2009 Better Government Competition
Pioneer Institute



Abolish the MA Dept of Mental Health
This is a proposal to eliminate, to abolish the Massachusetts
Department of Mental Health (DMH). The arguments apply to all states and to the US Government.

* * * Legal and Moral Argument
End taxpayer funded institutionalized abuses of persons with
disabilities. Persons with disabilities are denied their
Constitutional and basic human rights every day mostly by the caring
professions, which act in the name of good or in the name of love.
There is no Constitutional provision, which denies to persons accused
of mental illness their constitutional rights, to be secure in his or
her own person, i.e., negates the notion of informed consent.
Forced treatment is unlawful. It is an abuse of 1st Amendment Rights,
14th Amendment Rights to Due Process and to Equal Protection of the
Laws, and 4th Amendment Rights.
Denying those rights based upon an allegation of disability violates
Mass General Laws Chapter 151B, the Americans with Disabilities Act of
1990, and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

* * * Public Safety Argument
Providers of goods and services for the psychiatric (mental health)
industry claim that for some (many, all?) people who take psychiatric
drugs, it is dangerous to stop taking them. Police are trained to take
a person who stopped taking his psychiatric drugs to a hospital to
coerce him or her to resume.
If stopping taking a psychiatric drug causes a person to be more
likely to be violent to himself or to others what is the benefit of
starting to take them in the first place? Under what theory of
government or medicine, are police powers used for enforcement of
diagnoses?
Psychiatric drugs help about 10 percent of the patients who take
them. But up to 60 percent of the persons who take these drugs
experience adverse effects. If they stop taking the drugs due to the
adverse effects the chemicals are known to increase the likelihood of
violence.
The Kathy Fountain show, a Tampa TV talk show, discusses chemical imbalance:
Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWE3UGl7KFk
Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzDv6Cublaw
Part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw0PxgTIT4k

* * * Economic Argument
Abolishing the DMH saves the MA taxpayer millions per year. The money
can be used to balance the state budget or to reduce taxes. Employees
at the DMH and the symbiotic providers of goods and services will be
phased out of their jobs slowly to mitigate the impact over five
years.
Human services corporations will be permitted to offer their services
to the public. But the DMH will no longer be a taxpayer-funded
lobbyist for that industry.

* * * Logical, Common Sense Argument
Psychiatrists treat illnesses that only they can see. There are no
pathologies for mental illnesses as there are for physical diseases.
Psychiatrists treat unacceptable speech and behavior. Psychiatry is
personal opinion masquerading as science. These licensed caring
professionals are unable to provide evidence of any link between
behavior and speech on the one hand and a brain malfunction on the
other. They allege a link that the obedient journalists dutifully publish.
But it cannot be substantiated.
* * *
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a4V6UEpXf_mY

Bloomberg News
6 April 2009
Grassley Probes Financing of Advocacy Group for Mental Health
By Nicole Gaouette
To contact the reporter on this story: Nicole Gaouette in Washington
at ngaouette@bloomberg.net.
* * *
The Infinite Mind Was Not Aware
PR Watch has reported previously on conflict of interest issues
surrounding psychiatrist Fred Goodwin, the former host of "The
Infinite Mind" public radio series. In his role as host of the show,
Goodwin talked up the advantages of antidepressant drugs while failing
to disclose that he had received $1.2 million in fees for giving
marketing lectures on behalf of pharmaceutical companies. After the
funding was revealed publicly, Goodwin attempted to claim that he had
informed the show's producer, Bill Lichtenstein, of his financial ties
to drugmakers (a claim initially echoed by National Public Radio's "On
the Media" show). Now Lichtenstein is claiming vindication, and NPR
has issued a retraction and public apology for its claim that
Lichtenstein knew. Goodwin has also backed away from saying that he
disclosed the payments, claiming instead that he doesn't "see these
things as a conflict of interest."
* * *
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=523895
Harvard Medical School To Reexamine Conflicts of Interest Policy
Reevaluation comes amid allegations of unreported income against three Harvard psychiatrists
Published On Monday, June 16, 2008 5:17 PM
By JUNE Q. WU
Harvard Crimson Staff Writer
* * *
List of Documents and reports of psychiatric drug abuses with links
http://ablechild.org/documents%20and%20reports.htm
* * *
[Excerpts with commentary from books re: psychiatric abuses.]
"Much of the history of psychiatric care seems to be the fearful
attempt to control people, to bring them under submission." (Michael
Herrick, Anne Marie DiGiacomo, and Scott Welsch, "The Windhorse
Project," page 174, in Peter Stastny, Peter Lehmann, Alternatives
Beyond Psychiatry. That is included in the policy of the Massachusetts
Department of Mental Health (DMH).
"Modern psychiatry, especially academic psychiatry, is one great
labeling lie. It has very little to do with the mind." (Theodor Itten,
"Psychotherapy Instead of Psychiatry? A no-brainer," page 242, in
Stastny and Lehmann)
The DMH is a lobbyist for the psychiatric industry, human services
corporations, drug companies and the academic research industry.
Psychiatric illnesses are made up by consensus, not science.
"Psychiatry [. . .] functions as an arm of social force, ultimately an
arm of the state, with state powers, police powers, real locks and
bars, drugs and torments. [It embodies] an idea, the idea that the
individual carries an invisible disease, or taint, which no pathology
can prove, but which experts can intuit and cure by force. This idea
prevails by common consent, by publicity and propaganda, by the
borrowing from the prestige of science itself and applying the force
of the state and its overwhelming armory of physical power. [. . .]
The system would not work without force. [. . .] Here the ideology is
a perversion of reason and science, the medical model of mental
illness. [. . .] The medical model [. . .] is not based upon any
reality, nor is it medical, though it uses the prestige of physical
medicine and the reality of physical disease to mystify us and to
command a general social consent, lay or legal. [. . .] our communal
faith in the existence of mental illness is completely religious and
unscientific. We believe without any proof whatsoever. Without any
evidence of what science means by illness. [. . .] In medicine, there
is no disease or illness without pathology, and pathology is something
one can see and prove. Physical medicine and science itself rest on
proof." (Kate Millet, "Legal Rights and the Mental Health System,"
Queen's Law Journal, Vol. 17, (1992), No. 1, pp. 215-223), in Peter
Stastny and Peter Lehmann, Alternatives Beyond Psychiatry, page 29)
"[T]he New York Times editorialized in 1923 that 'it is certain
that the marriage of two mental defectives ought to be prohibited.'"
("His Trust in Eugenics Is Excessive," June 19, 1923 in Robert
Whitaker, Mad in America, Page 51) Mass General Laws Chap. 207 Sec.
16, still restricts marriage rights with no objections from the DMH.
"Scorn toward the severely mentally ill [became] the foundation for
laws that curbed their right to pursue, as the declaration of
Independence once promised, life liberty and happiness." (Whitaker,
page 56) DMH officials support these laws.
NJ Urologist William J. Robinson declared of mental patients, "Such
individuals have no rights." (Daniel Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics,
University of California Press, 1985, Page 93; in Whitaker, page 58)
Today politicians, psychiatrists, journalists, and courts treat
persons accused of mental illness according to that principle. The DMH
is silent about this unlawful policy.
In 1927 the US Supreme Court in Buck v. Bell (274 US 205, in Whitaker
page 59) declared that sterilization of persons accused of mental
illness was constitutional.
Patients "were locked up in pitiful asylums, and yet they would read
in magazines and newspapers about how psychiatrists, at their annual
meetings, boasted of therapeutic advances, or about how government
agencies were working to provide better care in the mental
hospitals—it was all stuff of a societal and medical fantasy."
(Whitaker, page 71) Public deception continues in 2008.
There was nothing one could do to "prod the nation into an awareness
of the way it had been duped with the folklore about modern
institutional psychiatry." (Harold Maine, If a Man Be Mad, Doubleday,
1947; republished by Permabooks, 1952, 309)
"The atmosphere reeks with the false notion that the mentally ill are
criminals and subhumans who should be denied all human rights and
scientific medial care." (Albert Deutsch, The Shame of the States,
Harcourt Brace, 1948, 57-58; in Whitaker page 71) Not much has changed
in the public discourse and public policy especially in MA under the
influence of the DMH.
Lobotomy was the newest fad that brought substantial research funds
and advancement to the surgeons. "There was money to be earned, money
to be saved, and professional advancement to be had. [. . .] everyone
would still need to believe that that the operation benefited the
mental ill. [. . .] They framed the question of efficacy . . . in a
way that made it virtually impossible for the surgery to fail. . . .
They routinely described their patients as having no hope of getting
well again without the operation.
Surgeon Francis Grant wrote that the "life of the victim [was] little
worth living [and] can expect no relief from their misery until death
intervenes." (Jack Pressman, Last resort, Cambridge University Press,
1998, 108; in Whitaker page 131)
"This judgment of the hospitalized mentally ill . . . did fit
prevailing societal views . . . about the 'worth' of the mentally ill.
They didn't have any intrinsic value as they were. . . . any change in
behavior that resulted in the patients' becoming more manageable (or
less of a bother) could be judged as an improvement. What could be
worse than hopeless?" (Whitaker, page 131). Eugenics conception of the
mentally ill had become a baseline for perceiving frontal lobotomy as
a rousing success. [. . .] Stories of medical success have a way of
spinning out of control." (Ibid, page 132)
The very same pattern of reporting applies to this year's medical
"breakthroughs" of new psychiatric drugs. The DMH plays a major role
in perpetuating these fantasies and promoting new treatments.
"Medical therapeutics for the mentally ill [. . .] invariably reflect
underlying societal values." (Whitaker, page 136) That permits
institutionalized abuses without any scrutiny by public safety
officials.
"In [Nazi] Germany, eugenics attitudes toward the mentally ill led to
a euthanasia program. [. . .] Psychiatrists and other doctors decided
which mentally ill people needed to "relieved" of the burden of
living." (Whitaker, page 137)
"Prior to 1951, the American Medical Association had acted as a
watchdog of the drug industry. . . . distinguishing good drugs from
the bad. [. . .] The Durham-Humphrey Amendment to the Federal Food,
Drug, and Cosmetics Act of 1938 [. . .] provided doctors with a much
more privileged status within society. . . . drug companies began
showering them, and their professional organizations, with their
marketing dollars, and that flow of money changed the AMA almost
overnight. . . . The AMA dropped its critical stance toward the [drug]
industry. [. . .] In 1961 the AMA even opposed . . . a proposal to
require drugmakers to prove to the FDA that their new drugs were
effective. [. . .] the marketing machinery of pharmaceutical firms
completely altered what physicians, and the general public read about
new medications. . . . medical journals 'refused to publish articles
provided criticizing drugs and methods, lest advertising suffer. . . .
pharmaceutical companies ghostwrote many of the laudatory articles."
(Whitaker, page 148-149)
"There is a rather remarkable attitude prevalent that if a paper is
published then its contents become authoritative, even though before
publication the same contents may have been considered nonsense."
("study of Administered Prices in the Drug Industry," a report by the
Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly, reprinted as an
appendix in Morton Mintz's Therapeutic Nightmare, Houghton Mifflin,
1965, 477; in Whitaker, page 150) The same pattern of corruption of
the scientific process is reported in David Callahan's The Cheating
Culture. "While the medical journals in the 1950s may have filled up
with articles lauding the new drugs, the research behind the articles
was recognized as mostly pap." (Whitaker, page 157)
"Our perceptions of how those ill with 'schizophrenia' think, behave,
and look are all perceptions of people altered by medication, and not
by any natural course of a 'disease.'" [. . .] Schizophrenia became a
disorder defined primarily by the presence of abnormal thoughts. [. .
.] Researchers found that every single person experienced thoughts,
beliefs, moods, and fantasies that, if isolated in a mental health
interview, would support a diagnosis of mental illness. [. . .]
underlying social and political tensions [. . .] led to a relative
lack of tolerance for nonconformist behavior." (Whitaker, page 164-69)
"The evaluation of the merits of medical treatments for madness has
always been a calculation made by doctors and, to a certain extent, by
society as a whole. Does the treatment provide a method for managing
disturbed people? That is the usual bottom line. The patient's
subjective response to the treatment-—does it help the patient feel
better or think more clearly?—-simply doesn't count in that
evaluation. The 'mad,' in fact, are dismissed as unreliable
witnesses." (Whitaker, page 175)
"The drugs made people chronically ill, more prone to violence and
criminal behavior, and more socially withdrawn. [. . .] The NIMH
investigators simply couldn't conceive of the possibility that
neuroleptics were harming people. [. . .] Although the public may
think that 'crazy' people are likely to behave in violent ways, this
was not true of mental patients prior to the introduction of
neuroleptics." Violence was driven by popular medications, not the
madmen. [. . .] The blame is put on the patients and their 'disease,'
rather than on the medications. [. . .] Maintaining [the belief in
miracle psychiatric drugs] required mental juggling of the most agile
sort, and more than a little talent for self-delusion, poor science,
and—-ultimately-–outright deceit. [. . .] In a sense, the drugs were
agents that turned a normal brain into a schizophrenic one. But that
story was never told to the public. The public has been sold on a
medical paradigm of a different sort, and on August 18, 1996, a
consortium of pharmaceutical companies placed an ad in The New York
Times assuring the public that scientific studies had found that
neuroleptics worked just as promised. [. . .] This claim of efficacy
had been built upon a scientific house of cards [. . .] science of the
worst sort, and it totally misled the public about what was really
happening to drug-treated patients."(Whitaker, page 180-203)
"There was the reality that the patients experienced and the one that
we as a society believed in, and they were in dramatic conflict. [. .
.] American society had always pretty much taken for granted that it
had the right to forcibly treat the mentally ill. [. . .] Mental
patients lacked competence to consent, and—-or so the argument
went—-the state had the right, in the absence of such competence to
act as a substitute parent and determine what was best for them."
(Whitaker, page 211-212)
"Rarely has psychiatry been totally without a remedy advertised as
effective. Whether it be whipping the mentally ill, bleeding them,
making them vomit, feeding them sheep thyroids, putting them in
continuous baths, stunning them with shock therapies, or severing
their frontal lobes—-all such therapies 'worked' at one time, and
then, when a new therapy came along, they were suddenly seen in a new
light, and their shortcomings were revealed. [. . ] Behind the public
façade of medical achievement is a story of science marred by greed,
deaths, and the deliberate deception of the American public. [. . .]
In modern American psychiatry, the scientific journals had become a
place to make false claims that the FDA had explicitly banned from
advertisements as false. [. . .] Much like the academic doctors, NAMI
[National Alliance for the Mentally Ill] is also a recipient of drug
money. From 1996 to 1999, drug companies gave NAMI $11.72 million for
a 'Campaign to End Discrimination' against the mentally ill. The two
largest donors were Eli Lilly ($2.87 million) and Janssen ($2.08
million). In addition, an Eli Lilly executive was 'loaned' to NAMI in
1999 and helped the advocacy group with its 'strategic planning.'"
(Whitaker, page 253-283)
NAMI never stopped E. Fuller Torrey from issuing repeated slurs on
persons accused of mental illness. They did not stop daily accusations
of dangerousness by police, prosecutors and journalists in news
reports in media outlets. NAMI promotes drug treatment.
"Antipsychotics do not fix any known brain abnormality, nor do they
put brain chemistry back into balance. (Whitaker, page 291) A wooden
club is as effective cheaper and heals faster.
* * *
[News articles may not have reached decision makers.]
http://tmap.wordpress.com/2008/03/27/otsuka-to-pay-fine-to-resolve-abilify-marketing-probe/
Otsuka to Pay Fine to Resolve Abilify Marketing Probe
Bloomberg News
By Robert Schmidt and Beth Jinks
March 27, 2008
* * *
Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. agreed to pay $4 million to resolve U.S.
allegations it marketed the schizophrenia drug Abilify for off-label
uses in cahoots with Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., which settled in
September. [. . .]
* * *
New York Times, March 27, 2008:
"Given the fact that Alaska has fewer than 700,000 residents, and only
6,300 Medicaid patients taking Zyprexa, the $15 million payment is
larger than it first seems. But the private lawyers Alaska hired to
represent it at the trial said Wednesday that they were unhappy that
the state had agreed to settle. "The settlement was done exclusively
by the attorney general without our input," said Tommy Fibich, a
lawyer from Houston who was one of the outside attorneys hired by
Alaska.
* * *
Anchorage Daily News
State settles lawsuit Eli Lilly to pay $15 million March 27, 2008
By LISA DEMER

Just days before its case would have gone to a jury, the state settled
a lawsuit against Eli Lilly over the drug Zyprexa for $15 million in a
deal that disappointed lawyers fighting in court for the state but was
still a "good result," according to Attorney General Talis Colberg. [.
. .]
* * *
Florida State University
Study: unsubstantiated chemical imbalance theory
Tallahassee, Florida
BY JILL ELISH
March 3, 2008

The theory that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance is often
presented in the media as fact even though there is little scientific
evidence to support it. Jeffrey Lacasse, an FSU doctoral candidate and
visiting lecturer in the College of Social Work, and Jonathan Leo, a
neuroanatomy professor at Lincoln Memorial University in Tennessee,
found that reporters who included statements in news articles about
depression being caused by a chemical imbalance, or a lack of
serotonin in the brain, were unable to provide scientific evidence to
support those statements.
Lacasse and Leo spent about a year in late 2006 and 2007 monitoring
the daily news for articles that included statements about chemical
imbalances and contacting the authors to request evidence that
supported their statements. Their findings were published in the
journal Society. [. . .]
http://www.fsu.com/pages/2008/03/03/depression.html
* * *
www.southernstandard.net/news.php?viewStory=46251
Southern Standard
Cheyenne was heavily medicated - Psychiatrist testifies he prescribed
three drugs at first session
By James Clark
Feb 27, 2008

Regardless of what killed Cheyenne Delp on June 26, 2004, she was a
child under the influence of heavy medication the day she died.
The medicine Cheyenne was prescribed was so powerful, she had to
undergo an EKG to determine if her heart was healthy enough for her to
take Imipramine, a heavy duty anti-depressant. Dr. Saran Mudumbi, who
said his specialty is child psychiatry, testified Monday that he
prescribed the assortment of drugs for Cheyenne because her behavior
was out of control, according to her guardian, Sherri Mathis. [. . .]
* * *
Low Risk Patients - Heavy Drugs
State's Nursing Homes Might Be Overusing Antipsychotics
BY LISA CHEDEKEL lchedekel@courant.com
Hartford Courant
March 2, 2008
Connecticut's nursing homes dole out antipsychotic drugs to residents
who do not have psychotic disorders at one of the highest rates in the
country, raising questions about whether the medications are being
used to subdue agitated patients because of a lack of staffing and
attention to alternate treatments.
Federal data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services show
that since 2005, Connecticut has consistently ranked in the top four
states in the prevalence of antipsychotic drugs dispensed to nursing
home residents who have no psychotic or related conditions. [. . .]
* * *
By Sandra G. Boodman
Washington Post Staff Writer
January 15, 2008

Known as the transorbital or "ice pick" lobotomy, the crude and
destructive brain-scrambling operation performed on thousands of
psychiatric patients between the 1930s and 1960s was touted as a cure
for mental illness [by] Walter J. Freeman, who pioneered the operation
in 1936 while at George Washington University Hospital. [. . .]
As the riveting hour-long "American Experience" documentary "The
Lobotomist" (scheduled to air Jan. 21, 2008 at 9 p.m. on WETA and
other PBS stations) makes clear, Freeman's operation reflected the
neurologist's peculiar combination of zealotry, talent, hubris and, as
one of his trainees noted, craziness. Sometimes Freeman, who relished
putting on a show, used a carpenter's mallet instead of a surgical
hammer during demonstrations of his operation. [. . .]
* * *
guardian.co.uk
Prozac, used by 40m people, does not work say scientists. Prozac, the
bestselling antidepressant taken by 40 million people worldwide, does
not work and nor do similar drugs in the same class, according to a
major review released today. The study examined all available data on
the drugs, including results from clinical trials that the
manufacturers chose not to publish at the time. The paper, published
today in the journal PLoS (Public Library of Science) Medicine. . .
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/feb/26/mentalhealth.medicalresearch