Does The Heritage Foundation Distort Its Mission?

This is the mission statement of the Heritage Foundation,
http://www.heritage.org/about

"Founded in 1973, The Heritage Foundation is a research and educational institution—a think tank—whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.

We believe the principles and ideas of the American Founding are worth conserving and renewing. As policy entrepreneurs, we believe the most effective solutions are consistent with those ideas and principles. Our vision is to build an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish."

On July 18, 2012 the Heritage Foundation sponsored a lecture by E. Fuller Torrey, who is promoting his book, The Insanity Offense: How America’s Failure to Treat the Seriously Mentally Ill Endangers Its Citizens, which [according to Jim Gottstein, Attorney and Founder of Psychrights.org says] advocates making it even easier to lock citizens up, label and stigmatize them without legal justification, and forcibly drug them against their will ("forced treatment"). In a prior book, Torrey explicitly advocates committing perjury to accomplish these aims, noting with approval, “It would probably be difficult to find any American psychiatrist working with the mentally ill who has not, at a minimum, exaggerated the dangerousness of a mentally ill person's behavior to obtain a judicial order for commitment.”

Torrey notoriously promotes the unverified claim that mental illness causes violence. There is no causal connection between mental illness and crime or violence. Nonetheless the psychiatric industry tries to criminalize mental illness to increase its client base and to extend psychiatry into the criminal justice system. That will further corrupt the system removing any protections from government abuses from the arbitrary opinions of psychiatrists who are not held accountable for their errors in judgment or their criminal abuses.

How is that compatible with their mission statement regarding individual freedom and limited government? Psychiatry criminalizes constitutionally protected speech and behavior, which psychiatrists do not like or do not understand. They force individuals using the police power of government to take psychiatric drugs. How is that compatible with limited government, the Fourth and the Ninth Amendments? Psychiatry is the only alleged medical discipline that requires police powers to enforce diagnoses. It is the only alleged medical discipline which can force treatment without consent.

The psychiatric industry conducted a multi year PR campaign promoting the false notion of "chemical imbalance of the brain." The goal was to give psychiatry a basis in science. They alleged that pictures of brain activity were evidence of mental illness. But there is no standard for a chemical balance of the brain to measure against. It was a fantasy. When confronted by civil rights and disability rights activists the American Psychiatric Association was unable to present any evidence of their claim of a chemical imbalance of the brain. Nonetheless among the minds of civilians there are still many who believe this psychiatric fantasy.

Psychiatry uses state and US courts to deny persons accused of mental illness the basic rights guaranteed to others under the constitution. Court rules deny to persons accused of mental illness the protections afforded other parties in court proceedings. Yet the Heritage Foundation allows this self interested and self promoting psychiatrist with a history of promoting denial of rights and restricting freedom of vulnerable citizens, a forum without any opposition. Has the Heritage Foundation like the American Civil Liberties Union become an oppressive organization in the name of freedom? How shameful that psychiatrists use scholarly organizations to promote taking freedom from individuals in the name of health. Psychiatry is a system of social control with no due process protections. Nazi doctors used psychiatry to resolve what they said were public health problems. They said Jews were vermin. Nazis medicalized social problems. There is no appeal from medical diagnoses.

Psychiatry is a system of personal opinion masquerading as science. Mental illnesses are created by consensus not science. Yet judges allow their testimony in courts contrary to the requirements of case law, (KUMHO TIRE CO. V. CARMICHAEL (97-1709) 526 U.S. 137 (1999), 131 F.3d 1433, reversed.) which limits expert testimony to experts using knowledge with a high reliability factor. Personal opinion is not reliable knowledge. This is easily seen with regard to the lack of accountability of psychiatrists who err in their opinions. For every psychiatric opinion in court there is an equal and opposite opinion.

In order to maintain a rational approach to limiting psychiatric abuse The Heritage Foundation should extend an invitation to Robert Whitaker who writes about the evils of psychiatry and its irrational public policy abominations. http://robertwhitaker.org/robertwhitaker.org/Home.html

Whitaker: Stop Psychiatric Drug Abuse

http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/web/news/sevendays/25126557-35/bipolar-illness-medical-medications-mental.csp

GUEST VIEWPOINT: It’s time to end this grand experiment with psychiatric drugs

By Robert Whitaker

The Register-Guard

Appeared in print: Thursday, Aug 12, 2010

Judi Chamberlin, Mad Pride Activist Remembered

Judi Chamberlin, Mad Pride Activist Remembered


19 January 2009
USA National Public Radio (NPR) Covers Death of Judi Chamberlin

NPR aired a remembrance this morning of mad movement activist and
psychiatric survivor Judi Chamberlin, who died on 16 January 2010 at
the age of 65.

BELOW is the text from the NPR web site story, which is a little
longer than the one that aired. At BOTTOM are updates and actions you
can take.

You may listen to and comments on the NPR radio story here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122706192

~~~~~~~~~~~~

National Public Radio

January 19, 2010

Advocate For People With Mental Illnesses Dies

by JOSEPH SHAPIRO

Judi Chamberlin, who died this weekend at age 65, was a civil rights
hero from a civil rights movement you may have never heard of. She
took her inspiration from the heroes of other civil rights movements
to start something she liked to call Mad Pride — a movement for the
rights and dignity of people with mental illness.

It started in 1966, when Chamberlin was 21 years old and seeing her
doctor because she was dealing with a deep depression. "After a while,
he suggested I sign myself into a hospital because I was just not
functioning, I was so depressed. And I just thought, 'Oh a hospital's
a place where you get help.' And you know, I'd been in hospitals for
surgery and things like that, and didn't think of it as having
anything to do with your fundamental rights. So I just said, 'OK, I'll
try it.' "

Chamberlin told her story in a 2006 interview with Will Hall, host of
Madness Radio, a program by people like Chamberlin who call themselves
"psychiatric survivors."

"And very quickly, [I] found out that once you sign papers to go in on
a voluntary basis, but then you can't leave when you want to leave,
which was absolutely shocking to me," she said.
She got out of that state hospital and moved to Vancouver, British
Columbia, where she lived with other people who'd been diagnosed with
mental illness but who'd then gotten government money to develop their
own treatments. She recovered and eventually moved to Boston, where
she started working with other former American patients who wanted to
change the system. They called themselves the Mental Patients
Liberation Front.

"When I arrived at this storefront in Cambridge, Mass., I was a senior
Harvard student, had been locked up five times, so I was referred by
Harvard to volunteer there," recalls David Oaks, who came to the group
in 1976. "And I walked in, and it was a little radical ragtag group,
Mental Patients Liberation Front. And Judi was right in the thick of
folks, just really warm, community organizer."

Oaks now runs his own advocacy group, MindFreedom International.
Chamberlin was a mentor. "One thing she immediately helped teach a lot
of people was basic 101 about mental health liberation: That we're
equal; that we have rights."

Chamberlin put that basic thinking into a book called On Our Own,
which published in 1978. In it, she argued that, as she'd experienced
in Canada, just the ability to have some say in your own treatment was
a key part of making that treatment work.

Chamberlin's book became a manifesto for other patients. But it
influenced lots of people in the mental health establishment, too.
Today, notes Oaks, it's common for people with mental illness to have
a say. "Most U.S. states now have an office of mental health consumer
affairs or something to hear the voice of mental health clients," says
Oaks. "And it certainly is people like Judi that did that."

Robert Whitaker, the author of Mad in America, a history of the
treatment of people with mental illness in America, says Chamberlin
was "a seminal figure in the rise of the consumer movement." She was
able to get across the patient's point of view in a way that was
strong, but also clear. And that appealed to people in the mental
health field who were often the target of her criticism.
"Judi was fierce, incredibly fierce," says Whitaker. "And by that I
mean she knew her mind, she spoke her mind, and she didn't worry if
she offended people who were listening."

Chamberlin, he says, was irreverent, "brilliant" and "a joy to be
around." He also says she was "incredibly brave," because "it
obviously takes a lot of bravery to confront a society that's had a
different belief before."

Chamberlin told people with mental illness that they were, like
everyone else, people with quirks and differences, but with strengths
and abilities, too. She wanted people to reclaim the description "mad"
as something that was OK.

"She changed it from a word that was a pejorative word," says
Whitaker. "That was saying to the world at large: We are worthy
individuals, and our minds our worthy, and they're to be respected."
Chamberlin even used "mad pride" as her e-mail address. "And you can
see the historical echoes with 'black pride' as well," says Whitaker.
"It absolutely followed in the footsteps of the civil rights movement."

Chamberlin traveled the world as an advocate, even in the months
before her death. She worked at Boston University on mental health
issues and started a center with federal funding to support other
psychiatric survivors.

More recently, Chamberlin faced another illness: lung disease. And
last year, when her insurance company told her she'd exhausted her
hospice benefit, she faced going into a nursing home. She started a
blog she called Life as a Hospice Patient about her fight to die at
home.

Late Saturday night, she died as she wished: at home, in her favorite
chair, surrounded by friends and family.

*** Judi's friends and relatives have posted updates on Judi's hospice
blog, where you may also post remembrances and tributes:

http://judi-lifeasahospicepatient.blogspot.com

*** You may listen to the Will Hall interview in 2006 with Judi on
Madness Radio here:

http://bit.ly/madness-judi

Fumento's Two Flaws

Fumento's Two Flaws

There are two flaws in Fumento's argument about homeless people. (MICHAEL
FUMENTO, "THE HOMELESS 'VETS' WHO AREN'T," New York Post, December 18, 2007)
He suggests that "money to expand the welfare state," motivates the Homeless
Research Institute (HRI). He ignores the lobbyists for the psychiatric industry
and drug companies who are greedier than HRI. They promote psychiatric illnesses
and drug treatment for no rational reason other than profits. Psychiatry is the
greatest boondoggle in the history of man.
Mental illnesses are created by consensus, not science. (Margaret Hagan,
"Whores of the Court") Psychiatry is personal opinion masquerading as science.
Fumento's focus is misguided.
It is cheaper to put homeless people in apartments and provide them with
the substances that they abuse than it costs to let them roam the streets
committing crimes and destroying the quality of life for others. Sane people
become disoriented when they have no place to sleep and to clean themselves.
Historically poor people are most likely to be diagnosed as mentally ill.
"Asylums in the nineteenth century served as poorhouses." (Robert Whitaker, "Mad
in America," page 173)

Roy Bercaw, Editor ENOUGH ROOM

THE HOMELESS 'VETS' WHO AREN'T
New York Post
By MICHAEL FUMENTO

December 18, 2007 -- THE homeless-advocacy industry always puts the most
sympathetic face on its "clientele." It works desperately to divert attention
from alcoholics, drug users, schizophrenics, and fat panhandlers holding signs
reading: "Hungry."

And it doesn't talk about unpleasant truths like those reported by ABC's John
Stossel (viewable on YouTube) - who, after exhaustive efforts, managed to find
only one person with a sign reading "Will work for food" who would actually do
so.

Instead, advocates focus (with the media's help) on unrepresentative but
heart-tugging cases - like veterans.

Eleven years ago, I debunked a "study" claiming a third of all men in homeless
shelters were vets - noting it was based entirely on the men's own claims, and
that claiming to be a vet is a favorite panhandler ploy.

But comes now a new "study" from the Homeless Research Institute (HRI), the
research arm of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. It claims government
data show that vets are more than twice as likely to be "homeless" as non-vets -
that is, that vets make up 11 percent of the adult US population, but 26 percent
of the labeled homeless.

The 29-page report also insists it's a myth that substance abuse and/or mental
illness is at the heart of the homelessness problem; rather, it's "lack of
affordable housing." And, naturally, it's the job of an expanded government to
make that housing affordable.

HRI's claims are false on both the "veteran disparity" and the causes of
homelessness. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development, for example,
says only 18 percent of homeless are veterans (albeit based on incomplete data),
and that's down from 23 percent in 1996.

That still leaves vets seeming to be disproportionately homeless. But you have
to account for two facts: the demographics of those in homeless shelters differ
vastly from those not homeless, as do demographics of veterans and non-vets.
Most important: Among adults in homeless shelters, males outnumber females by
three to one, while females outnumber males in the general adult population. And
93 percent of all veterans are male.

So HRI didn't really measure the disparate homeless rate of vets; at best it
restated the obvious - that men are a lot more likely to be homeless than women.

On to HRI's claim for the cause of vets' homelessness - namely, that it's mainly
the non-affordability of housing.

As HRI admits, veterans generally are more educated and more employed than those
with similar demographics in the general population; they earn more, too. That
doesn't exactly explain why vets are less able to afford housing . . .

In fact, to live or work near homeless populations is to sadly observe that many
won't even avail themselves of the shelters - you see them on cold winter nights
sleeping on heating vents and covered with blankets provided by city workers who
couldn't coax them inside.

And decades of empirical research support what those of us who regularly
encounter the homeless readily observe: They aren't just like you and me, minus
a home. Their major defining features are indeed alcohol and drug abuse, along
with mental illness.

According to the Veterans Administration, 70 percent of homeless vets suffer
from alcohol- or other substance-abuse, while 45 percent are mentally ill.
Obviously, there's overlap between those groups (since they add up to 115
percent), but between them there's little room for the "non-affordable housing"
baloney.

Further, for the general homeless population, those sad figures are even higher.

Three years ago, researchers at Washington University of Medicine in St. Louis
published a paper in the American Journal of Public Health on the results of
three different studies conducted at homeless shelters (one each for 1980, 1990
and 2000). In the latest assessment, a stunning 84 percent of the homeless men
and 58 percent of the women suffered from substance abuse. Worse, 88 percent of
the men and 69 percent of the women had psychiatric disorders.

Note the far higher rates of both substance abuse and mental illness among the
men than among the women; then recall that homeless men outnumber women by three
to one. That's highly suggestive that it's the substance abuse and mental
illness that's tied to homelessness - and that men's greater rates of the former
explain why they make up most homeless.

HRI does admit that homeless vets have a high rate of psychiatric illness. But
it claims they have a special reason for mental illness: post-traumatic stress
disorder (PTSD) from their military service.

Obviously, there is some PTSD among homeless vets. Problem is, most vets served
only in peacetime. We've had 17 years of "hot wars" in the 62 years since 1945 -
and even most wartime vets never saw combat. (Another problem: Homeless vets
suffer mental illness at half the rate of the general homeless population -
strongly suggesting that PTSD is not a big factor.)

Not that HRI cares about any of this. Substance abuse and mental illness isn't
its shtick; raising "awareness" - and hence money to expand the welfare state
with more subsidized housing - is. You can count on the advocates to keep on
pursuing that agenda no matter how much it harms the homeless by removing the
focus from their real problems.

Michael Fumento is a former paratrooper who has been embedded three times in
Iraq and once in Afghanistan.