Staff use of force on psych inpatients, what are the rules ?

Riccola wrote:If I may add, I think perhaps the best people suited for this would be media outlets? I mean think about it, not only can they conduct a legal investigations legally airing what would otherwise get people arrested, but they can reach everyone, far more than obscure You Tube videos. Media can also petition courts for freedom of information far more effectively than any individual. There is already a number of social justice movements under way in the media, psychiatry could easily be the next one.


I propose people try and get media on board. Your stories can get the ball rolling. CNN is viewed all over the world. A single story will be viewed by billions starting legit discussion giving this the attention it deserves.

Horrific stories make the news all the time and it doesn't seem to help. I even had my story in the news when I was locked up. I was on the front page of my local newspaper 3 times in one year. A couple of the articles got shortened and put in the Boston Globe too. There was no big push to change the system. And now anyone can google my name and find out that I spent 2 years locked up in a psych hospital.

People just seem to think it will never happen to them. And so many stories in the news about crazy people going on killing sprees. Best way to stop that is to drug everyone who acts a bit 'off'.

Copy_Cat wrote:I went off topic but I am still looking for any information on the rules on using force inpatient.


After it is all found I would like to organize it and put it online so it is easy for people to find.

It ok, and I think that would be an awesome idea. I've researched use of force rules in both psychiatry and law enforcement and getting an easy, accurate answer is next to impossible

Parador wrote:Horrific stories make the news all the time and it doesn't seem to help. I even had my story in the news when I was locked up. I was on the front page of my local newspaper 3 times in one year. A couple of the articles got shortened and put in the Boston Globe too. There was no big push to change the system. And now anyone can google my name and find out that I spent 2 years locked up in a psych hospital.

Let me be another person to say I am sorry that happened to you. You did not deserve it no matter how much they thought or said you did.

But, (my new viewing might be limited) I would say that psychiatric horror stories do not make mainstream news anywhere as much as police misconduct does. And even when it does, video is very rare. If more stories made it mainstream and if more legally acquired videos accompanied it a revolution soon or latter take place.

People just seem to think it will never happen to them. And so many stories in the news about crazy people going on killing sprees.

I regret to say I agree with you. The average person has a very, very limited understanding of psychiatry and thinks that the only people who become committed to institutions are stereotypical knife wielding serial killers. What few realize are that there are institutions which will do anything to fill empty beds regardless of a persons true mental state. Doctors who will make anything. Institutions who will instigate anything. Courts that can force treatment/medication with zero evidence or made up doctor testimony. Let alone laws that can mandate it even if a person is not a danger to himself or others. The average joe might make the argument 'why would institutions hospitalize/medicate sane people, they have enough crazy people do deal with'. They would because every hospital bed and every prescription filled is $$$$$. Filling beds and force medicating is easy for people who couldn't care less or enjoy it, so why would those who have the power stop something that is racking in billions a year with next to no investment and zero accountability?

Best way to stop that is to drug everyone who acts a bit 'off'.

I would disagree, thats a myth peddled by psychiatry. If you look at mass shooters roughly half were on some type of psychotropics, and some drugs like SSRIs have thousands of stories (let alone lawsuits) where people became violent or suicidal after taking them were no history existed prior. The chicken egg argument regrading this is a convincing argument made by professionals to subvert the obvious. It is psychiatry which can and sometimes does create the violence or insanity observed in the first place.

While there may be abuse at psych hospitals (I've been in lock down six times in California and never seen it happen), this would be a gross invasion of patient privacy.

constantvoyager wrote:While there may be abuse at psych hospitals (I've been in lock down six times in California and never seen it happen), this would be a gross invasion of patient privacy.

They get to violate people's rights and keep it secret because of the privacy rule. How is that fair?

According to a book in a uni library, they are allowed to use a reasonable force to make a brain damage ("provide a treatment").

On the issue of reasonable force, I remember a while ago reading some law which says when an authority commands us we are obliged to follow their instructions and that they are allowed to use a reasonable force if we don't. If I remember correctly, the law is relevant to all who act in the government capacity, thus they are delineated as government authorities, even though they are for example brain mutilators.

Reasonable force itself is debatable, and has a common practice given by the case law. But simply, if given the circumstances the use of force was unreasonable, you can complain about excessive force. If they are acting as authorities in the government capacity, i.e. they work for the government, it is the government that needs to be sued for human rights violations.

Lawyers and the government are corrupt. In medical negligence cases studied over the past several years, where up to $60,000 was awarded legal fees were higher than the awarded money, according to the book. So the money went from one charlatans to another, and the victim got nothing, and had to overpay on legal fees. The only ones who get money are law charlatans that predate on the same victims medical charlatans predate on. Get it.

In other cases where more money was awarded, law charlatans got 3/4 of it and the victim got paid 1/4. There are cases where a person represented himself and it was so complex on technicalities, like requiring an affidavit from another medical charlatan with an opinion against the accused charlatan, etc. So due to complexity the victim had the case repeatedly dismissed and it did not even come to proceeding.

Since brain mutilators, in situations they act for the government, are allowed to use a reasonable force, the onus is on the victim to prove the force was unreasonable. I cannot see successful charges of an assault / battery where brain mutilators work for the government.

Also considering their withholding of information, trickery, lying, and legal fees, law charlatans and medical charlatans only predate on people.

We must investigate them for felonies and sue, have some evidence recorded or obtained via a private investigator. And it is important to bear in mind the medical negligence law is rigged to protect medical charlatans, not the people. So, there has to be evidence of an injury beyond reasonable doubt, and it has to be caused by doing something that no other medical charlatan would do, and there has to be an "expert" in court, i.e. other medical charlatan, who will testify against the accused one, and will say he would not do this and none of his colleagues would do this. It is called the Bolam test.

It is completely corrupt. If the brain mutilator finds himself just one colleague or charlatan who will testify he would have done the same, it is being taken as a passed Bolam test, even if you had an "expert" who claimed he would not do that, and none of his colleagues would do that. So, as you see it is completely corrupt, and the government protects charlatans, and they do not care about people, and the government doesn't care about people. And law charlatans do not care about people.

All these scumbags predate on us to have our hard work, and our money, and to cripple us into passivity and brain damage with the first opportunity. It is a rigged system. They only predate on us, we are fighting clean while they are fighting dirty. That has to change. We can't be the stupid people anymore. They are killing us. We have to be the smart people and fight dirty back.

This is how we can start winning again (instead of scientology think your name):

**mod edit**

http://www.alternet.org/culture/6-insan ... ts-critics

For me, the important bit is the government allows itself to use "reasonable force", the government allows itself to mutilate brains with fraudulent and malicious intention, and the government allows itself to get away with it. For most part, the government is controlled by special interests, including medical charlatans who have big groups controlling it, and it is a lobbying and a propaganda that these special interests do. Hence I concentrate on attacking that.

And they are largely battle scarred, battle tested, getting away with semantic trickery such as to insult, discredit, brain damage, and ostracize people who misbehaved. Instead of defending or justifying, the best action is attack them, investigate their felonies, then pass them to the press, and if they sue we can prove their felonies in court, and we win, they will lose and pay.

We are free to trick them, lie to them, and discredit them. And we must do it until everybody will be so disgusted with them, that nobody will listen to their information.

At the same time we must subvert their propaganda. But lying to them and tricking them is best. Let's take them for a lunch and give them back their toxin! Or hospitals open for a lawsuit like copy_cat suggested. That would be tricking them and lying to them. Otherwise, they are tricking us and lying to us, and killing us! I can't let that happen, and I won't let that happen.

Copy_Cat wrote:I had this idea that if 2 or more people got together and got themselves admitted to an inpatient psych facility and then had a visitor sneak in a smart phone or mini DVR camera they could bait a staff member into assaulting one of them unjustly by "smarting off" or something wile the other records then take the video to a lawyer and cash in big time by suing the hospital for rights violations.

Maybe if you bought one of those spy-pens, and removed the camera from the pen and implanted it somewhere else on your body where they couldn't find during the search, you could get away with it with just 1 person. After that you can freely record the abuse that goes on in these places, then blow the whistle on them in court, and as you say -- cash in big time. Hell why stop there? Be a martyr and do it to multiple facilities

Although I think you'd have a difficult time getting a camera into there, they don't want anyone finding out about their... methods, after all.

Undercover journalist Alexander Reynolds goes inside hospital psychiatric wards to experience the life mentally ill patients endure at facilities across America.

Alexander – who previously went undercover as a prisoner at various U.S. institutions – says the two situations are not that different in many ways. “There are a lot of similarities between the prison experience and the hospitalization experience, which is akin to criminalization,” he said...

Watch the full interview for more, including the differences between American and British psychiatric facilities, and to hear about the cover story Alexander used to fool doctors and workers in the hospitals.

http://thelip.tv/episode/appalling-conditions-mistreatment-us-psych-ward-exposed-undercover-reporter/