Psychiatry and your human rights

It is well documented that many people experience involuntary psychiatric treatment as an assault. Some describe it as similar to rape where the assault strikes to the core of your body, mind and soul. As with sexual assaults, our mental health system needs to respect the very basic human requirement at such times that No ! means No ! It is also well documented that many suicidal people are struggling with complex personal histories of trauma. For these people, involuntary psychiatric treatment further traumatises them, often worsening or indeed sometimes triggering suicidal feelings.

You don't actually get arrested by psychiatry because its not technically unlawful (yet) to be mentally ill. Although practically speaking, from those who have been through it, it does seem as though it is unlawful to be an apparently symptomatic and untreated mentally ill person in the united states.

What is INVOLUNTARY COMMITMENT
An unconstitutional and horrifyingly abused legal process by which-- in the absence of any illegal activity whatsoever, and on nothing more than the word of a single psychiatrist a person can be stripped of his civil rights (and gets a naked strip search) and imprisoned in a psychiatric facility, with no form of recourse whatsoever. A terrifying and destructive ordeal whose only positive effect is to inspire activism against the "The Psycho-pharmaceutical Industrial Complex".

Read about that here http://pubrecord.org/nation/7955/psychopharmaceutical-industrial-complex/


What are your constitutional rights?

The Fourth Amendment guarantees the right against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Good luck with that one.

The Fifth Amendment guarantees the right against self-incrimination, which is the well-known right to remain silent.

Not talking could be misconstrued as a "symptom of the illness".


The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to a speedy trial. Every defendant in a criminal case has a constitutional right to have the charges against him or her decided quickly so that he or she can move on with life. The Sixth Amendment also guarantees the right to a public trial and a jury trial. The right to confront witnesses, a compulsory process for obtaining witnesses, and the right to assistance of counsel are also protected by this amendment.

Jury trial ? Victims of psychiatry don't even get a public hearing, its was a back room hearing behind closed doors in the hospital for me when they were ripping of my insurance company for $1,200 a day.

See this video "Psychiatric Coercion and Restraint" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ifitvaIe7k


The Eighth Amendment protects people from cruel and unusual punishment.


Because psychiatric imprisonment and chemical rapes (coerced drugging) are "treatment" not punishment, they seem be criticized only by fellow-experts and on technical grounds, never by men as men and on grounds of justice...

On the issue of the use of the term "rape" as a analogy for what coercive psychiatrists do to you when they violate the integrity of your biology and consciousness, I think it is a cogent one. Some people find this hysterical, because their thinking starts from the premise that one means well and the other doesn't. Also, because the victim of rape is now more widely recognized as not deserving such an attack (where as the mental patient is), these assumptions inevitably color our judgments also.

Yet, in many regards what a victim of the metaphorical species of rape psychiatrists specialize in has to go through can be far worse. For one, what psychiatrists do when they forcibly drug someone, when they forcibly administer electricity, or perform brain surgery (which by the way, is making a big comeback across the globe), is an act of violence of the most despicable kind, because the permanent damage, death, disease and long-term suffering it causes, which ultimately distinguishes it from recognized acts of violence (such as beating someone up, breaking people's bones) as an act of violence several orders of magnitude above most others in terms of sheer depravity.

Also, victims of "psychiatric rape" are constantly preyed upon by their victimizers. Just when the memory of one predatory attack begins to wear off, they are then subjected to another, then another, sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks, sometimes for years, sometimes for decades, although obviously they rarely need to force their "treatments" upon you for long, because the trauma and humiliation inculcates a willingness to accept the "treatments" to avoid further humiliation and conflict.

The suffering of the victim is compounded by the fact that he/she has no legal recourse for their grievances, no hope of justice unless they take the duty of administering it upon themselves. Even in countries where there is judicial oversight, the judges are prepossessed in favor of the "expert" testimony of their oppressors.

*makes a nice job breaking it, hero joke*

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I agree. The "no mans land" of forced psychiatric treatment that denys people their fundemental rights is a big issue for me, which is why I think it is important that the underlying causes of feelings and behaviour be identified, to give us back our humanity (hint hint its not a "chemical imbalace")

We are descriminated against because there is this wackjob separation between "mental" and physical health.

Can you imagine how we would react to someone with cancer, epilepsy, AIDS or systemic Lyme being treated the way mental patients are today? Oh wait THEY WERE TREATED LIKE THAT, before it occured to mainstream medicine that there was nothing "mental" about their condition at all.

Mental illness is just a label used to treat suffering persons as second class citizens.

The two times I've been involuntarily admitted (once at 14 and another at 28), I can see why when looking back, so I don't feel violated at all. I've generally had good experiences with psychiatry, and have been in psychiatric treatment since the age of 5, except for the period of about age 18 until age 28.

beneficii wrote:The two times I've been involuntarily admitted (once at 14 and another at 28), I can see why when looking back, so I don't feel violated at all. I've generally had good experiences with psychiatry, and have been in psychiatric treatment since the age of 5, except for the period of about age 18 until age 28.

For some of us it was pretty awful , have you ever refused a medication you didn't like and had them make threats of violence (forced drugging) or what many survivors call chemical rape ?

They do that to people all the time.

Copy_Cat wrote:

beneficii wrote:The two times I've been involuntarily admitted (once at 14 and another at 28), I can see why when looking back, so I don't feel violated at all. I've generally had good experiences with psychiatry, and have been in psychiatric treatment since the age of 5, except for the period of about age 18 until age 28.

For some of us it was pretty awful , have you ever refused a medication you didn't like and had them make threats of violence (forced drugging... chemical rape) ?

They do that to people all the time.

Yes, I'm aware that some psychiatrist are jerks and some people's experiences are bad. There's a lot that can be improved in psychiatry. However, we do ask that for those of us who have done well, including me (who's dealt with severe and persistent mental illness), not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

beneficii wrote:

Copy_Cat wrote:

beneficii wrote:The two times I've been involuntarily admitted (once at 14 and another at 28), I can see why when looking back, so I don't feel violated at all. I've generally had good experiences with psychiatry, and have been in psychiatric treatment since the age of 5, except for the period of about age 18 until age 28.

For some of us it was pretty awful , have you ever refused a medication you didn't like and had them make threats of violence (forced drugging... chemical rape) ?

They do that to people all the time.

Yes, I'm aware that some psychiatrist are jerks and some people's experiences are bad. There's a lot that can be improved in psychiatry. However, we do ask that for those of us who have done well, including me (who's dealt with severe and persistent mental illness), not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Sounds good, We just trying to get cleaner bathwater (better treatment) for everyone.

Copy_Cat wrote:Although practically speaking, from those who have been through it, it does seem as though it is unlawful to be an apparently symptomatic and untreated mentally ill person in the united states.

This. People have the right to be unwell so long as they are not hurting themselves or others in my opinion. I really wish more people understood this.