October 27, 2013

Misguided Psychiatric Boondoggle Rolls Along Taking Innocent Lives While Greedy Drug Dealing Psychiatrists Get Rich


[From article]
Mr. Chappell, a schizophrenic with a violent criminal record,
[. . .]
Mr. Chappell had stopped getting his antipsychotic injections
[. . .]
The arrests began in the summer of 2003 when Mr. Chappell, then 19, was charged with armed robbery and assault. The victim was a homeless man with $96 in his pocket. Mr. Chappell accosted the man twice, slashing his forehead the first time and then punching him in the eye, causing an injury that required surgery, according to court records. The charges were dismissed.
Mr. Chappell’s record also includes drug and alcohol charges; he was apparently drinking and smoking marijuana
[. . .]
he was also arrested several more times on assault charges, which were ultimately dismissed.
[. . .]
Dr. Marie H. Hobart, medical director of Community Healthlink in Worcester, said “In the past, D.M.H. would recognize that this is a person with schizophrenia, a condition that is ongoing and not something that can be cured.”
[. . .]
after his fifth arrest on assault charges resulted in a conviction.
That arrest occurred in November 2006 after Mr. Chappell’s stepfather, who had raised him and occasionally hired him to work construction, dismissed him from a job. Mr. Chappell, using “an unknown hard object,” responded by fracturing three bones in his stepfather’s left eye socket, a police report said. When officers arrived, the stepfather was “holding his head with a cloth and had blood running from his mouth.”
In 2007, Mr. Chappell, sentenced to a year in jail but required to serve only three months,
[. . .]
Over all, the risk of violence from people with mental disorders is considered low. But studies have shown that it can be elevated by various factors apparent in Mr. Chappell’s profile — delusions and hallucinations, a lack of treatment or failure to take medication, abuse of alcohol or drugs. The strongest predictor of violence by a mentally ill person is believed to be past violence.
[. . .]
“If providers want to leave a house unstaffed or single-staffed, they can — and they do,” said Toby Fisher, a senior field policy specialist for the Service Employees International Union, which represents many of the state’s mental health workers.
[. . .]
“The overwhelming majority of consumers are not more dangerous than the general population, although there is a very small group that does cause concern,” said Dr. Kenneth Appelbaum, a co-chairman of the task force. “How to go about addressing safety concerns without adding stigma is a challenge.”

Rising to address the panel, Laurie Martinelli, the executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Massachusetts, said the issue raised by Ms. Moulton’s case — and by the subsequent killing of a homeless shelter employee — was not whether people with mental illness were violent.
“The elephant in the room is the state mental health budget,” she said. “Did the murders have something to do with funding cutbacks?”

Maybe the murders have to do with eliminating the line between crime and psychiatry. Instead of increasing the client base for the drug dealing psychiatrists and their drug corporate mentors why not separate criminals from troubled law abiding persons? Currently all persons accused of mental illness are treated as if they are violent criminals and lose their Second Amendment rights. Nice. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/us/17MENTAL.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

A Schizophrenic, a Slain Worker, Troubling Questions
By DEBORAH SONTAG
New York Times
Published: June 16, 2011

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http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/10/weeping_mother_hears_details_of_daughter_s_slaying_at_trial

Weeping mother hears details of daughter’s slaying at trial
Saturday, October 12, 2013
By: O’ryan Johnson and Antonio Planas
Boston Herald

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