To: psysr-disc@yahoogroups.com
From: target@batstar.net
Date: Fri, 4 Dec 2009 11:59:45 -0800
Subject: RE: [psysr-disc] from Gec re Seattle shooting
Dfh:
Thank you very much for these comments.
The bigoted language of "psychotic people being denied care" distressed me deeply.
The extremist views promoted by the likes of E. Fuller Torrey and Sally Satel have received general support (even with micro concerns expressed) by Big Pharma advocacies such as NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) and have also been embraced politically (albeit with 'reservations') by the APA Practice Org.
"Treatment" can be a positive contribution but sometimes it can also be confounded with torture. Objectifying people and then forced treating them into "compliance" is not ethics – [here is] the
skit some of us performed at the 2007 S.F. APA.Even SAMHSA understands that madness should not be inferentially confounded with violence, and that facts don't tend to support that.
We do not need a "surge" against the "domestic terrorism" promoted by "psychotic people being denied care." Your term "re-humanize" is much more to the point, I'd say.
Andrew Phelps
who is friends with some of the activists in On Our Own of MD
Quoting Dfh:
While attempts to help people who commit crimes like this is surely worth the effort (before they commit the crime), I wonder how many of these kinds of tragedies could be avoided by really paying attention to wider societal issues in order to re-humanize our lives.
The following is anecdotal, but one example of what I mean. I had a teenage client who was referred to me for thinking/talking violent and suspicious things. Turns out he was a pretty good kid, good academics, well-behaved, and desperately trying to find girlfriends. But he was finding himself behind the puberty growth rate in a world of on-track teenage boys. He was seen as odd, quirky, and an outcast. Ridiculed constantly by his peers, and physically bullied. He also was frustrated that teachers didn't seem to care about the students who wanted to learn, and hesitated to do anything about the ones who were blatantly disruptive in class - some of the stories he told me were shocking as to just how out of control some schools are.
..
Dfh, Ph.D.
Psychologist
Waldorf, MD
Gec wrote:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/30/seattle-washington-police-gunman
According to The Guardian, the suspect in this tragedy is a paranoid schizophrenic. Thus part of the issue is "blowback" from lack effective medical care of mental patients. I wonder how much of the violent crime in the USA arises from psychotic people being denied care.