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State prison plans: mental therapy or torture?
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How the government medicalizes social problems
© 2006 by Roy Bercaw
Item: Bush plans to screen whole US population for mental illness by Jeanne Lenzer, British Medical Journal, June 19, 2006 <http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/328/7454/1458?ck=nck>
"The president's commission found that 'despite their prevalence, mental disorders often go undiagnosed . . .'" That is because all human activity is now considered to be a symptom of mental illness. Psychiatry and the drug companies treat symptoms. There is no illness behind these "symptoms."
The American government is medicalizing social problems. That is what the Nazis did in Germany. Most human rights activists recognize the abuses of Stalinist and Nazi psychiatrists. But they believe that American psychiatrists have had their genes cleansed of greed, mendacity, and sadism. That false belief is reflected in the fact that psychiatry is seldom addressed in the United States as a human rights abuse.
At Harvard University where their endowment is $26 billion, the co-chair of their human rights committee is Steven Hyman, former Director of the National Institute of Mental Health where he conducted medical research on mental patients. This is the Harvard idea of human rights activism.
The issue is not that Bush plans to do this. The drug industry and the psychiatric have control of the government and the public discourse promoting the absolute goodness of psychiatry.
Also there is no focus on the basic rights of humans, constitutional rights guaranteed to every person or citizen in the USA. The legal professionals and the law enforcement apparatus have been coopted by the same industries that control public discourse and legislation.
If Bush were not President the Democrats would permit that same screening. I do not see or hear any widespread opposition from U.S. Senators Kennedy, Kerry, Edwards, Clinton, or Reid. Where is the dynamic Howard Dean on this issue? Did he join the silent majority?
In the United States there are two U.S. laws that are not being enforced or used by alleged advocates for persons accused of psychiatric illness. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Each state also has discrimination laws that are seldom enforced for persons with disabilities in general, and almost never for persons accused of psychiatric illness.
These laws and others must be used to challenge and to fight this attempt to control all human behavior, silencing unpopular speech and actions. The U.S. Dept. of Justice reported in August 2006 (Freedom of Information Act request), that in the past five years their Civil Rights Divsion prosecuted one case on discrimination based upon psychiatric disability.