Government Control Freaks Take Freedom From Advocate for Persons With Disabilities, They Discredit Her and Diminish Her Spirit

Left: Alison Hymes attends a friend's wedding in Washington in 1984. (Courtesy of Alison Hymes) Right: Hymes is seen at the entrance of Riverdale Assisted Living on Dec. 17, 2014. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post)
Contrary to its image of love and compassion, psychiatry is a means of social control with no due process protections. Among the misguided standards is if a person denies the entire concept of mental illness that too is a mental illness. Human emotions, ordinary protected speech and behavior are classified as illnesses. Using arbitrary standards psychiatrists take a person's freedom for speech and behavior which they do not like or do not understand.  

[From article]
Hymes was no ordinary patient. Before landing at Western, she spent years urging others with mental illness and their families not to let doctors, judges and social workers make decisions for them. She was part of a state task force charged with reforming civil commitment laws at the time of the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, serving alongside doctors, academics, and law enforcement officials.
The daughter of a prominent University of Virginia linguist, Hymes argued vehemently — and unsuccessfully — against loosening the state’s commitment criteria.
[. . .]
Anyone who knew Hymes from her days on the state’s commitment task force would not have recognized the timid woman in the hospital waiting room.
She had been a fixture at public meetings on mental health issues for years, with a reputation for challenging anyone, no matter how important.
[. . .]
Author Pete Earley, who served with Hymes on the state panel, described her as the loudest, fiercest voice against involuntary hospitalization and forced medication. “She wouldn’t give an inch and celebrated being an outsider,” he said. “She was relentless if you disagreed with her.”
[. . .]
Years of taking lithium had ruined Hymes’s kidneys. She was on a transplant waiting list as she served on the task force, spending much of her free time going to dialysis.
[. . .]
More significant for Hymes, the state adopted the approach to involuntary hospitalization recommended by the task force. It no longer required that people pose an “imminent danger” to themselves or others before they could be committed, but it also allowed involuntary hospitalization of those who showed a “substantial likelihood” of harm because of an inability to protect themselves from harm or to provide for their basic human needs.
[. . .]
When asked whether she was mentally ill, she replied, “I don’t really believe in mental disability.”
To clinicians, her answer was a sign of her illness, and they sent her to Western for what became a one-year stay. To her friends in what’s called “the psychiatric survivors movement,” her statement was a sign of sanity. She shared their view of involuntary hospitalization, forced medication and the use of restraints as traumatizing and a violation of civil rights. To them, she was not a patient but a political prisoner.
[. . .]
When outside pressure against her hospital commitment did not work, Hymes grew dejected. A doctor described her as “feeling hopeless and helpless” and saying, “ ‘I give up.’ ”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/she-fought-for-patients-rights-then-she-was-put-in-a-hospital-against-her-will/2015/01/31/c306f01c-a1b0-11e4-903f-9f2faf7cd9fe_story.html

She fought for patients’ rights, then she was put in a hospital against her will
By Annys Shin

January 31, 2015 at 8:15 PM

Washington Post 

Another Attempt to Curb Individual Freedom Using Arbitrary Psychiatric Diagnoses

Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, killed a soldier in Ottawa and then rampaged through Canada's parliament before being shot dead was a misfit and perhaps mentally ill, according to friends and family, while his troubled and transient past included robbery and drug offenses.

This report appears to be advocacy for the psychiatric industry. 


[From article]
Police said all three were terrorists and motivated by ideology. Authorities and family members said they may have been mentally ill. A growing body of research suggests they might well have been both.
New studies have challenged several decades of thinking that psychological problems are only a minor factor in the making of terrorists. The research has instead found a significant link between mental problems and "lone wolf" terrorism.
Friends and family frequently reveal the medical records of their family and friends. This is unlawful for medical professionals in the U.S. But since the diagnoses are from non psychiatrists why do journalists report them as if valid? That is not to say that any psychiatric diagnosis is valid. Psychiatry is personal opinion masquerading as science. There is no causal connection between an accusation of mental illness and crime. Yet journalists report the connection as real. All persons accused of mental illness are not violent. The ones who commit crimes are criminals. The others are not. It is no different than suggesting that all black people and all homosexuals are criminals. It just does not make sense. Describing a "significant link" does not make a causal connection.
[. . .]
his former lawyer said the standoff was "not a concerted terrorism event" but the work of "a damaged-goods individual."
The same can be said about all criminals, and all non criminals. Do all "damaged" people commit violent crimes?  
[. . .]
Spaaij said a number of law enforcement and intelligence agencies have shown interest in his work.
Police, spies, politicians, and psychiatrists are control freaks. Psychiatry is a means of social control with no due process protections. There is no appeal from a diagnosis. Police would love to be able to make arrests without probable cause. There are no penalties for misguided diagnoses by psychiatrists. 
[. . .]
Most people with mental health problems are neither terrorists nor violent, and mental illness alone can't explain lone wolf attackers. Some experts dispute whether there is a link at all.
No definition of "a link" is provided. What evidence is there of a causal connection between an accusation of mental illness and crime? None.
[. . .]
a psychology professor at the University of Quebec at Montreal, told the Canadian Senate's national security committee that "to believe that radicalized individuals are crazy or not playing with a full deck will be our first mistake in developing effective counterterrorism strategies."
In order to combat terror and crime it is necessary separate them from psychiatry. Criminals and terrorists must be identified, isolated and punished. Persons accused of mental illness do not get an exemption.
[. . .]
Critics say the strategy can amount to entrapment of mentally vulnerable people who wouldn't have the wherewithal to act alone.
Meanwhile, the fundamental question of whether there is a link between mental health problems and terrorism remains controversial.
It is not controversial. There is no link. No psychiatrist can provide evidence of a causal connection between crime, terrorism and mental illness. They can say there is one but they cannot provide evidence of it. For years the psychiatric industry promoted the idea of a chemical imbalance in the brain, as mental illness. But they were and are unable to provide evidence of any chemical imbalance. They can't even provide a standard for what a chemical balance is. It is propaganda. 
[. . .]
One psychiatric report found him to be insane, while a second concluded that he was sane — and judges agreed, sending him to prison indefinitely.
The killer was happy with the outcome. For Breivik, it was recognition that his views were legitimate and not those of a madman.
That is evidence of the arbitrary nature of psychiatry. They pretend to be scientific. Science does not vary based on the observer or the reporter. Nature is uniform, unlike psychiatric diagnoses. 

http://www.wral.com/can-identifying-mental-illness-stop-terror-attacks-/14281189/

Can identifying mental illness stop terror attacks?
Posted 12:33 p.m. December 15, 2014 Updated 12:37 p.m. December 15, 2014
By JILL LAWLESS
Associated Press

Arbitrary Racism

[From article]
Liberals tend to devote a significant portion of their daily lives to proving how not racist they are. One particularly expedient way of doing this is to declare that something a conservative has said or done is totally racist, and then to place oneself in opposition to the thing that was racist: “See, I’m not a racist!”

http://freebeacon.com/blog/whats-racist-whats-not-as-of-friday-oct-3-2014/

What’s Racist, What’s Not (As of Friday, Oct. 3, 2014)
Note: Will update as necessary
BY: Andrew Stiles
October 3, 2014 4:01 pm

New Loose Guidelines To Label Americans Terrorists Without Evidence

[From article]
The “March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance,” a 166-page document issued last year by the National Counterterrorism Center, spells out the government’s secret rules for putting individuals on its main terrorist database, as well as the no fly list and the selectee list, which triggers enhanced screening at airports and border crossings. The new guidelines allow individuals to be designated as representatives of terror organizations without any evidence they are actually connected to such organizations, and it gives a single White House official the unilateral authority to place entire “categories” of people the government is tracking onto the no fly and selectee lists. It broadens the authority of government officials to “nominate” people to the watchlists based on what is vaguely described as “fragmentary information.” It also allows for dead people to be watchlisted.
[. . .]
“Instead of a watchlist limited to actual, known terrorists, the government has built a vast system based on the unproven and flawed premise that it can predict if a person will commit a terrorist act in the future,” says Hina Shamsi, the head of the ACLU’s National Security Project. “On that dangerous theory, the government is secretly blacklisting people as suspected terrorists and giving them the impossible task of proving themselves innocent of a threat they haven’t carried out.” Shamsi, who reviewed the document, added, “These criteria should never have been kept secret.”

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/07/23/blacklisted/

The Secret Government Rulebook For Labeling You a Terrorist
By Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux
23 Jul 2014, 2:45 PM EDT

Secret Gov't Panel Can Order Citizen Killed

[From article]
"In an ironic turn, Obama, who ran for president denouncing predecessor George W. Bush's expansive use of executive power in his "war on terrorism," is being attacked in some quarters for using similar tactics. They include secret legal justifications and undisclosed intelligence assessments.
Liberals criticized the drone attack on an American citizen as extra-judicial murder."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/05/us-cia-killlist-idUSTRE79475C20111005

Secret panel can put Americans on "kill list'
By Mark Hosenball
Reuters
WASHINGTON
Wed Oct 5, 2011 7:59pm EDT

Obama, Holder, Arbitrary Capricious

[From article]
"As for Attorney General Eric Holder, he's insisting the bin Laden hit was "justified as an action of national self-defense" against "a lawful military target." Khalid Sheik Muhammed, the 9/11 mastermind being held at Gitmo, should be tried in a civilian courtroom, the AG believes -- but his partner-in-terror, bin Laden, was a legitimate "military target." Any doubt these guys make this stuff up as they go along?"

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/obama_the_cowboy_SuWMhYCA6IFodCa9s7wvrO

Obama the cowboy
Three cheers for unilateralism
Adam Brodsky
New York Post
Last Updated: 4:11 AM, May 9, 2011
Posted: 10:22 PM, May 8, 2011