center in Hopewell. He was not charged with any crime.
***
Col. Thierry Dupuis, the county police chief, said Raub was taken into custody upon the recommendation of mental health crisis intervention workers. He said the action was taken under the state’s emergency custody statute, which allows a magistrate to order the civil detention and psychiatric evaluation of a person who is considered potentially dangerous.
New York Police officer Adrian Schoolcraft was involuntarily hospitalizated in a psychiatric ward after he recorded videotapes of his fellow police officers engaging in corruption.
Claire Swinney of New Zealand was also held in a psychiatric ward and called “delusional” for criticizing the government. Susan Lindauer was held under the Patriot Act for a year at Carswell Air Force Base - where psychiatric drugs were pushed on her - after she alleged government corruption.
The Daily Mail notes:
The [British] Government has established a shadowy new national anti-terrorist unit to protect VIPs, with the power to detain suspects indefinitely using mental health laws.
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The team’s psychiatrists and psychologists then have the power to order treatment – including forcibly detaining suspects in secure psychiatric units.
Using these powers, the unit can legally detain people for an indefinite period without trial, criminal charges or even evidence of a crime being committed and with very limited rights of appeal.
Until now it has been the exclusive decision of doctors and mental health professionals to determine if someone should be forcibly detained.
But the new unit uses the police to identify suspects – increasing fears the line is being blurred between criminal investigation and doctors’ clinical decisions.
***
Scotland Yard, which runs the shadowy unit, refuses to discuss how many suspects have been forcibly hospitalised by the team because of “patient confidentiality”.
***
The purpose of the centre is “to evaluate and manage the risk posed to prominent people by…those who engage in inappropriate or threatening communications or behaviours in the context of abnormally intense preoccupations, many [Many? That means that some are not] of which arise from psychotic illness.”
Who gets to decide what “inappropriate” or “threatening” means? What if a whistleblower has information that a member of parliament has engaged in bribes? Would trying to reveal such information constitute “inappropriate or threatening communications or behaviours” in the context of “abnormally intense preoccupations” with that MP’s illegal actions?
Indeed, a study published in the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry found a high rate of false positives in the British identification of dangerous persons.
The Mail continues:
So-called ‘sectioning’ allows a patient to be held for up to six months before a further psychological assessment. Patients are then reviewed every year to determine if they can be released.
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Human rights activists fear the team, whose existence has never been publicised, may be being used as a way to detain suspected terrorists without having to put evidence before the courts.
***
Last night human rights group Liberty said the secret unit represented a new threat to civil liberties.
Policy director Gareth Crossman said: “There is a grave danger of this being used to deal with people where there is insufficient evidence for a criminal prosecution.
“This blurs the line between medical decisions and police actions. If you are going to allow doctors to take people’s liberty away, they have to be independent. That credibility is undermined when the doctors are part of the same team as the police.
“This raises serious concerns. First that you have a unit that allows police investigation to lead directly to people being sectioned without any kind of criminal proceedings.
“Secondly, it is being done under the umbrella of anti-terrorism at a time when the Government is looking at ways to detain terrorists without putting them on trial.”
***
The team examined thousands of cases and liaised with the FBI, the US Secret Service, the Capitol Hill Police, which protects Congressmen and Senators, and the Swedish and Norwegian secret services.
***
Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: “The Government is trying to bring in a wider definition of mental disorder and is resisting exclusions which ensure that people cannot be treated as mentally disordered on the grounds of their cultural, political or religious beliefs.
“When you hear they are also setting up something like this police unit, it raises questions about quite what their intentions are.
“The use of mental health powers of detention should be confined to the purposes of treatment. But the Government wants to be able to detain someone who is mentally disordered even when the treatment would have no benefit.
“Combined with the idea that someone could be classed as mentally ill on the grounds of their religious beliefs, it is a very worrying scenario.”
Indeed, the whole “indefinite detention” process (which Americans living on American soil are subject to) can be based on circular reasoning:
The government’s indefinite detention policy – stripped of it’s spin – is literally insane, and based on circular reasoning. Stripped of p.r., this is the actual policy:
- If you are an enemy combatant or a threat to national security, we will detain you indefinitely until the war is over
- It is a perpetual war, which will never be over
- Neither you or your lawyers have a right to see the evidence against you, nor to face your accusers
- But trust us, we know you are an enemy combatant and a threat to national security
- We may torture you (and try to cover up the fact that you were tortured), because you are an enemy combatant, and so basic rights of a prisoner guaranteed by the Geneva Convention don’t apply to you
- Since you admitted that you’re a bad guy (while trying to tell us whatever you think we want to hear to make the torture stop), it proves that we should hold you in indefinite detention
See how that works?
This is an analogy. We are not accusing psych wards of using torture. However, they do often use powerful psychiatric drugs on patients … which can elicit false confessions.
Are we going to slide into Soviet levels of psychiatric detention of political dissidents? Unless the spread of psychiatric detention without due process of law is checked, the mere belief that the government is interfering with your liberty may become grounds for locking you away.
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And yet they allowed him a radio interview I heard today. Sounded totally calm and collected to me.
Better living through chemistry.
yeah that just dropped
so its very clear whats going down
After speaking with Brandon’s brother, Brent Raub, supporter Brian Smith shared concerns amongst those following the case that the former Marine is being ‘disappeared’ by the government as controversy surrounding the incident continues to snowball.
Smith added that if more people don’t come to Raub’s aid in publicizing his mistreatment, authorities are more likely to “make him disappear or to “zombify Brandon”.
Renditioned, is more like it. Those motherfuckers don't want a shit storm so close to DC. I hope that his supporters will follow him along with as many cameras as they can attract. The cockroaches don't like to have the light shined on them.
As a long time Ron Paul supporter, it sure would be nice to see Dr. Paul do something to bring a national spotlight on this case. I know he is about to retire for politics, but for once it would be nice to see him rally his troops in the defense of freedom of speech and dissent.
by the time they came for me there was no one left to stand up
sad that this is what it takes for most people to even look at the architecture of the prison planet being constructed around them, sadder yet imo that those who see it are still nascent as a culture
we have to get past producing lists of offences, we need our own philosophy, music, culture - its like were stuck in a position of having to wake up other people and the only mechanism is to map out the tyranny - but people are so demoralized (a la Bezemenov's analysis) that even a binary proof, black and white, in front of their faces cannot be processed logically.
this is tyranny plain and simple
its like being in nazi germany in 1929, we have to stop trying to convict the various hitlers they trot out and deconstructing enemy operations so much - form our own breakaway civilization
at the very least such analysis needs a stronger tone, there is no question about what is going on - why is it still couched as if there were yet some debate
Only much more quickly this time. This will happen in a matter of weeks. The first time failed, they leared.
It is time for us to separate ourselves - completely - from an utterly corrupt system, and start building afresh.
Fuck the system. We can do better. MUCH better.
We can start with the six inches between our ears.
OK. I shot my psychiatrist. He's not going to lock me up.
That's funny. LOL.
remember when they burned a church full of people to death and the plebs were like "yeah get those religious nuts"
i like how were still so unsure of ourselves we have to ask questions and produce litanies, its cute - but cute isnt going to cut it.
lets stop playing around here gentlemen, this isnt a theoretical model, the new world order is on your front porch soft killing you slowly and you cant even ask me, 12 pitchers of beer and you still cant ask me
how are we not already there? lol
in this crazy world surrounded by insanity, psychiatric ward is for the sane people.
when you get old you will appreciate solitude from insanity that is all around us today.
people in 1800s thought automation agriculture would make sure nobody is starving.
what they didnt' realize is that people also care and enforce and kill each other for relative rankings.
the grand monopoly board (take on brezinskis chess board analogy)
to hell with making clear, concise statements that point the way forward like aximoatic cannon fire
move foreground objects around and regurgitate analysis in novel ways if you want the plebs to stand up on their hind legs
cut through the gordian knot and they snicker - shave at the problem with a pocket knife and you are a hero
Re Are People Being Thrown In Psychiatric Wards For Their Political Views?
Throwing those guilty of Thought-Crime or Wrong-Speak into Psychiactric Institutions was common practice in the USSR.
Why should the latest Bolshevik incarnation - the USSA - be any different?
thought crime is death
"When psychiatric science becomes co-opted by a political agenda, an unhealthy alliance may be created.
In a general context:
"When ANY FUCKING THING becomes co-opted by a political agenda, an unhealthy alliance IS created."
It's a damn shame we're all hosts to this parasite now, by necessity and design.
The ghost(s) of George Carlin 2012 and Smedley Butler 2012!
"And authoritarian American psychologists are eager to label anyone “taking a >>>cynical<<< stance toward politics, mistrusting authority, endorsing democratic practices, … and displaying an inquisitive, imaginative outlook” as worthy of a trip to the insane asylum. (Those traits may also get one labeled as a potential terrorist.)"
;-)
That's a rather cynical perspecitve...
Well, that's because cnycism is cowardice.
I read it on the internets, so it must be true.
lol...stuck the landin_.
however, I'm optimistic I'll have a new laptop by the weekend, if Fed Ex doesn't stop at every titty bar between here and Atlanta...which a cynic would say is very probable ;-)
Oddly the murdering psychiatrist at Fort Hood, though showing signs of over the years of siding with muslim extremist was not only allowed to continue seeing patients but was continuously promoted up the military ranks. Things that make you go Hmmm....
Yes, but he was on the bad guys' side!
Can't have a War on Terror without actual terrorists ...
Even things that make you go Hmmm... can get you a thumbs down. The thought police are even patrolling ZH.
It's an old Soviet tactic for those of you too young to remember. Ask those old enough to have lived under the communists, you'll find "psychiatry" has a VERY different meaning to them.
You are right. In the communist block, psychiatry was practiced by medical professionals with Dr. Josef Mengele mindset.
The next step in enforcement. Take away freedom and liberty because someone with 'authority' "says" a person is a threat to themselves or someone else.
This is the perfect personal protection scheme which can be targetted on anyone at anytime, for any reason that has nothing to do with enforcing laws, but in punishing people before ANY law has been broken.
It really is amazing how far we have fallen when we can just round people up on the streets, put labels on them w/o so much as a hearing, much less an appeal, and then dump them in black hole institutions for doing absolutely nothing, except being unemployed, breathing, and being there when the 'law enforcement' (ahem civil rights removal teams) arrive.
Sounds like we have a perfect story line for a mini-series - Legally kidnapped and tortured in America - you could be next.
At this rate anyone who stands up to protest anything is likely to find themselves in a straight jacket after some electroshock therapy, dosed up with lithium, and a confession dvd straped to their chests. Wow.
End of Line
I don't know about you, comrades, but I Love Big Brother.
Precogs pointing the finger at you for pre-crimes?
Facebook's new facial recognition app:
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/08/14/app-on-facebook-uses-facial-...
TrapWire
http://www.govtech.com/public-safety/Wikileaks-Exposes-TrapWire-Spy-Netw...
Holy Shit:
The TrapWire system is billed as an anti-terrorism measure and has received legal liability protections through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's SAFETY Act.
TrapWire is a unique, predictive software system designed to detect patterns indicative of terrorist attacks or criminal operations,” the TrapWire website reads. “Utilizing a proprietary, rules-based engine, TrapWire detects, analyzes and alerts on suspicious events as they are collected over periods of time and across multiple locations. Through the systematic capture of these pre-attack indicators, terrorist or criminal surveillance and pre-attack planning operations can be identified -- and appropriate law enforcement counter measures employed ahead of the attack. As such, our clients are provided with the ability to prevent the terrorist or criminal event, rather than simply mitigate damage or loss of life.”
Anonymous don't likey:
http://remainanonymous.org/2012/08/12/anonymous-operation-trapwire-press...
I read his entire facebook page and he was testing the system...The system is a POS...They fell for it...
Your first amendment "rights" are just in your imagination...This marine just taught you a lesson.
Now learn or be confused...
so enlighten us plz.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/protesters-rally-for-former-marine-and-9...
Go to the bottom..."the revolution will come for me" "they will be at my door soon"
Brother Nathaniel will enlighten you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjeLTiotn8M&feature=channel&list=UL
The authorities did not really want to put Brandon Raub in a psychiatric facility. What they really wanted to do was send a message out to all the other Brandon Raubs of this world.
yup. Pavlov strikes again...
A few months ago we were making jokes about this. Not laughing now because shit just got real.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RA-7W9DG5Y&feature=youtube_gdata_player
"... give me liberty or give me death."
Patrick Henry March 23, 1775
...it looks to me like tyranny is back.
The authorities are intellectually bankrupt and terribly corrupt. So, nobody really knows what to expect from them.
Things can easily go out of control at any moment.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
Now back to sharpening my axe.....
They wanted both...
Dup
This guy Brandon Raub said enough stuff on his facebook page, i'm not surprised he was questioned.
Change your mame to PatC, Patb.
Questioning and indefinite detention are the same just like blueberry pancakes and pocket lint are the same.
Please share some of the things that Raub said if you wouldn't mind. I also might not be surprised that he was questioned. But regardless, you should be appalled that he is still being held against his will in a psychiatric ward FOR.A.FACEBOOK.COMMENT. Seriously, wtf?
If you threaten someone with bodily harm then you have some questions to answer and perhaps charges to face. If you rant against the government in general for any fucking reason, whether you're mad as a hatter or not, it's none of the government's business. None, period, full stop.
Remember, first they came for the anti-government crazies on Facebook. Where are you on the list and will anyone give a shit when you get carted off?
Then they came for the Zero Hedge troublemakers.....
This entire episode is appalling...welcome to the NDAA indefinite detention.