Mental Illness Criminalized

Hi Cytizen H.  Good to see you back.

Thanks!

Bluidy stupid ignorant anti-democratic bourgeois bastards. Law enforcement in this province, from McGuinty (most boring human being on the planet) on down is in the hands of bluidy stupid ignorant anti-democratic bourgeois bastards.

Set that man free. What an appalling, disgusting abuse of his rights as a citizen, by twits whose thought doesn't go much deeper than table manners.

And if I get really mad about this, I may say more. Gah!

this is heartbreaking, especially with a couple of family members who suffered from mental illness.  he did nothing wrong, and he has had his freedom "revoked" since the g20, which is insane since there is really no charge against him.  Also, that he has suffered a pretty brutal beating while in jail....this could be anyone's grandpa.

i hope he sues and gets a settlement.

I think the point, Snert, is not that McCullogh is harmless, but that the reason he feels the need to drive around with a crossbow is tightly tied to his mental illness, which is not being considered wrt his detention. We might start by asking where is the institutional and community support for this individual, why no one was monitoring his potentially dangerous behaviour, and why, now that the facts have come to light, the police still insist on treating him like a run-of-the-mill criminal, rather than someone living with a mental illness.

Yeah-- he is in a jail not a hospital.

There is not any good explanation for this treatment.

apparently in Ontario, but then they put up with everything.

Strange syntax in this paragraph. Is the prosecutor agreeing MCCullogh is being treated differnetly because of his medical condition?

Enright, the prosecutor, is cautious about whether McCullough's mental health played a role in the decision to deny bail: "I cannot say whether it was determinative," he said. "Do we treat mentally disordered offenders differently than those who aren't? Well, you look at all the circumstances - it's unfair to try to pigeonhole Crown decisions. Yes, I guess."

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/08/22/g20-mccullough-crossbow-jail.html#ixzz0yIiHgsyc

I already sleep OK knowing that when someone is pulled over with a restricted weapon — one that basically amounts to a silent rifle — they're not just sent on their merry way.

The only question is what to do with them, evidently.

I think the whole thing is a bit big for one guy to have all the answers.

Ah.  My bad... and Ontario's, IMHO.  My first exposure to the lethality of them was many years ago, when a man in (I believe) Ottawa used one to murder his ex in broad daylight.  Huh.

There isn't a point. A man who has been previously diagnosed, and had some trouble with some neighbours, who had his own property damaged (apparently anonymously by said neighbours) has been ensnared in the G20 trap carrying various common construction items and one non-restricted weapon. His previous problems were dealt with in court mandated treatement and he was released. The issue with his neighbours has not recurred apparently. He did nothing illegal to warrent further suspension of his civil liberties, because he did nothing at all wrong, up to and including driving on the streets of Toronto during the G20.

You guys think it is just AOK for the police to put keep people in the slammer because once upon a time they were diagonosed by the psychiatric community, even though they have done absolutely nothing illegal.

God, Snert, but you scare me.

For unrelated reasons, facts about this guy's private life have become public in the past and are being repeated now. So now breathless gossips are saying, "Gee, maybe he's not harmless!"

So gosh, Snert, I'm going to scare you now. There are a lot of people -- the vast majority, in fact -- whose private lives have yet to be fingered over in public. What were we thinking?!? Can all of them be harmless? Clearly not! Let's start checking out everyone! Default presumption: you might not be harmless! Do you see where this is going, Snert?

Yes, you're both right!  I want to do deep background checks on everyone!  I want to lock up the whole country.

Can "rabble" be a verb?  As in "I think I just got rabbled"?  Anyway, fair enough.  Let him go free, and give him his silent rifle back, too.  For the bears and the raccoons and such. 

Can I assume you both oppose the long gun registry, too?  Somehow I doubt it.  Security, and all that.

"Vaguely disturbing" is the phrase Snert used to justify McCullough's continuing incarceration.

I am aware of that, Cueball. Still, you are too kind. Snert's type of rationalization is all too familiar to require any vagueness in my books.

Actually, what I said was:

But nevermind that. Now I understand he fires the crossbow in the air to scare off bears. And the aluminum baseball bat is just a prized personal possession. So it's all good.

Thank you, Maysie.

I'd like to add one thing about Gary McCullough's situation, from personal experience.

A relative of mine(I'd rather not specify the relationship) was diagnosed, in the early 1960's, as being paranoid schizophrenic.  Later, I learned from ANOTHER relative that, at that time, this diagnosis was kind of meaningless...it was what the shrinks labelled you as if they didn't know what the hell was actually going on in your head.  If that is STILL the case with that diagnosis, it's also possible, if not probable, that McCullough is being given the wrong medications or the wrong course of therapy, which will of course be making his situation far worse.  His counsel in the case should bring this up in the pre-trial proceedings.

Has there been any explanation as to WHY they didn't have him kept in a mental health facility, rather than a general inmate population?

Is the Crown refusing to accept that McCullough has mental health issues?

Sadly, these opinion's, like Snert's remain.  And he's in the majority, make no mistake about it.  Their's a real war on.  Classs vs Class.  Fools, if we don't see it.  I, like many others, I'm sure, have had some brief experiences where "doctors" have diagnosed them.  "paranoid schizophrenic"?  "bi-polar"?  These diagnoses are short cuts.  A mentally ill dude got smoked by the cops the other night even though his parents tried to call for help.

Shame on us all.

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/854757--police-knew-of-mental-illness-before-fatal-shooting-family-says

Yeah, I know. There is no limit to the use of force, when any potential threat is established. They say he had a knife so they shot him at least three times in the head and chest. Witnesses reports are confused as to if this guy challenged the police or was trying to run away. Not long ago they pumped that "mentally distraught" guy full of holes who was driving his car in manner the police believed to be a threat. He is dead too.

However, I note, Michael Bryant kills someone with his vehicle, and the last thing the Crown of the media establish is that he may have used his vehicle as a "weapon of opportunity".

These killings, combined with the police behaviour at the G20 is creating a serious image crisis for the Toronto PD.

When you have rational sounding soft soap hate of the type espoused by snert, above, many people will buy into it as being plausible, which is why comments like that are so bloody dangerous to society, and in fact to all people.

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/borderline-personality-disorder-fact-sheet/index.shtml

http://www.borderlinepersonalitydisorder.com/

"where you would prefer this thread to go"?

Wasn't really taking snert to task, at all, was  making the point that comments like snerts, are dangerous to society and promote an idea that this type of behaviour against a person is acceptable, when it isn't. And I think that is a fair observation on how such things permiate and change society.

We wonder how a right wing agenda gets traction,  and shifts society's thinking, wrongly? It is through comments like these.

People really need to be aware, in the greater society of these type s of subtle remarks, and object to them strongly, each and everytime, or we will be allowing more people to be locked up, all the time, as anti-different people sentiment grows..

When I was coordinating accommodations for students with disabilities, I met a few students with BPD. I'll defer to oldgoat who has a ton more experience. I look forward to hearing what he has to say.

Happy I could help you out, Maysie.

That would run contrary to statistical definitions of normal. Interesting....

The borderline diagnosis has an interesting history. Originally the term comes from when Freudians made the distinction between neurotic and psychotic disorders, people labelled bordrline were considered a little from column A a little from column B. Not to say psychiatric labelling is anymore scientific or specific today. The term BPD is generally a pejoritive that is given to people who are considered "difficult". The reality is that approximately 90% of those given the label have experienced severe trauma usully ongoing starting in childhood. Strangely people who have experienced severe ongoing abuse in childhood, can have difficulties in forming relationships, have a poor sense of self and engage in behaviour that is perceived as self destructive( although to the people themselves they are methods of coping) and even more surprisingly the experience anger at times when they feel threatened. Psychiatry fails to acknowledge the context of trauma and in doing so renders peoples experiences and responses to others as meaningless. Unfortunately the disrespect, hostility and abuse trauma survivors experience within the psychiatric system is a continuation of their early experiences. The underlying dynamics of trauma is never addressed and the people can be dismissed as difficult or non-compliant.

Why is this relevant. This thread is about people's behaviours being criminalized due to psychiatric labels it has nothing to do with people with psychiatric labels committing acts of violence. Extensive research has shown that those with psychiatric labels are no more likely to be violent than anyone else.

Fair enough my apologies. It would have been helpful if you had included that in the earlier post. This situation is more difficult though when someone has actually engaged in violence to the extent of murder. The reality is it is difficult to predict if someone is going to be violent if someone has been violent in the past that is one of the best predictors of future violence.

Thanks oldgoat and N.R.Kissed.

What people don't understand about the "insanity defense" is that it is not a get out of jail free card. Indeed, a person found "not guilty" this way actually can have an open ended sentence where they are either debilitated with psychiatric drugs for the rest of their lives, and even kept in a psychiatric institution until an psychiatric authority deems you to be sane, which might never happen of course.

Under Canadian Law, (The criminal code to be exact, section 84.1), a crossbow is called a restrictive firearm, as 84.1 specifically references Schedule 3 which describes a crossbow as

7. A crossbow or similar device that

(a) is designed or altered to be aimed and fired by the action of one hand, whether or not it has been redesigned or subsequently altered to be aimed and fired by the action of both hands; or

(b) has a length not exceeding 500 mm.

The term firearm and weapon is used interchangibly when it comes to restricted weapons of a projectile nature.

Specifically (SOR/98-462) makes it clear that a crossbow is a weapon under the Canadian Criminal Code 84.1

From here

There needs to be more informed discussion about mental health issues in Canada-- especially in regard to the respective Provincial 'Mental Health Acts' vis-a-vis civil liberties under the Charter. 

It's a national disgrace that the mentally ill are marginalized and criminalized (often as a last resort to treatment) by a system that few professionals understand and even fewer care about, unless it involves them directly. There are no pat answers to what seems to be presented as an intractable problem--but the discussion must begin somewhere. Threads like this are a good beginning.

Who decides what is best for the mentaly ill (after it is decided that they are sick), and what is to be done to, for, with, or about them?

If anything begs further investigation and recommendation by a Royal Commission, this is it.

As someone who has been fighting with Manic Depression for the past 40 years, and who has had a nasty encounter with the cops, I'd like to comment here. I self-identify as a crazy person. Having been malevolently mistreated by Government, I am going to have a nasty Libertarian streak. These days, more people seem to be feeling the rage.

Some people who are not crazy are extremely scared of crazy people. Michael Wilson (C), Gerard Kennedy (L) and Cheri Dinovo (NDP) are trying to de-stigmatize mental illness, however if that does happen it will take decades. Tony Clement had the guts to mention mental health at the cabinet table of Mike Harris.

In the minds of most Authoritarian people (who, face it, are nuts themselves), crazy people should be locked away and forgotten. I think people who are nuts want to lock away crazy people because they don't like looking in the mirror. Closeted crazy people will say the most nasty and offensive things about the mentally ill, similar to closeted gay polticians sending the cops in to bash other gays. Closeted crazy people are often functioning alcoholics and/or abusers of other drugs. They use the substances to medicate out the bad feelings from their condition. That's why in the official mental health community they quite correctly tie Addiction to Mental Health.

I like to compare our struggle with that of the LGBTQ community who have gone from the bath house raids in the early 80s to having an openly gay candidate for mayor in 2010. I hope the LGBTQ people do not mind. But I think we mental health people could learn a lot about activism and being heard from the LGBTQs.

I feel pride during Pride Week even though I am not gay, and because they are saying Here We Are and We Don't Care If You Don't Like It. "All power to you" I think. Us???? LGBTQC???? (C for Crazy) Maybe the LGBTQs wouldnt want the stigma of Mental Illness associated with them... But doesn't LGBTQ fight stigma all the time anyway? Just as LGBTQs are in all families, so are mental health issues.

People used to say a lot of stupid things about gays. They still do, but not so much officially any more. Now, people say stupid things about crazy people. When either kind of stupidity reaches Authority, people get hurt.

Uncle John, thanks for what you've shared. There's a group called Mad Pride Toronto. Please check out their blog here.

Whenever I ask people to not use words like "crazy" in derogatory ways I get called all kinds of things, including the language police, the thought police, the politically correct police, etc. I think it's a critical mass thing. The more who speak up the more it will be unacceptable. Language affects attitudes and vice versa.

autoworker - you imply the issue of the CTO, at least in Ontario. This is a Community Treatment Order. The Province has an interest in coercing people to seek treatment, especially if it is a material fact that said people have demonstrated a danger to themselves or others. If used effectively, the person involved is put through a court case, however the result is not jail but something more humane. The economics of the matter are simple. It costs $500 a night to keep someone hospitalized, $300 a night to keep them in jail, and $500 a week to support them in the community. With some luck, a creative person might find a way of making a living.

I self-identify as a crazy person. Any word can be used in a derogatory manner. There is stigma, ergo there is fear. I came by my craziness honestly. My father was diagnosed with manic depression a generation ago, and although undiagnosed, my mother may have had something similar too. Mad Pride uses Mad, which is more English. I think crazy is more North American. To me, Mad is angry. But I guess I could go with them. Certainly when fighting the Nazis! North American people could be scared of crazy people who are mad. Especially after watching stupid episodes of Law and Order. To eliminate the stigma, we have to eliminate the fear.

Frick, I hate this categorizing.  The "crazy" word is not cool Uncle John no matter how much you but into the stigmatization.  We deserve better.

There are a number of problematic assumptions in this paragraph. I am not meaning to challenge you personally only to point out the assumptions that are inherent within the dominant biopsychiatric narrative.

Let us start with the assumption of "treatment" Your post is dependent on the belief that presently there is a system of effective treatment options that are available to people experiening pschoemotional distress, this is not the case. Due to the dominance of biopsychiatry within the mental health system treatments to the most part are limited to the use of psychiatrics drugs which in themselves frequently have horrific side effects and long term consequence that do not promote recovery or health.

An excellent book on this topic is Robert Whitaker's Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of mental illness in America.

http://www.madinamerica.com/madinamerica.com/Anatomy%20of%20an%20Epidemi...

“Why are so many more people disabled by mental illness than ever before?  Why are those so diagnosed dying 10-25 years earlier than others?  In Anatomy of an Epidemic investigative reporter Robert Whitaker cuts through flawed science, greed and outright lies to reveal that the drugs hailed as the cure for mental disorders instead worsen them over the long term.  But Whitaker’s investigation also offers hope for the future: solid science backs nature’s way of healing our mental ills through time and human relationships.  Whitaker tenderly interviews children and adults who bear witness to the ravages of mental illness, and testify to their newly found “aliveness” when freed from the prison of mind-numbing drugs.”—Daniel Dorman, M.D., Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, UCLA School of Medicine and author of Dante’s Cure: A Journey Out of Madness

“Anatomy of an Epidemic investigates a profoundly troubling question: do psychiatric medications increase the likelihood that people taking them, far from being helped, are more likely to become chronically ill? In making a compelling case that our current psychotropic drugs are causing as much—if not more—harm than good, Robert Whitaker reviews the scientific literature thoroughly, demonstrating how much of the evidence is on his side. There is nothing unorthodox here—this case is solid and evidence-backed. If psychiatry wants to retain its credibility with the public, it will now have to engage with the scientific argument at the core of this cogently and elegantly written book.”—David Healy, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry, Cardiff University and author of The Antidepressant Era and Let Them Eat Prozac

The other longstanding problem within the biopsychiatric ideology is the promotion of the "chemical imbalance" theory despite a complete lack of scientific evidence.

"Contemporary neuroscience research has failed to confirm any serotonergic lesion in any mental disorder, and has in fact provided significant counterevidence to the explanation of a simple neurotransmitter deficiency. Modern neuroscience has instead shown that the brain is vastly complex and poorly understood [11]. While neuroscience is a rapidly advancing field, to propose that researchers can objectively identify a “chemical imbalance” at the molecular level is not compatible with the extant science. In fact, there is no scientifically established ideal “chemical balance” of serotonin, let alone an identifiable pathological imbalance. To equate the impressive recent achievements of neuroscience with support for the serotonin hypothesis is a mistake."

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.002039...

http://thehealthyskeptic.org/the-chemical-imbalance-myth

The psychiatric systems continued promotion of the chemical imbalance myth constitutes scientific fraud on a massive scale yet this fraud continues because it is profitable to both psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry. Some might argue there is little to differentiate the two at this point. How are you able to adequately respond to the needs of those in distress when your theory of the eitiology of that distress has been disproven. So when you state that people "have been diagnosed with serious mental illnesses that they both refuse to acknowledge". People in reality refuse to accept the suggestion that they suffer from a magical and scientifically invalidated "chemical imbalance" It is not the psychiatricly labelled that are delusional but the psychiatist who maintains the delusion of the existence of a "chemical imbalance" despite all evidence to the contrary. This does not mean that people are not experiencing extreme states of distress, despair or crisis, only that the response to these human experiences are presently inappropriate damaging and inadequate.

Which brings us to another assumption and that is that the mental health system is operating in the interests of those who are experiencing psychiatric distress when in reality they are the ones with the least power and voice in a massive industry that is much better at meeting the interests of pharmaceutical companies, psychiatrists and others working within the system.

So in response to your basic question concerning forced treatment. I would counter by asking how is it desirable or humane to force people into circumstances that are more likely to be harmful to them. Even if a treatment was effective the use of coercion is likely to render that treatment harmful. Forcefully confining drugging and shocking people does not promote health. The conditions of psychiatric hospitals and wards are not humane and do not promote health. The basis of healing and especially with people experiencing psychoemotional crisis is the building of a trusting and empathic relationship, coercion on any level will destroy that relationship.

It is also worth noting that the vast majority of people with diagnosed with "serious mental illness" are survivors of trauma often extreme and repeated abuse throughout childhood. Our whole framework of responding to those in distress shifts dramatically if instead of asking how do we force treatment on the "mentally ill" if we ask how do we respond to people who are survivers of trauma. In this context forceably confining victims of severe abuse, locking them in solitary or leaving them tied to a hospital guerny, becomes deeply troubling to say the least.

The question then becomes what conditions do people need that foster recovery and health, what promotes healing. Not surprisingly when we do not categorize and marginalize people through labels it becomes clear that their needs are quite similar to everyone else, including an access to safe affordable housing, adequate income, work and meaningful activity and relationships connection and inclusion within a broader community.

At it's heart mental health is a profoundly social and political issue unfortunately psychiatric ideology has people focus on and pathologize the behaviour of the individual rather than looking at the conditions that give rise and maintain the experience of psychiatric distress.

I say all of this as both a psychiatric survivor and someone who has worked within the mental health system for over ten years. My own well being is dependent on  my social location as a middle class, white, hetero male, that has allowed me access to the necessary resources to heal. Otherwise it is quite possible that I might be alone, overmedicated, unemployed and living in marginalized housing.My experience working within the system and my ongoing education has given me deeper understanding of how deeply flawed the system is but also allowed me to see the profound possibility of providing a healthy alternative.

A final note on stigma the myth promoted by the psychiatric system is that stigma would magically disappear if we only accepted that "mental illness" was accepted as a disease like any other. This ignores the reality of many who have disabilities some more visible than others that still face discrimination, barriers and stigma. Do we really believe that those in wheelchairs, or with Cerebal palsy the blind or the deaf amognst others do not face discrimination. This myth also ignores the reality that those who have contact with the psychiatric system face extreme discrimination from professionals within the system. It is also the psychiatric ideology that views and treats people as broken, incapable and incompetent.

double post

You are correct it is the same David Healy, who has done groundbreaking work critiquing the poor science behind the use of psychiatric drugs. Unfortunately a few years back he co-authored a book championing the use of Electroshock, ignoring the devastation this procedure has caused. His coauthor Edwin Shorter from U of T has a long history as a biopsychiatric shill. He writes on the history of psychiatry as psychiatrists would like to believe it. Robert Whitaker's Mad in America and Richard Warner's Schizophrenia and the Political Economy provide excellent counterpoints to the dominant story.

Incidently Robert Whitaker writes a blog for Psychology today and his most recent posting examines the extent to which psyhopharmaceutical interests will go to attempt to silence him and others

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mad-in-america/201010/samhsa-the-alt...

I am also glad we are having this discussion and although it can be dark there are cracks that let the light in.

N.R.KISSED:

What does one do about someone who's clearly not the person once known to thieir loved ones, and who's physical condition is visibly deteriorating? Yet, that person clings to certain delusions about their condition, and refuses to accept that there's a problem. let alone address it.

Is there a point at which 'forced intervention' is acceptable as necesary, while that individual is not an immediate danger to themselves, or others?

Also, do you truly believe that mental heath professionals, and the facilities they work in, are really that cynical, and in thrall to 'Big Pharma"? 

I've read and re-read the literature you provided, and the prospects seem quite frightening, if not sinister.  I'm loath to have anyone subjected to what may amount to a 'chemical lobotomy', -- but what effective alternatives are there for someone who increasingly claims to feel worthless, while continuing to live in a hovel (initially by choice, but now, perhaps, by self-induced necessity)?

duplicated

N.R.KISSED:

In answer to the first part of your response about family members having the power to force their loved one into psychiatric care, I trust (perhaps naively) that things have changed since R. D. Laing presented his concerns in his 1968 Massey Lecture: The Politics of the Family (in which he dealt primarily with schizophrenia. I believe). My understanding is that familiy members have little input as to the actual decision itself, at present day hearings.

That said, while I think it's important not to overstate the possible physical harm that respective individuals might inflict upon themselves or others, I believe that it's equally important not to underestimate the emotional distress that parents, siblings, spouses, and children each experience in their dislocated relationship with their loved one, who's behaviour has been professionally diagnosed (perhaps incorrectly) as problematic, and exceeds the psyciatric parameters of normal (cheeseburgers notwithstanding). 

Is a protracted and steady deterioration towards a reasonably predictable outcome different than the reasonably certain danger of a loved one's imminent demise? Why not address their known plight?  We, as a society, don't hesitate to intervene in other, warranted circumstances (certain abuse situations come to mind).  So why the reluctance here? How are those cases decided, and by whom?  No doubt there are guidelines and accountability involved in the process. (or am I naive, again?).

Earlier, there was some discussion of current and former psychiatric patients self-identifying as 'crazy', or 'mad', and organizing towards greater awareness and sensitivity of their conditions.  But what of those diagnosed individuals who fail to acknowledge their respective illnesses, and, therefore, won't allign with others for encouragement and support-- which may prove positive, for both themselves and their loved ones (at least those family members and friends who can accept that reality).

I understand that there are no easy solutions to the hopelessness and dispossession suffered by the homeless (many of whom were formerly institutionalized in psychiatric facilities--which in themselves, left much to be desired-- and who are now often cycled through the criminal jusctice system), but is it necessary to reach a critical mass of despair before anything gets done?

Enough for now.  I'll comment on your response to my second question later. Thanks again, N.R..

Uncle John:  If you read this, your insight would be most welcome.

I think mental illnesses have always been with us, Uncle John.  For instance, the incidence of schizophrenia is constant throughout the world, regardless of race or socioeconomic status, which is kind of weird for any disease.  Seems it must be pretty basic to humanity to be so evenly distributed (it's not the case with all psychiatric illnesses).  Could be they were not recognized as mental illnesses in the past.  And there are more new diagnoses all the time, rightly or wrongly; it is possible there is an over-pathologizing of the human condition.

I'm pretty skeptical about the whole heavy metals thing, and chelation therapy is dangerous because you can end up sucking all the calcium out of a person's bloodstream, killing them (your heart needs calcium to work).  I also believe, however, there are physical causes, but they aren't the whole picture.  You could have identical twins raised in the same house, and one could have a major mental illness while the other will not.  There probably are contributing psychological factors.

Sounds like you're managing really well - there are a lot of people who can't deal with the metabolic side effects of olanzapine through just diet - a friend who works at a psychiatric hospital says he sees patients gain 40 pounds when they are started on that.  Like a patient told a psychiatrist in my workplace, "When I was on risperidone, I could stop at half a pie.  Now that I'm on olanzapine, I have to eat the whole pie."

Uncle John:

The Detroit Free Press published a series (a while back) about its city's neighbourhood schools, and the various factors that influence education.  One report juxtaposed the the proximity of local neighbourhoods to present and former industrial sites that are known to contain heavy metals, and compared their schools' respective test scores to State averages.  The results, sadly, corresponded with known correlations between exposure levels of toxins and childhood intellectual development (lead being a particular factor).

Your concerns about mercury, and the neurological damage that it is known to cause, are well-established.  Yet, coal-fired power plants (a major source) continue to be built throughout the midwestern U.S. (but that's another subject).

Also, your comment about the obverse connection between addiction and mental health, and the often inherent reluctance of survivors to face that verity, is noteworthy (although, as you correctly point out, abuse and trauma may also be involved).

As with N.R.KISSED's comments, there is much information to digest from your posting.  I, too, am glad that a productive discussion continues.

This of course is another psychiatric myth that does not hold up to scrutiny. Schizophrenia only exists as a construct of the western psychiatric ideology that is then imposed on other cultures who do not have similar experiences, certainly "madness" exists cross culturally but it is experienced much differently and chronicity is almost non-existent until areas are psychiatricly colonized.

The Americanization of Mental Illness

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/magazine/10psyche-t.html

"We have for many years been busily engaged in a grand project of Americanizing the world’s understanding of mental health and illness. We may indeed be far along in homogenizing the way the world goes mad.

This unnerving possibility springs from recent research by a loose group of anthropologists and cross-cultural psychiatrists. Swimming against the biomedical currents of the time, they have argued that mental illnesses are not discrete entities like the polio virus with their own natural histories. These researchers have amassed an impressive body of evidence suggesting that mental illnesses have never been the same the world over (either in prevalence or in form) but are inevitably sparked and shaped by the ethos of particular times and places. "

Outcomes and prognosis for the diagnosis of schizophrenia is worst in western countries.

"NOWHERE ARE THE limitations of Western ideas and treatments more evident than in the case of schizophrenia. Researchers have long sought to understand what may be the most perplexing finding in the cross-cultural study of mental illness: people with schizophrenia in developing countries appear to fare better over time than those living in industrialized nations.

This was the startling result of three large international studies carried out by the World Health Organization over the course of 30 years, starting in the early 1970s. The research showed that patients outside the United States and Europe had significantly lower relapse rates — as much as two-thirds lower in one follow-up study. These findings have been widely discussed and debated in part because of their obvious incongruity: the regions of the world with the most resources to devote to the illness — the best technology, the cutting-edge medicines and the best-financed academic and private-research institutions — had the most troubled and socially marginalized patients."

What is more the diagnosis of schizophrenia actually means something dramatically different from the founders of the disorder Kraeplin called it Dementia Praecox and Bluer was the one who first coined the term schizophrenia. Even if we accept the validity of this diagnosis it has not been used in a consistent and reliable way. So as a diagnosis it has been influenced by historical shifts in it's application that render temporal comparisons inaccurate.

"It has been noted that the term “schizophrenia” is now applied to a group in many ways dissimilar to Emil Kraepelin's cases of dementia praecox and Eugen Bleuler's of schizophrenia. No detailed explanation has been offered for the difference. This article offers evidence that Kraepelin's and Bleuler's concepts were derived from a population largely suffering from organic disorders including the Parkinsonian sequelae of encephalitis lethargica; it describes the conceptual confusion which followed the introduction of the concept of post-encephalitic Parkinsonism and discusses some implications for the modern concept of schizophrenia. It is suggested that the differences between earlier and later groups of schizophrenics may be accounted for by the decline in prevalence of post-encephalitic Parkinsonism and of the neurological and behavioral sequelae of other diseases, and by the parallel unsystematic development of the concept of schizophrenia."

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/1520-6696%28199010%2926:4%3C3...

Uncle John:

I'm glad to hear that Olanzipine has not caused you the horrible problems many users have experienced. I am also pleased that your encounter with the police did not end the unfortunate way it has for many psychiatric survivors.

I also agree that factors such as industrial pollutants can have profound effects on our physical and mental health and actually have been demonstrated to have neurological effects.