Massachusetts has a budget deficit.

For the fiscal year 2005, the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health (DMH) gets $594,558,781.

What is its mission, its reason for being, and its effectiveness? What are the assumptions of psychiatry, and the rational basis for having a state agency focused on one type of illness?

What does the DMH do? The Mass. General Laws states, "The Department shall take cognizance of all matters affecting the mental health of the citizens of the commonwealth; provided, that the primary mission of the department shall be to provide for services to citizens with long-term or serious mental illness, early and ongoing treatment for mental illness, and research into the causes of mental illness."

But what is mental health? What is mental illness? Why does the state promote psychiatry? Why not focus on broken limbs or rashes? Does the reason have anything to do with stigma toward a person accused of psychiatric illness?

How does the DMH treat such stigma? Does the DMH protect the integrity of its clients or patients? In what way does the DMH protect vulnerable citizens? Vulnerable people seldom enjoy the same rights, privileges and protections as other citizens. The DMH has a Human Rights Officer.

She refers persons to other agencies—the Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee; The Disability Law Center; The Disabled Persons Protection Commission; and The Disability Rights Project of the Attorney General.

A woman called me one Saturday morning saying she was being held at Mass. General Hospital’s psych unit against her will.

After two hours I located the admitting psychiatrist. I asked why she admitted the woman. The psychiatrist asked, "Have you ever spoken with her daughter?" I said I had not.

I asked if the woman had harmed or threatened to harm her, any property or another person? The psychiatrist said she hadn’t. I asked again why she admitted the woman.

I read to her the statute, including the words, "a likelihood of serious harm." The psychiatrist hung up the phone. The psychiatrist had placed the woman in a hospital because of speech that she did not like or understand.

The next Monday I called the Mental Health Legal Advisor’s Committee. The Executive Director said, "They do that." I thought, "That is his reaction? He was unconcerned that a woman was held contrary to law?"

It is difficult to determine what mental illness is. Historically mental illness is behavior offensive to the ruling class.

Philosopher of science Karl Popper concluded that genuinely scientific theories must be "falsifiable"—formulated in such a way that if they are wrong, they can be proven false through experiments.

Judged by this standard, many of the "social sciences"—including the psychoanalytical theories of Freud, Jung, and others—are actually pseudosciences. (Sheldon Rampton, John Stauber, Trust Us, We’re Experts) Fashionable pseudoscientists say that psychiatric illness is a "chemical imbalance" of the brain.

Photographs, images of the brain, are passed off as chemical analysis. But even if they did actually test brain matter chemically, what is a chemical "balance" for the brain? This does not exist. The "chemical imbalance" is a fantasy.

In 2004 a group of advocates held a hunger strike when the American Psychiatric Association refused to provide evidence for such a "chemical imbalance."

Drugs meant to heal such a "chemical imbalance" may instead cause violence.

A Florida man was charged with attempted second-degree murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, firing a weapon into a dwelling and resisting an officer with violence and battery. His public defender "argued that [the man] was insane at the time of the crime because he was ‘involuntarily intoxicated’ by an adverse reaction to a prescribed anti-depressant." (Charlotte Harbor, FL Sun-Herald, 4/5/05)

The DMH is silent on this growing threat to citizens from anti-depressants.

Criminal psychiatrists treated a Massachusetts man without consent, and without a court order. They conducted a behavior-conditioning project for ten years.

To no avail, the man complained to the US taxpayer funded office PAIMI (Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness—until 2003 it was the Center for Public Representation).

Currently the Disability Law Center (DLC) is the Governor’s designee for those funds.

The Coalition for the Legal Rights of the Disabled is a Boston advocates’ group. Some of its members receive state funds to provide services to persons with disabilities. Others are state employees. The group’s focus is to get more funding for more treatment.

During budget discussions at the State House, providers of services exploit discrimination toward persons with disabilities. They speak of "the (non-existent) right to treatment."

The rest of the year they are silent about discrimination toward persons with disabilities. Along with treatment without consent, there is a growing lucrative business using humans for experiments.

The DMH is charged by law to conduct research. It is difficult to learn the extent of human experimentation by the DMH. Laws protecting humans are weak. They carry no penalties for non-compliance. Animals sometimes have more protections from research abuses than humans. "Clinical drug trials are now one of the most ethically compromised areas of medicine." (The Cheating Culture, David Callahan)

In a letter to the Boston Globe (11/29/98), Melvin Brownstein, wrote, "My son spent 13 months as a research subject at the National Institute on Mental Illness (sic). The day that he checked in, very sick, he was presented with a volume of protocols that he was asked to sign.

Neither the doctor nor the nurse who were present made any effort to explain the meaning, the purpose, or the possible side effects of the protocols. "This is a population that does not have any power nor spokespeople in positions of power."

In his essay, "Atomic Guinea Pigs,"(NYTimes Magazine, 8/31/97), Michael D’Antonio reported on the illegal radiation experiments conducted from 1944 to 1974 at MIT for Quaker Oats on students at the Fernald School in Waltham. He later wrote a book about the students called, State Boys Rebellion.

Some students learned what MIT was doing to them. The bureaucrats at the US Department of Energy referred to them as "the crazies."

Few psychiatrists take time to learn about their patients. Prescribing medication is faster and often eliminates the symptoms. Psychiatrists claim to treat illnesses, but they actually treat symptoms — speech, behavior and thoughts.

Do drugs solve human problems? Or are they simply a means of keeping people silent and docile? Psychiatric illnesses are identified by their symptoms—speech, thoughts, or behavior. Unlike broken legs or rashes, psychiatric illnesses are never cured.

In her Whores of the Court, B.U. Psychology Professor Margaret Hagen reveals how psychiatric illnesses are created by consensus.

The illnesses are not determined by science, but by personal opinions.

"Nowhere in the [professional handbook] DSM-IV is a state of sanity defined or described." (L.J. Davis, Harpers Magazine, February 1997)

David Rosenhan conducted an experiment with psychiatrists. He concluded, "It is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals." ("On being sane in insane places." Science, 179, 250-258)

Graduate students checked into a hospital, saying they heard voices. Persons accused of psychiatric illness are never believed. Except when they say they hear voices. The DMH lobbies for the psychiatric and the pharmaceutical industries.

The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and the DMH promote treatment and more funding for more treatment. Neither the DMH nor NAMI protect citizens from abusive treatment. Massachusetts taxpayers fund delivery of psychiatric drugs to homeless persons.

Who creates this priority? The drug companies make campaign contributions to state and US legislators. "It is simply understood that long-term relationships between lobbyists and staffers determine who gets what in Washington, and that gifts are a means of establishing those relationships." (Michael Lind, Harper’s Magazine, August 1998).

In The Truth about Drug Companies, Marcia Angell says that the US Congress is learning about drug company abuses; so the corporations are focusing their efforts at the state level.

When I expressed to her my concerns about the dubious nature of competency evaluations, a DMH forensic psychologist called me a moron.. She said, "Those people would get killed if they were put in jail. They cannot defend themselves."

The public discourse on psychiatry is controlled by the psychiatric industry and the pharmaceutical industry. They employ public relations firms and make substantial contributions to political campaigns.

Most persons with disabilities are unable to lobby their legislators. Corporate providers tell the legislators what they need. Ahem!

In 2004 the New York Attorney General sued the makers of the psychiatric drug Paxil, GlaxoSmithKline. He charged the drug company with knowingly withholding information that Paxil "increased risk of suicidal thoughts," in children. (Dareh Gregorian, NYPost, 6/11/04). The DMH remains silent on dangerous drugs.

Psychiatry is a means of social control without due process protections. It masquerades as a scientific healing practice. Psychiatry forced on prisoners is punishment not treatment. Psychiatric illnesses are criminalized.

There are no protections from psychiatric abuses of prisoners. Legal aid lawyers are trained in criminal law, or in mental health law, but not both.

Competency evaluations are a lucrative business, wasting taxpayer funds. Competency to stand trial has a low threshold. It requires a person accused of crime to know what a courthouse is, what a lawyer is, and what a judge is. It takes about five minutes.

Judges regularly grant lawyers requests for evaluations at a hospital. Suspects can be held for 20 days. The court may grant a second 20 days. But the legal maximum is 40 days.

Yet a Cambridge man was held for 78 days contrary to law. The assigned lawyers were incompetent, and did not object to this abuse of process. It is one of many common taxpayer-funded legal abuses of persons accused of psychiatric illness. State agencies do not remedy abuses of criminal process. Local commissions for persons with disabilities ignore psychiatric abuses.

They focus on the rights of persons with physical disabilities. Members of NAMI are on such boards. Drug companies give NAMI about $3 million a year to do anti-stigma work. (Greg Birnbaum, NYPost, 2/28/99) NAMI uses the money to promote treatment, saying denying treatment is discrimination.

The Cambridge Health Alliance delivers psychiatric services "coordinated with the Cambridge Police."

The DMH should be eliminated. This can be done over a period, not to exceed five years in order to mitigate the effects of eliminating jobs.

Some resistance will be heard from persons who want to take psychiatric drugs. They will be free to obtain them from someplace other than a state agency.