The psychiatric protection order for the “battered mental patient”
BMJ 2003; 327 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.327.7429.1449 (Published 18 December 2003) Cite this as: BMJ 2003;327:1449
All rapid responses
The capacity for patients to individually choose their psychiatrist would help negate some of the conflicts and ethical concerns in this area.
When well, those prone to episodic illness could then negotiate a 'prospective treatment plan' with their chosen psychiatrist to cover likely scenarios, in this most nebulous of clinical areas. This would provide the opportunity for prospective informed consent, in some instances.
But we need to better inform consumers and the general public of the evidence base (or lack thereof) underpinning treatments that we offer or impose.
It is considered reasonable to therapeutically intervene in someone's best interests when they are clearly unable to make decisions - we automatically treat the unconscious woman with a hypoglycaemic episode, we resuscitate the man who collapses and arrests in the street, but what do we do if that same man has "Do Not Resuscitate" tattooed across his chest?
These are "wicked problems"(1) indeed.
1. Conklin, J. (2005). Chapter 1: Wicked Problems and Social Complexity. Dialogue Mapping: Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems: Wiley.
Competing interests: No competing interests
I had two stereotactic cingulotomies in 1990 at Massachusetts General
Hospital. I was also treated behaviorally at McLean Hospital in between,
and after, the procedures were performed. While being treated at the
mental hospital, I was subjected to four-point restraints several times.
Some of these times happened because I couldn't get out of our unit's
bathroom in the given (by the psychiatric nurse) allotment of 21/2
minutes. Some happened because, while being held in a "quiet room" on a
closed unit for a suicide attempt, I couldn't get out of the bathroom in
five minutes. Why couldn't I get out sooner,you ask? It was because of the
strong counting and touching compulsions I had. I was no longer exhibiting
suicidal behavior, and I was certainly not a stereotypical violent, crazed
mental patient.
Despite my maltreatment, I am divided on the issue of psychiatric
living wills. I think there may be times when you should be able to refuse
psychiatric treatment, such as "the McLean treatment",or the haloperidol
that was prescribed to everybody, regardless of diagnosis, in the late
1980's and early 1990's. However, if you're psychotic or suicidal, you may
not be thinking sanely enough to know that you need medication.
I've gotten one good thing out of my experiences - a deeper concern
for my fellow man, which I've already demonstrated in my work as a
caregiver for the developmentally disabled. When you see someone who you
think of as weird or abnormal, look deeper - but for a physical or mental
aberration, he or she could be you! Or, who knows - maybe you're the
weirdo.
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
Sir,
Hungarian-born Professor Szasz will perhaps allow me to comment
“through Hungarian eyes” on his article (1).
He writes that “psychiatric patients are routinely treated against
their will”, but this imposed treatment occurs less and less often and far
less as a routine measure.
I am sure the above humor was not noticed by its author, "Yes, I
still beat my spouse, but I am beating her/him less!"
Harold A. Maio
khmaio@earthlink.net
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
When Bowker says, “One could probably rate them as more rational than
blood letting and cupping!” [Bowker] one could easily countenance such an
off-the-cuff jibe with the opposing view:
"...use not to bleed much, for evils come thereof...but bloodletting
in measure, it cleareth thy thought and closeth thy bladder and tempereth
thy brain. It amendeth thine hearing, it restraineth tears, it closeth thy
maw, it defieth thy meat, it cleareth thy voice, it sharpeth thy wit, it
easeth thy womb, it gathereth thy sleep, it draweth away anguish, it
nourisheth good blood, wicked blood destroyeth and lengtheneth thy life."
[Dawson, 63]
Such a voice of pure experience with bloodletting from many centuries
ago must loudly caution us today against making too flippant a judgement
of the ancient methods, about which we are prudent not to presume too
much.
Considering that "as well as purging...bleeding was an essential of
eighteenth and nineteenth century medical practice, for all social
classes, as losing blood was considered beneficial in most medical
conditions." [Lane, 46] Blood-letting was “recommended in spring and the
beginning of September, its benefits…included sound sleep, toning up of
the spirits, calmness, and better sight and hearing.” [Porter, 116] It was
used “to sedate the demented and evacuate peccant humours.” [Porter, 127]
In the 17th century “the most common surgical procedure…was blood-
letting, often performed at the patient’s request. Galenic
medicine…[contended that] apoplexy and headache followed from excessive
build-up of blood. Venesection was the obvious corrective.” [Porter, 189]
In the 18th century, madness was treated with “blood-lettings,
emetics and violent purges to discharge toxins,” [Porter, 272] amongst
many other measures. The letting of “blood prophylactically at the
appropriate time of year,” [French, 120] was one of the commonest medical
practices throughout Europe in the medieval period, and was without doubt
“the major therapeutic technique of selective blood-letting.” [French,
175] Even when the core Galenic principles of medieval medicine began to
break up in the 17th century, in the ensuing “uncertainty, practice was
reduced to purging, bleeding and vesication.” [French, 208]
So commonplace were bleeding and purging that even playwrights could
write knowledgably about them:
Briefly to this end: we are all diseased,
And with our surfeiting and wanton hours
Have brought ourselves into a burning fever,
And we must bleed for it; of which disease
Our late king, Richard, being infected, died.
[King Henry IV, Part II Act IV, Scene I]
Bleeding and purging became the two mainstays of medical practice for
centuries:
And purge the obstructions which begin to stop
Our very veins of life.
[King Henry IV, Part II Act IV, Scene I]
I come to bring him sleep. 'Tis such as you,
That creep like shadows by him and do sigh
At each his needless heavings, such as you
Nourish the cause of his awaking: I
Do come with words as medicinal as true,
Honest as either, to purge him of that humour
That presses him from sleep.
[The Winter's Tale Act II, Scene III]
What could possibly motivate so many physicians to declare such
benefits of bleeding if it was a useless procedure? Does not this tried
and tested practice, persisting doggedly for most of two millennia,
actually comprise the longest clinical trial in medical history, involving
thousands of physicians and millions of patients? Sobering thoughts.
Regardless of the humour-expelling theory that inspired it, bleeding was
clearly an essentially empirical practice that reliably produced
beneficial results in order "to cure sometimes, to relieve often, to
comfort always," [Horrobin].
Any prolonged and sober study and reflection of the historical
literature, leaves one saddled with a strong impression that purging and
bleeding induced far greater beneficial therapeutic effects—for a whole
raft of ailments—than clinicians today [or medical historians] seem
willing to admit. Why that should be the case is, of course, another
mystery in itself.
"Bleed and Purge all Kensington!" is a phrase attributed to the
American physician Benjamin Rush, [1745-1813] who became famous for his
bleed and purge approach to medical practice.
Sources
David M Bowker, Where is the Humanity? BMJ letter, 21 Dec 2003
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/327/7429/1449#46422
William Buchan, Domestic Medicine; or, the Family Physician, 2nd
Edition, London: Balfour, Auld and Smellie, 1785
Warren R Dawson, A Leechbook of the Fifteenth Century [1443-4],
London: MacMillan, 1934
Roger French, Medicine before Science: the Business of Medicine from
the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003
D F Horrobin, The philosophical basis of peer review, and the
suppression of innovation, JAMA, 2000; 263: 1438-1441
Joan Lane, A Social History of Medicine: Health Healing and Disease
in England 1750-1950, London: Routledge, 2001
Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, a Medical History of
Humanity, New York: Norton, 1998
William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part II, 1597-8
William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, 1609
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
Experience of Truth As Power in the Reciprocity of Life and Death or
Nature's Covenant
The organic principle of reciprocity that informs ecological
relations implies mutual respect for the needs, wants and desires of self
within other, involving ongoing consensual rights and obligations, and
thereby the communal sharing of resources in order to continue
efficiently, abundantly, and reliably producing wholistic subsistence.
In an ecological cultural logic (economic, social and moral) quest
for power is a metaphor for integrity, the conceptualization (meanings,
values) of the mindful, the self-defining communal and consensual as seen
in the actions of Indigenous Hunters, whereby power is a spiritual
relationship in thought and action among many beings in which potentiality
based in principles of community, responsible autonomy, and reciprocity
becomes actuality.
In a corporatist cultural logic quest for power is a metaphor for the
conceptualization of the self-interested, the patrilineally-defining
consumerism, individualism and conflict as seen in the actions of
Corporate/State, whereby power is the political domination by force over
other to attain and maintain individual, national and global financial
control over other by ownership of resources (privatization, deregulation,
smaller government and unfettered free trade) resulting in acts of
conspiracy, piracy, tyranny and destruction leading to human rights abuses
as a result of systematic destabilization and systematic undermining of
democratic values (individually and nationally) or self-governance through
self-determination based on right of self-identity. Corporatism is a
ceaseless infliction of pain on a passive, unresisting body, Mother Earth
(air, water, soil and all life upon it), a suppurating endurance resisting
a military-industrial complex and the wealthy commercial elite.
In both the ecological and corporatism culture, the communal logic of
quest for power is a hierarchy of leaders with concepts of power dependent
on the activities of the direct participants in consort with an integrated
chain of leaders and helpers acting together. In both cases, the goal of
the good life is to exhibit one's competence, to participate in power and
to be respected by others.
The subtle, wholistic, or democratic perspective of the concept of
power or reciprocal respect for those whose self-definition is mindful,
communal and consensual, has several ecological meanings: a process of
seeking; a process of fulfillment; an expression of need, want and
desire; a continuous process of growth and maturation (self-
actualization). Independent, responsible action is conceived of as a
spiritual expression. The attainment of power is purposefully achieved
upon entering into a reciprocal, complex and moral relationship
conceptualized as gifts received and obligations incurred both inter and
intrapersonally based in mutuality. This system provides a means with
which people can fulfill their rights and responsibilities thereby
contributing to the conditions necessary for mutual survival.
The concept of a gift indicates that power is not solely the result
of the knowledge, will, and action of an individual. The most important
reasons for the gifting lie in the capability of intelligent thought and
social action relationships of the givers and the receivers. Their shared
reciprocity or giving of power are events of communication that convey
information about intentions through adaptation of one's self to what one
learns from and knows about the other. One's global perspective is
therefore volitional, habitual, but also capricious, because many
phenomena must act in concert for events to occur. Complex inter and
intrapersonal relationships constantly confirmed by everyday experience is
a metaphor for personal action applied to a complex, but understandable
world of intelligent order in the promotion of efficiency, abundance, and
reliability of resources.
The power is a coincidence between an internal state of being
(psychological) and the actualization of the positive social milieu. For
this reason, power is not an individual possession, but a participatory
gifting. Psychological (cognitive and emotional) power of truth, analogous
to gifts, with many givers, can only be actualized by sensitively
interpreting and responding to the communications and actions of the other
beings in one's environ, an ongoing process involving a delicate and
dynamic balance of health and well-being, reciprocally contributing to the
survival of other. "The aim of life is the perpetuation of an ordered,
meaningful, and bountiful world. This aim includes those now alive and
those yet to be born. The social universe thus extends beyond the human
world, beyond the temporal frame of an individual human life." The
exercise of authority in stewardship implies "a willingness to exercise
self-control and participation in a community of responsibility," thus an
obligation to protect and share the resources within an historical chain
of responsible authority. The stewards use their knowledge to direct human
consumption of the resources by suggestion and by influence. The
responsibility of each consumer is assumed, and each is given respect and
autonomy in the exercise of personal authority or self-rule.
Based on: Hunting and the Quest for Power: The James Bay Cree and
Whitemen in the 20th Century by Harvey A. Feit (A Chapter in Native
Peoples: The Canadian Experience, (2nd ed. 1995), edited by R. Bruce
Morrison and C. Roderick Wilson and published by McCelland & Stewart.
It is reprinted here (in three parts) with permission of the copyright
holders.
<http://arcticcircle.uconn.edu/HistoryCulture/Cree/Feit1/feit1.html>
See Also:
Haudenosaunee/League of the Iroquois
<http://daphne.palomar.edu/ais100/mohawk.htm>
Seneca People of the Great Hill: Keepers of the Western Door
Cayuga People of the Mucky Land: Keepers of the Pipe
Onondaga People of the Mountains: Keepers of the Fire and Wampum
Oneida People of the Standing Stone or Granite
Mohawk People of the Flint: Keepers of the Eastern Door
Tuscarora Shirt Wearing People taken in by the Oneida ca 1722
See Also:
Oneidas for Democracy
<http://www.oneidasfordemocracy.org/Weare.htm>
WOLF
Wolf is a totem symbol of nurturance.
Power in communal integrity,
Maternal care
Ecological and consensual.
Wolf's ongoing dessimation
A colonialist symbol
Consumerist conflict,
Avaricious destruction,
Individual cowardice.
Awaken to the nightmare
Fear of self-
Centred within 'other'
Exemplified individuals, indivisible.
Analyze the cannibalistic aberrancy
Acculturated
Corrupt ego-centricity.
Love of self-
Centred within 'I'
Feeding off self.
Safeguard our future(s).
Today is a shadow of yesterday,
Imprisoning tomorrow.
I support Szasz: Psychiatric Protection Order for the 'battered'
mental patient as it recognizes, acknowledges and seeks to protect my
integrity as a human 'being', i.e. to enable me to escape further
terrorist acts of conspiracy, piracy, tyranny and destruction of my
humanity, as a result of systematic destabilization and systematic
undermining of democratic values of self-governance through self-
determination based on right of self-identity, wherein the mental health
system is a mirror of the society as a whole.
Competing interests:
Psychiatric, Consumer-Survivor, X-Patient, Self-Advocate, Metis, Matriarchy
Competing interests: No competing interests
In "Civilized" society a child or a wife used to be property of the
man who had taken this wife. This man used to have the right to be abusive
and use violence in order to "discipline" his possessions. Now there are
laws against such behavior in society but when a person has been labeled
as mentally ill these laws cease to be valid.
A person can be forced on drugs which have been proven to create a
chemical imbalance and thus hurt the patient. These drugs were tested in
an endeavor to prove that they were addressing a chemical imbalance but
instead they found that they created a chemical imbalance and thus that
evidence was withheld. The only evidence that these drugs worked to create
"healing" was from the observations of the psychiatrists who decided
whether the patients behaved sanely while on them. This is the same
premise used to condone the abuse a man had the right to inflict on his
properties (his wife and his children) because after he had beaten them
senseless then they were perceived to behave in a more obedient manner.
Dendron, a nonviolent organization at www.mindfreedom.org had a
hunger strike challenging the food and drug administration to come up with
evidence that there was a chemical imbalance that needed to be addressed
with psychiatric drugs (this is their claim although the only real
evidence there is is that their drugs create a chemical imbalance which
wasn't there before that). The evidence was evaluated by a panel of
scientists. They were handed a text book used in Universities as proof but
not only did they find that the textbook didn't have proof that there was
a chemical imbalance which needed to be addressed but they found that the
text book actually supported the fact that there was no proof of a
chemical imbalance.
Competing interests:
I wouldn't want to be affiliated with Scientology just because they speak against psychiatry. You can't battle evil with evil.
Competing interests: No competing interests
Hi Roelof:
I greatly admire your stamina in clarifying the various issues involved in
the psychiatric system, the primary malaise being biopsychiatry and
behavioural psychology. I thought that I would add some of my favourite
quotes.
Frederick Douglas stated, "Power concedes nothing without a demand."
"Having therapists testify about the need for psychotherapy is about as
smart as answering an insulation ad that promises Free Analysis of Your
home’s Heating Efficiency." Margaret A. Hagen, Ph.D., Whores of the
Court—The Fraud of Psychiatric Testimony and the Rape of American Justice
(1997, ReganBooks) P. 10. From 'The American Prospect' (online): Dangerous
Medicine By Daniel W. Sigelman Issue Date: 9.23.02
<http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/17/sigelman-d.html>
Arthur Kleinman, M.D. stated, "(H)ealing has become increasingly
marginal to the West's dominant healing system." R. M. Hare stated,
"Sympathy is a vital ingredient in moral thinking, because only if we have
it can we be sure that in universalizing our moral judgments we are doing
so with an understanding of what their acceptance in cases where we were
the victims would mean for us, i.e. what it is like to be at the receiving
end." "Thirteen dangerous prescription drugs have been withdrawn from the
market in the last decade -- but not before hundreds of patients died and
thousands were injured. Yet no congressional committee has investigated
why the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved these dubious medicines
or why they were not withdrawn right away."
This is my favourite, "In the world of modern psychiatry, claims can
become truth, hopes can become achievements, and propaganda is taken as
science". Peter Breggin, Toxic Psychiatry.
"Through strong, painful impressions we capture the patient’s
attention, accustom him to unconditional obedience, and indelibly imprint
in his heart the feeling of necessity. The will of his superior must be
such a firm, immutable law for him that he will no more resist it
than he would rebel against the elements." (Johann Christian Reil, creator
of the word Psychiatry, 1810)
I wrote this one myself, "The predation of biopsychiatry and behavioural
psychology, indeed the mental health system, fully supported by the human
service sector, epitomizes the leprotic malaise inherent in the structures
of civilization, while personifying its necrotic decay within the bodies
of its victims, whose mindful energies are consumed by iatrogenic brain
injury." Katie Hill
"There are forms of alienation that are relatively strange to
statistically "normal" forms of alienation. The
"normally" alienated person, by reason of the fact that he (one) acts more
or less like everyone else, is taken to be sane. Other forms of alienation
that are out of step with the prevailing state of alienation are those
that are labeled by the "normal" majority as bad or mad...The condition of
alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one's
mind, is the condition of the normal man (individual)...Society highly
values its normal man (person). It educates children to lose themselves
and to become absurd, and thus to be normal..." R.D.Laing (parentheses
mine)
"Love and violence, properly speaking, are polar opposites. Love lets
the other be, but with affection and concern. Violence attempts to
constrain the other's freedom, to force him (one) to act in the way we
(they) desire, but with ultimate lack of concern, with indifference to the
other's own existence or destiny...We are effectively destroying ourselves
(self) by violence masquerading as love..."R.D.Laing (parentheses mine).
Competing interests:
Psychiatric, Consumer-Survivor, X-Patient Self-Advocate
Competing interests: No competing interests
I posted the following
"The psychiatrists don't really work with the reason the dopamine is
there to begin with. In fact when there are alternative methods which do
work with the natural occurrence of dopamine and the need for that
chemistry to be allowed to integrate with cognitive understanding then
these are overlooked by the mental health system because saying that there
isn't anything wrong with the mind doesn't enforce the fact that perhaps
there is something wrong with the way people judge behavior they say is
not sane."
I noticed I was trying to make a point and so in mid sentence I......
Well what did I do?
I said the following
"saying that there isn't anything wrong with the mind doesn't enforce
the fact that perhaps there is something wrong with the way people judge
behavior they say is not sane."
The point being that you can't enforce something that speaks for
itself because then you are speaking for it instead. That is the
difference between observing and judging, maybe you can become it but I
don't think you speak for it by means of enforcing it.
You see because if it doesn't enforce the fact that perhaps there is
something wrong with the way people judge behavior they say is not sane
Then it leaves it free for it to be apparent that there is something
wrong with the way people judge behavior they say is not sane!
And
I think that there is something wrong with the way people judge
behavior they say is not sane.
Especially when they force people, in the name of healing, to take
medications which are proven to create chemical imbalances and are not
proven to address chemical imbalances.
This is unscientific and unethical.
The point being that the medications disable the mind, they turn off
a basic chemical needed for thought and thus by doing this to the mind
they are trying to prevent the "patient" (unwilling victim) from finding
the path that would be natural (with the dopamine that nature creates for
a reason to help the individual). Also, so many of the different tools
that the mind uses in order to create a place where this new growth of the
individual can occur are also labeled as symptoms in order to fabricate
this device of calling what's going on a disease rather than seeing it as
a natural occurrence of chemistry for the individual. If these devices
were seen as creative tools for a person to learn how to and be able to
express what they need to express in order to understand what is going on
in their life (like we all do, everyone of us) then not only would they
not be seen as symptoms of a disease but they would be seen as tools that
life creates for growth. Hearing voices, having an imagination, being able
to believe in things unseen because they somehow how animate was going on
inside of us so that we can find out who we are. There's also the issue of
paranoia. You can teach a person not to try to build self esteem by
finding fault with the things around them. If you do this then they won't
think that they have to spend so much time finding fault with what goes on
around them that they start to fabricate unreal criticisms and unreal
faults in order to have self esteem or feel that they are part of the
system. Some people also seem to think that they have to have the right to
find fault with others and say that those people must change in order for
society to function...... This also breeds paranoia. People collectively
decide how others are supposed to behave and then when a person doesn't
adhere to these laws then one of the reactions is that they are labeled as
being mentally ill and or treated as if something is wrong with them. One
of the ways they are treated then (out of paranoia then) is that they are
told that they need to take medications or they are forced to take them.
The psychiatric community does this and the drug companies supply the
drugs. About drugs that suppress the production of dopamine for example:.
They know that the medications they use suppress the production of
dopamine but they have no proof that there was too much dopamine and this
dopamine occurs naturally, they do have proof that putting someone on
these medications that suppress dopamine creates a chemical imbalance as
well as that it changes the basic shape of parts of the mind. Suppressing
Dopamine creates a chemical imbalance rather than restoring the bodies
chemical balance yet they still do not want to take the steps that science
shows them and see that they are making the victim ill and that they are
creating harm with their judgments of a person's behavior. They do not do
this (this would point out that their judgments are paranoid or even worse
fascist), what they do instead is that they decide that, despite what
science says, that their judgments that the person is behaving insanely
and thus has an illness is more important than the rules of the whole
discipline that they follow and which would point out that they are
hurting the patient. In fact they are showing that their approach creates
an unhealthy environment for the patient, when a patient wants to get away
from this environment – the mental health profession can legally force
them to be on these medications – which have been proven to hurt them
along with the fact that the implementation of these medications in the
guise of healing shows that the mental health system actually is hurting
the patients rather than healing them. This is the same as a fascist state
where the use of force to change people's behavior to adhere to the
judgments that the fascist state makes on how they should behave is
considered appropriate.
Competing interests:
to make the device that your enemies enemy is your friend breeds hatred......
Competing interests: No competing interests
Cosgrove says the following
"psychiatrists do not work characteristically in partnership with
patients and parents.
Instead, they look for environmental reasons for the suffering of the
patient in order to conclude that the patient or parents have brought this
suffering down upon themselves. Therefore, the patient does not deserve to
receive any professional help - just blame and criticism, implied or
explicit."
Would one truly point out environmental reason for the suffering of
patients that could only help them to understand what is causing it so
that they know how to avoid such environments.........
I do not believe psychiatrists have never even really considered
environmental causes nor do they have the ability to understand such
causes. When an artist is seeking new harmony through their work in
delving into beauty and they are shedding old skins by letting go of old
patterns of behavior which then act out their last ghosts of rote
controlled behavior in various escapades which the mental health system
judges to be symptoms of a disease, consequently the poor victim (and in
this case an artist) is put in a place where they are treated as if there
is something wrong with them they are first told there is something wrong
with them analyzed in all sorts of fashions of prejudism against what the
human imagination really is (rather than imagination it's delusions rather
than voices from sources that could turn into whole enigmas of knowledge
it's schizophrenia etc. etc.,) they are put on medications which turn this
ability to have an inner world where they can learn on their own terms and
digest what they learn off and when the fears that they almost let go of
have been resurrected they are labeled as being sane and found fit to live
in the society that deems such fears more important than evolution itself
and would have prevented the human body from ever evolving were it
expected to adhere to it's limitations!
By the way there is not proof that dopamine related medication work
either at all. It would be the same as saying that when you lame a child
that it's less likely to hurt themselves by falling down when trying to
walk. The dopamine related medications turn off a basic chemical needed
for thought. The psychiatrists don't really work with the reason the
dopamine is there to begin with. In fact when there are alternative
methods which do work with the natural occurrence of dopamine and the need
for that chemistry to be allowed to integrate with cognitive understanding
then these are overlooked by the mental health system because saying that
there isn't anything wrong with the mind doesn't enforce the fact that
perhaps there is something wrong with the way people judge behavior they
say is not sane.
Perhaps they don't understand it!!!!!
But instead of even questioning this they disacknowledge the necessity of
trying methods that don't make people dependent on little pills because
that in essence challenges people to question their judgments of what is
or isn't sane because seeing something as a disease that when allowed the
space to integrate naturally with the self (as in what they say is an over
abundance of dopamine while it is a basic chemical necessary for thought)
proves it is a method of growth shows that the basic premise of judgment
for something to be bad or a disease was incorrect.
Also about Scientology, When the Cult Awareness Network listed
Scientology as being a cult Scientology repeatedly sued them causing them
to go bankrupt. Then Scientology bought the logo for the Cult Awareness
Network. Was Scientology not a cult all they would have had to do was
honestly point this out to the Cult Awareness Network.
Http://www.rickross.com/groups/newcan.html
http://www.csj.org/announce/annoucement_archives/can.html
Competing interests:
I wouldn't want Scientology representing me I consider them a cult. They have a whole history of trying to use intimidation and coercion
Competing interests: No competing interests
Re: The psychiatric protection order for the “battered mental patient”
Contrary to claims made in the responses, Szasz was an atheist who was never a member of Scientology. In a 2009 interview aired by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Szasz said the following:
"Well I got affiliated with an organisation long after I was established as a critic of psychiatry, called Citizens Commission for Human Rights, because they were then the only organisation and they still are the only organisation who had money and had some access to lawyers and were active in trying to free mental patients who were incarcerated in mental hospitals with whom there was nothing wrong, who had committed no crimes, who wanted to get out of the hospital. And that to me was a very worthwhile cause; it's still a very worthwhile cause. I no more believe in their religion or their beliefs than I believe in the beliefs of any other religion. I am an atheist, I don't believe in Christianity, in Judaism, in Islam, in Buddhism and I don't believe in Scientology. I have nothing to do with Scientology."
Competing interests: No competing interests