Advance directives legally binding in Germany

All the while Danish politicians recently have agreed to make more human rights violations in the shape of involuntary outpatient "treatment" happen in this country, because it is "ethically irresponsible that some very sick individuals can't get treatment because they lack insight", uhm yahhh, their German colleagues have had a moment of true enlightenment, and have made psychiatric advance directives legally binding.

So, from now on, if you live in Germany and have an advance directive, any psychiatric "treatment" your advance directive lists as unwanted by you, becomes bodily assault, and any detention on a locked ward against your will becomes deprivation of liberty in the eye of the law.

But read for yourself, here's the press release:

(This press release was translated and forwarded by Rene Talbot - please snowball this message in e-mail lists and newsgroups)

Finally, coercive psychiatry can be put to a stop!
In Germany a new advance directive („PatVerfue“) makes it possible
Berlin, 18/6/2009
After years of discussion, today a new law on the legal rules for advance directives has finally been adopted by the German parliament.
The legislature has clearly and with votes from all political parties agreed to make valid the will of the patient and by doing so also the self-determination in any situation against any medical and state paternalism, regardless of the type and stage of an illness.

The time finally belongs to the past that others - doctors and judges - define what the supposedly "objective" best interests of a person are and what should be undertaken or refrained from, against his/her declared will, with regard to these supposedly "objective" best interests of a person! This will have far-reaching effects with regard to court ordered guardianship: For the first time there is the chance that guardianship may no longer be enforced against the wishes and needs of the person in question and thus guardianship now has the potential to be transformed into a service that is loyal to the person in question.

The patient‘s will is now to be regarded as being legally binding in medical decisions, as already promised in the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany and for over 60 years in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Each case of "medical" treatment against the written and actual will of a "patient" thereby becomes bodily assault and incarceration in a locked ward becomes deprivation of liberty.

On this occasion we would therefore like to make known our specific form of an advance directive, the PatVerfue, with a built-in representation agreement, in which any torture-like bodily harm in the form of unwanted psychiatric treatment and any deprivation of liberty whatsoever due to a slanderous pseudo-medical psychiatric diagnosis is legally binding excluded. The associations publishing this form have joined forces to help this parliament´s promise to be accepted in the judiciary. It is this promise with which the validity of basic, civil and human rights for all, also for the psychiatrically slandered, hopefully becomes reality. By supporting and encouraging all those with a PatVerfue who would nevertheless be incarcerated and endure coercive treatment and/or are threatened with these acts, to create precedents at all judicial levels Germany, it is our aim to make the PatVerfue „watertight“ ["waterproof" I suppose is meant] in the courts. Our aim is that in the future all judges be made to adhere to this new law, to accept the patient‘s will without restrictions and to implement it with their decisions.

Our proposed form of an advance directive prohibits all psychiatric diagnoses from the outset. We do not believe in the existence of these so-called "mental illnesses", because there is no objective criteria to prove them. The PatVerfue thus ensures the self determination of the person against psychiatrists trying to deny his or her free will, by claiming that they have an illness-incurred lack of „insight or the ability to behave in the light of this insight ".

Today is for us a day of joy!

The rigid implementation of this law would mean the end of forced psychiatry in Germany.

An illogical fact remains, however, in that psychiatric diagnoses and treatment against the declared will of a person can only be staved off by a PatVerfue and - to the contrary - is not excluded at all.

Actually, each psychiatric - just as with any medical - treatment should only be made with the "informed consent" of the individual, i.e. it is explicitly  a g r e e d  to by the person after extensive consultation on the pros and cons thereof.

Thus, with the entry into force of the law, unfortunately a prior legally binding refusal of psychiatric coercive measures is only possible for those who already know that a PatVerfue is a loophole to prevent coercive psychiatry.
This is therefore the right occasion for a broad information campaign to make the PatVerfue public, so that increased use widens the loophole into a "door out of coercive psychiatry".

At www.PatVerfue.de information and the appropriate form is now free to download for noncommercial users.

Publisher of the PatVerfue: Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Psychiatrie-Erfahrener: die-bpe.de, Irren-Offensive: antipsychiatrie.de, Landesverband Psychiatrie-Erfahrener Berlin-Brandenburg: psychiatrie-erfahrene.de, Landesverband Psychiatrie-Erfahrener NRW: psychiatrie-erfahrene.nrw.de, Werner-Fuss-Zentrum: psychiatrie-erfahrene.de, Antipsychiatrische und betroffenenkontrollierte Informations- und Beratungsstelle: weglaufhaus.de/beratung.

To celebrate this day of joy, the Werner-Fuss-Center publicly invites everybody to a barbecue at 8 p.m. today on the kleinen Bunkerberg in the Volkspark in Friedrichshain in Berlin. Please bring something with to celebrate.
_______________

Meanwhile, the Danish version of involuntary outpatient "treatment" will make it possible to also drug up people, who are not psychotic, who do not suffer of any "symptoms", if only one or the other self-appointed "expert" at some point of time has assessed the person to be "very sick". That is, you risk to get drugged up with substances, that provenly are harmful, not only but also in a way that can make you "psychotic", when actually you are recovering or even recovered... Can it get less respectful to peoples' human rights, and more maliciously oppressive?? I don't think so.

Concerning the reaction from the only Danish user/ex-user/survivor organization, LAP - oh, sorry, wrong link, this is the right one, or is it?... - I suggest to send even more loving kindness along with its "Oh please, don't!"-press releases, as that definitely will make an impression on Danish politicians. Just as it obviously does make a huge impression on Darth Vader in "The environmentalist version of Star Wars"...

Well, although I couldn't join the Germans at their party in Berlin, you bet I celebrated. Here's to the Germans!

Did You Used To Be R.D. Laing

Don't

Three video clips about the real violence - and some thoughts about delusions.







Something I notice, again and again, is that more often than not it is people, who've experienced the violence close up themselves, who've experienced it in a very concentrated form, who achieve an awareness and an understanding of it, like Derrick Jensen or R.D. Laing for instance have achieved it.

It really seems, that one has to get to a point where it becomes unbearable, before one has the courage to let go of all the delusions and to face reality. And the more I think abut it, the more it seems to me, that working in the mh system actually is the ultimate protection against having to face reality and having to let go of the delusions. Unconsciously as close to enlightenment as one possibly can get without actually achieving it. And at the same time, consciously, light years away from it. The ultimate insanity: normality.

"Look, even the mentally ill themselves do believe in it!"

This is something, I think I'll never quite get:

Once more, I got into a, luckily very short, but nevertheless, discussion with a person, who identifies as, well, yeah, a consumer, suffering from "manic depression", and, of course, the pills were no less than godsend.

The discussion: Danish psychiatry has made a film, Åbenhed gør stærk - om skizofreni i familien (Strength through openness - about schizophrenia in the family) technically, formally, obviously very much like Daniel Mackler's Take These Broken Wings - cross cutting between sequences of interviews with respectively two young people, Helle and Emil, labelled with "schizophrenia", their relatives, some friends, and, of course, professionals, especially one consultant psychiatrist from the OPUS-project. In regard to the "message" on the other hand, the Danish film, not surprisingly, tells the opposite of what Daniel Mackler's film tells. "Schizophrenia" is a chronic biological brain disease, due to defective genes, that cause abnormalities in brain structure, and the best treatment option is lifelong medication with "antipsychotics".

And the family? Well, it's important to assure the relatives, that it is not their fault. It's all just defective genes. But, of course, it is also very important to involve the relatives, and psycho-educate them - about biological brain diseases, what else?! - so that they can support "treatment" compliance. And when all this is in place, voilà, what a success story! Never mind, that one of the two young people in the film is in need of assisted housing, as she can't take care of herself due to the drugs' side effects. And never mind, that both face a future on disability, and dependent on the system for the rest of their, approximately 25 years shorter than average, life.

Now, during the past couple of weeks I've noticed numerous hits on my Danish blog, search terms "film about schizophrenia", and since I imagine, that it is the above described botched job people are looking for, and not necessarily Daniel Mackler's or Leo Regan's film, I combed the net for reviews, and wrote my own "not-quite-a-review", always just looking to meet the public's needs and desires... Not-quite-a-review, because I haven't seen the film myself, and I don't intend to, since I won't pay as much as one cent for crap like that. I actually won't give as much as one cent for whatever it might be that supports biopsychiatry. Not if I can help it.

And, yeah, right, I do a hatchet job on the film, slamming its message totally as being oppressive, discriminating, and disempowering, calling the "expert's factual information" for a bunch of lies with no scientific evidence to support it, and the filmmakers for fraudulent when they choose to interview a couple of colonized consumers and their just as colonized relatives, only and solely to, as I see it, give the impression that psychiatry's hopeless message is the one and only truth: "Look, even the mentally ill themselves do believe in it!"

The thing is, that even though the film tries to make the viewer believe, that Helle's and Emil's words are their very own words, they are not. They are the system's words. - Actually, this borders to abuse of these two young people. Colonialism controls, displaces or exterminates the original. In order to exploit. Psychiatric colonialism controls, displaces or exterminates its victims' thoughts, emotions and language in order to exploit its victims' capability to talk, making them repeat its own ideology like a parrot. That. is. abuse.

Well, the pain in the neck I am, I let both the filmmakers, the "expert", and the three people, whose hurrays I've based my own review on, know about it. One of them reacts, so far. The "manic depressive" consumer, I mentioned above. She doesn't react commenting on my blog, but by e-mail. Somewhat resentful at the fact, that not all people agree with her on psychiatry and its pills being a godsend, and that some people dare to question that having insight and being "treatment" compliant would be the road to recovery, as she wants to have it in her review of the film.

Now I wonder: what's in for someone like her, that she defends an industry, that ruins people's lives in droves, just to make a profit? I mean, she doesn't make a profit by doing so, as far as I can see. Apart from the purely idealistic profit of a false ego-identification, that is: "I'm manic depressive! I suffer from a real disease!" Does that rotten ego-identification really mean so much more than the lives of millions of people?? I just can't but keep on wondering...

"Thou Shalt Not Be Aware"

What I would add to this video is how "Thou Shalt Not Be Aware" not only applies to abuse/mistreatment in families - and not being unconditionally loved by your parents to me equals to child abuse/mistreatment, just as the denial of the truth does - but just as much to a society, that only "loves" (i.e. accepts) you under the condition that you live up to its norms and values. Which, in regard to our modern western civilization, means that you have to be the perfect consumer/producer in order to receive society's unconditional love, its acceptance.

Well, and I'd like to add, that psychiatry of course not only covers over the abuse/mistreatment performed by single private persons, families - while society as a whole would condemn abuse/mistreatment - but indeed covers over the abuse/mistreatment, that pervades society on all levels, and that is the foundation of consumerism: "Thou Shalt Not Be Aware" that modern western civilization's norms and values are thoroughly unnatural, destructive, and abusive, and thus inhumane - causing inhumane suffering, both physically and psychologically. "Thou Shalt Not Be Aware" that it is modern western civilization, who suffers from a chronic imbalance - of power. "Thou Shalt Not Be Aware" that it is perfectly natural and healthy to react "crazy" to "normality", i.e. to the real insanity.

If society truly and honestly were dismissive of oppression, betrayal, fraud, exploitation, abuse, mistreatment, etc., psychiatry as a societal institution would never have been established. Instead people, who'd been exposed to these assaults, would be offered real help, not punishment and additional assault.

Read also Gianna's post on this video.

Self-actualization is a disease

If you haven't heard it yet: HealthCentral has bought Wellsphere. As I commented on Gianna's blog, I'm just glad, I didn't take the bite!!!

Well, since I couldn't remember to ever have visited HealthCentral's website, I went there tonight to have a look at it - I became even more glad, I didn't join Wellsphere - and came across a very interesting article.

Obviously, if ever you get into a situation where you'd need to reconsider your life, your identity, your being in this world, for instance because you were traumatized and thus didn't get the chance to establish a secure relationship with your true self, forget about ever being given the chance! Your self-reflections, your "focus on the self", aiming at healing and becoming more whole, are symptoms of a brain disease.

"Whitfield-Gabrieli found that in the schizophrenia patients, the default system was both hyperactive and hyperconnected during rest, and it remained so as they performed the memory tasks. In other words, the patients were less able than healthy control subjects to suppress the activity of this network during the task. Interestingly, the less the suppression and the greater the connectivity, the worse they performed on the hard memory task, and the more severe their clinical symptoms.

'We think this may reflect an inability of people with schizophrenia to direct mental resources away from internal thoughts and feelings and toward the external world in order to perform difficult tasks,' Whitfield-Gabrieli explained."

And what is, essentially, the big problem with "focussing on the self" and "an inability of people with schizophrenia to direct mental resources away from internal thoughts and feelings and toward the external world in order to perform difficult tasks"?

Yeah well, first of all, you might find out, that you actually were a victim of mistreatment and/or abuse, and secondly, it's unlikely that you will be a good consumer while your focus is directed toward your "internal thoughts and feelings" instead of "toward the external world in order to perform difficult tasks," like consuming...

Philosophizing about yourself, your self, discovering abusive mechanisms in your own upbringing and in the world you're living in, and failing to be a good consumer is undesirable as it is a disease. So, go and get an appointment with a shrink, so you at least can be a good consumer in regard to the mental illness industry and Big Pharma!

Misconceptions

I just stopped by one of the blogs, I only visit once in a while - only once in a while, because it's quite bio-oriented, and whenever I need the bio-bs, I prefer to go to "professional" sites, where I can get the real McCoy. Nevertheless, this blog is "alternatively bio-oriented", so, I stop by, once in a while.

And today, on one of my occasional visits, I read the - sad - news, that a family member of the blogger - It's hereditary, right? Yep. Non-genetic, familial inheritance. - got incarcerated and put on a neuroleptic. The blogger reports the family member to be "getting better".

That means, a week or maybe two or so more on the neuroleptic, and the family member should be able to do without it, improved as s/he then would be, thanks to the "medication", right? Nope.

People do not "get better" on these drugs. Generally speaking, there are two kinds of drugs: the ones that help a diseased/injured organism to heal itself by strengthening the organism's own immune system, and the ones that simply mask symptoms, unfortunately often with the result, that the organism is prevented from healing itself, since symptoms usually are the incentive for a healing process to occur.

Psychotropic drugs belong to the latter category. Although some of them, LSD in particular, once were - and by some people still are - believed to belong to the former. I don't think so.

Psychotropic drugs mask and suppress symptoms. It looks as if the drugged individual is getting better. Both to the environment, and often also to the drugged individual him-/herself. While the drugs see to, that the underlying problem, that gave rise to a healing reaction, i.e. to symptoms, thrives and flourishes. Undisturbed. The individual isn't getting better, s/he is actually often getting worse. Underneath the lid, or: behind the mask.

Give someone who's confused, scared, angry, agitated, etc., a neuroleptic, i.e. a major tranquillizer, and, yes, sure, since the major tranquillizer, as the term suggests, reduces their overall vitality, they won't be able to react to their underlying problem with the same amount of confusion, anxiety, anger, agitation, etc, as before. Probably they won't even have the energy left to realize the fact, that the problem still is there, unresolved. This then is called "improvement". How about giving someone who has broken a leg some strong pain killers, that enable them to get on and move about, and call it "improvement"?

"You give someone a tablet, and it shuts them up. It makes them dumb and stupid. People then have the ignorance to think, the medication is making someone better. You're not making someone better. You're making them stupid." -Rufus May in The Doctor Who Hears Voices.

Nothing is more essential to someone going through an existential crisis, and trying to resolve it, and truly "get better", than their ability to work it all out, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, etc. Someone who broke a leg, and did nothing but pop strong pain killers, while they kept on moving about as if nothing ever happened, would eventually drop dead, from gangrene (make that an intellectual, emotional, spiritual, etc., death in regard to crisis). Or from the pain killers' side effects.

An overdue book

In a recent blog entry, Ron Unger asks if anyone knows about a book for people with mental health problems on how to "manage" their family. Personally, I don't know of any such book. I only know about tons of books for families on how to manage their "mentally ill" offspring, and I think, a book for people with mental health issues on "managing" their family is overdue, and I hope, it will be written, as Ron's blog entry suggests it may be.

I myself am in the - as I choose to see it - lucky position, that my parents both died quite a long time ago, before it became clear that I had "mental health issues" that would require professional intervention, and that the only family I have left are some French(wo)men, whom I've never had any contact with.

In one of my first therapy sessions, my therapist asked about the whereabouts of my parents - of course the ulterior motive was to get them involved. (Or maybe that was just my "paranoia", instantly smelling a rat?? I don't think so.) My immediate, (survival-) instinctive, and not at all thought out reaction was panic - to put it mildly - followed by an enormous relief when I, after some seconds, that seemed to last an eternity, spent in terror, recalled, that they were dead, and thus couldn't be involved at all. Phew!!!

I've pondered a few times over how my folks probably would have reacted. There's no doubt whatsoever, that my mother would have welcomed the opportunity to re-establish a relationship where I would have been totally dependent on her. When I was in my twenties, she once said, she thought it a good idea if she could keep me under her surveillance and completely cut off from the outside world for at least a couple of years, so she could put my screwed up head straight. Not that this was the only time, she'd say stuff like that. But it was probably the clearest statement on how she saw things, she ever made. - And the system seriously suggests it's all biological??? No what the system's polemics call "bad parenting" involved??? I just wonder.

So, that she abstained from asking me to see a professional certainly wasn't because she didn't realize something was wrong. But, unfortunately (for her - luckily for me) she wasn't aware that a more and more purely biological model was about to be adopted by the mental health system during the '80ies. The thought, that she might be blamed, kept her from seeking professional help on my behalf. "Freud" was a naughty word at our house. She would have loved the biological model! A potential NAMI-mother. Without doubt.

My father... I don't know. I never really knew that man, although he lived at our house, and was married to my mother.

And how did I "manage" this mother-terrorist long-term? Well, I withdrew, to my safe-places, both inside and outside myself, to Munich, and eventually to Denmark. The geographical cure - that didn't work out, not even when she died, since the problem remains the same, as long as it isn't addressed directly.

Here's to my therapist - More on "schizophrenia" and the myth about a sick society

So, here it is, eventually. The translation of some maybe a bit controversial thoughts about so-called "schizophrenia" and genes - or mutated chromosomes. It took some time, because of my recent, rather unpleasant encounter with militant pro-psychiatry, and I don't guarantee for the quality of the translation. I'm tired, and don't feel up to doing any editing tonight.

Some esoteric élitist, sectarian, or just megalomanic thoughts about "schizophrenia" as a condition with a genetic predisposition.

"It can't be ruled out for genes to enter into it", my therapist said at my last session a good seven months ago. At that time I was just about to, once again, get rather angry, because I felt discriminated and, well, indeed threatened by this remark, that labelled me genetically defective. Defective. I chose to swallow my anger, then. I was, anyway, on my way out of the door, for the last time, so what.

In the meantime, I've thought a lot about a possible connection between "psychosis", genes, and politics. Here are some of my thoughts, in reference to Thomas Werge's and the Establishment's delight about maybe to have found a biological, genetic cause for "schizophrenia".

If it ever should prove correct, that for instance some certain mutated chromosomes increase the risk to develop "schizophrenia" (and I will believe it the moment I hear people like Grace Jackson or Peter Breggin approve of it, not before), it still is no proof of "schizophrenia" to be an illness, that needs to be "treated", that needs to be knocked down as effectively as possible, and be "kept in check" by all means, as the Establishment usually puts it, through suppressing the experience of "symptoms", and otherwise through silencing and zombifying "the schizophrenic" with brain damaging neurotoxins, euphemistically called "anti-psychotics". It is far from proof of that these mutations ought to be seen as a defect in the persons genes.

As one of the societies, the modern western world fancies to call "primitive", the Maori for instance regard "mental illness", that is existential crises, as a sign of something not functioning at its optimum in society (cf. "schizophrenia" being a reaction to a sick society), and that thus ought to be changed.

These "primitive" societies do not see "schizophrenia", "psychosis" in general, as an illness, but as a gift, that nevertheless needs that the gifted individual learns to handle and make constructive use of. "Treatment" thus consists of, partly, teaching the individual skills to handle and make constructive use of his gift, and partly of acknowledging the "symptoms", the reactions to society, without exception as unconditionally meaningful. Especially this second part of the "treatment" distinguishes the Maori's approach to "psychosis" from the modern western culture's approach, that only and at the most communicates so-called "coping strategies", preferably through CBT, that aren't meant to do anything but to re-adjust the individual as far as possible to an unchanged sick and destructive society. The kind of CBT, that generally is practised in a psychiatric context, is designed to change, adjust, discipline the individual in a way that lets society escape any change on its side.

In her blog entry "Speaking of Monkeys" Patricia Lefave writes about seeing the "gorilla". Instead of "gorilla", one could just as well put "society's destructive forces and behavior patterns". Like warfare, pollution and social injustice, like the witch hunt on differently thinking and thus "disturbing" people ("the mentally ill", "drug addicts", "the criminals"), but also discriminating and humiliating communication patterns in micro-societies such as families (cf. Bateson and Laing), that altogether are a result of modern western culture's egocentric (neo-liberalist) and thus insatiable hunt for more and more monetary profit, and of the profiling neurosis of the ego, its insatiable need for more and more fame and power, that formed the basis for this egocentric culture's rise and continued existence.

Even if there should be biological, genetic causes for some people to react "psychotic" to dysfunctional aspects of society, it would be far from being a carte blanche for the Establishment to discriminate and fight these people, as it is done today in our modern western society - and as it has been done so many times before, also before the beginnings of psychiatry about 250 years ago. For example in shape of the Inquisition.

People who react as sensitive to society as to become "psychotic" confronted with a sufficient amount of destructiveness and dysfunction, have an enormous potential (maybe even a genetically greater potential than "normal" people...) to contribute to a positive and constructive transformation and development in society, that could make society more, well, humane to live in for everyone, both on a psychological, sociological and ecological level. Alternatives like Soteria have shown, that non-medical, non-psychiatric treatment strengthens and develops this potential, while psychiatric, medical treatment suppresses and, long term, destroys it. One of several reasons why the Establishment, and not only the psychiatric one but also the political one, don't appreciate alternatives like Soteria. One of several reasons why the Establishment prefers to pay for countless people on "medicine"-created disability, instead of giving society's dissidents a language and through that a voice in society.

Seen from this angle, only a really sick society will seek to label these people as ill (so that society itself won't seem ill), and will clamp down on these people with the devastating force the modern western society clamps down on them today, with the help of psychiatry. And with the only goal to secure the undisturbed continued existence of its own devastating way of "functioning".

A quite common "symptom" of "psychosis" is the "delusion" of being chosen to save humanity. Another one is that of being persecuted - by the proponents of a destructively functioning society, symbolized for example by the CIA, and in some cases also symbolized by the mental health system. Are these "insane" and thus worth- and meaningless "delusions"? Or does there maybe lie a fundamental truth in these ideas?

At the risk of sounding slightly esoterically élitist, sectarian, or simply megalomanic and paranoid (depending on whose eyes are looking at it), I have to admit that I more and more tend to believe in those who say, the future is ours - unless the devastating modern westernness reaches to arrange for humanity as a whole, and thus also for those of us who maybe have some mutated chromosomes that make them see "gorillas", not to have any future. For example with the help of "preventive treatment for those individuals who are at a high risk of developing the illness". That is, not only by putting those people out of action who already do protest and send alarm signals through their reactions to society, but even everybody who maybe could risk to do so in future.

"Schizophrenia" - the end of the myths about a sick society?

Groundbreaking news: Once again, science is just about to have found the cause of "schizophrenia". Yesterday, July 30th 2008, the Danish news media tv2 nyhederne could tell that a European group of scientists had found a mutation in certain chromosomes to be very likely to increase the risk for an individual with these mutations to develop "schizophrenia".

The article "Tættere på skizofreniens årsag" (Closer to the causation of schizophrenia) quotes the Danish psychiatrist and researcher Thomas Werge:

"Schizophrenia has been surrounded by many myths, for instance that it was a reaction to a sick society. For 20 - 30 years now we've known, that schizophrenia with great probability is conditioned by genes. But the myths stayed alive. Thus it is very gratifying, that we now finally have documented concrete changes in our gene-pool, that imply a very strong risk for an individual to develop schizophrenia." (my italics)

And why would this be gratifying? Of course, because there's nothing more disastrous for a society, that both regards itself to be infallible, and also wishes to be regarded from the outside as being the best of all imaginable societies, than that the infallibility becomes questioned. For instance by some of the members of this society reacting with "schizophrenia" to the alleged infallibility.

The article further states, that if the new findings prove to hold, this could create a basis for easier diagnosis, better "treatment" and even "preventive treatment for those, who are at high risk to develop the illness".

"Preventive treatment"? I have a hunch, that we're here talking about taking one more step towards a "brave new world".

Yah, we've heard and read it many times before, throughout the past 20 - 30 years, that, hurray! now science has found something. Last time it was about "schizophrenic" mice, just as an example. And, by the way, what happened to those??... Last in the article, Thomas Werge thus hurries to backtrack: "Now we know, that some concrete mutations imply an increased risk for schizophrenia, but this isn't to say, that it can explain all cases of schizophrenia, because it doesn't."

I feel like asking: Well, what of it? Has science found the cause, or hasn't it?

But there's another, quite different aspect to the matter, I will have a closer look at in my next post.

Genetics, Information Technology and Politics

I recently came across the below comment on a post at Bodil Zalesky's blog, "Genetik och informationsteknik" (Genetics and Information Technology). The original post is about the article "Levande gener, döda metaforer" published in the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, October 13th 2005, by Håkan Lindgren (co-editor of a small but significant Swedish cultural magazine, Agamemnon), that is about the interaction between genes and environment in regard to human behaviour.

I found the comment on the matter extraordinarily important, concerning the controversy about Gaderummet as well as the authorities' and society's ongoing discrimination and oppression of certain groups in general, and very well put. I want to thank Marita, the author, for her permission to translate her comment, and post it on my blog. Thanks also to Bodil Zalesky for bringing about the contact.

*******************

Comment on "Genetik och informationsteknik"
Originally posted by Marita, October 15th 2005

I see, that which I am going to say, is a very personal view. Just as a warning.

Throughout the history of mankind, some minor groups always have regarded themselves as being of "the right kind", and the rest of mankind as a pitiful, ignorant and bad mob. Socrates told his adepts, "to think righteously is great, to think independently is greater" and instantly, "the right kind" decided, that they didn't want an independently thinking mob, and Socrates was forced to empty a cup of poison. The Romans separated themselves into Patricians ("the right kind") and Plebeians.

During the Middle Ages in Europe, the men of the church regarded themselves as being of "the right kind", while the wealthy, privileged, who were hardly affected by the church's oppression, of course always have considered themselves being of "the right kind". The church's oppression and feodalism kept the mob in its place ( just as one or the other outbreak of the plague, of course) - in some countries, learning to read was forbidden on penalty of death. (This also applied to black slaves in America.)

Renaissance came with a big sigh of relief, though only for "the right kind". Very little changed for the mob. Flogging, death penalty, witch trials, the Inquisition, poverty, famine, active service... All this yields control.

The Age of Enlightenment starts to emerge, and now scientists are beginning to be part of "the right kind". Everything is to be explained in scientific terms, there is no longer a God, only nature, plants are classified into their own gendersystem, the church is attacked, the law of gravity is put forward, etc. Mercantilism starts to organize and control the mob. Scientists and the wealthy believe, they have the right to perform experiments and sacrifice the mob - unlettered and considered less worthy, hardly of fully human worth as it is. The idea about the unspoiled human, "the noble savage", emerges. The stress, though, is not on "noble" but on "savage". Why "the right kind" wipe out the indigenous population in the conquered countries in America, Africa and South America. "Savages" aren't considered of having any human worth.

Romanticism, remarkably enough coinciding with the arrival of industrialism, creates a new "right kind" - the artist, who can interpret God's voice and will in his art, preferably in a state of opium-intoxication. While the smoke of opium lies heavily among the artists, a new society is established for the mob, where people are packed, dense, dense, in row houses and forced into the industry. Tuberculosis, lice, annoyance, famine, the loss of dignity - all this thrives in the worker quarters. In order to keep the infuriated masses under control, "the right kind" establishes - local pubs and other places with serving rights. Drinking skyrockets - and so do industrial accidents.

Realism then describes this misery, and it is the first time that the mob actually appears in its own right in the world of books. The workers' miserable conditions, work houses (sort of almshouses) and children's homes, angel-makers and diseases are written about. Of course, it aren't the workers themselves writing, but "the right kind", i.e. those with a sufficiently high education and the right background to see the whole society as a system. With the best of intentions, research is started to see if there possibly exists a superior race, if criminality, mental illness, drinking etc. may be diagnosed in the mob before they break out. Skulls are measured and Darwin is listened to. For the good of the race, mentally ill people, people with Downs Syndrome and gypsies, who are regarded as being especially threatening to a functioning society, are sterilized. Phrenology arrives at the conclusion, that the bigger a person's head, the bigger is the brain and thus the intelligence. Europeans' heads are quite big - especially the male ones that are measured. Authors write in furious despair, that it maybe are the miserable social conditions which cause criminality.

Yah, we now move toward our own age. During the 30ies and 40ies, workers and states themselves write about their situation - from the inside. We have a period of escape from a reality marked by war and other misery, and fantasy and sci-fi is written. We send up rockets with men, who, later on, set foot on the moon. Towards the end of the 20th century science makes remarkable process, in every field. "The right kind" have created a society for the mob, that is inhumanely hard, joyless and controlled. Criminality, suicide, mental problems, stress-related diseases, overuse injuries caused by monotonous work - all this increases. "The right kind" get busy explaining, and to their help there's gene technology. We don't measure skulls anymore, don't ask ourselves about environmental influences - we want an explanation, and preferably an excuse. Components in the genes of man (the mob) desperately are searched for which can explain, that this "worse kind" isn't to be blamed for being criminal, mentally ill, stressed to pieces etc., since their second-rate behaviour is programmed in advance in their genes. Programmed is a good term, because it sounds this modern in the age of computerization. Just as a computer, a video and a DVD are programmed, man, too, has been programmed in his genes. If genes for cancer, diabetes or other disabling diseases which may break out in the future - or not - can be found, insurance companies can become informed, and the mob with deficient genes will have to pay higher premiums - if at all they can get insurance. That society is inhumane, is of no concern, even politicians now think that absence due to illness is too high and lasts too long, so, the deficient individuals are stressed to pieces even more, by threats about their benefit being removed. This is of no importance, since the deficient ones belong to "the worse kind", and "the right kind" will manage, no matter what. They have money, a good income, a lot of power, good positions in society, ancestors, connections, a good education etc., and their genes are absolutely not defective. "The right kind" tells "the worse kind" not to regard themselves as a group with the same dreams, rights and goals, but as individuals. Machiavelli already had figured out, that to achieve total control one has to divide and rule.

Something like this: "The right kind" invent whatever they can to control and keep down "the worse kind". For now it is gene technology. Which it will be in 20 years, remains to be seen, still, the system is resiliant.

(translated from Swedish)

********************

In a follow-up comment, Marita states, that "science has never been able and will never be able to predict an individual's future, just as little as it can say anything about what being human means. It is of no importance, if we do research into the composition of genes, count bumps on people's head, or measure their skulls. Overall, we become everything we can through interaction with others, no matter what the rules of genetics tell.

(...) I have a very bright and positive view of what single individuals can achieve, but a pitch-black, negative view of whereto humanity as a whole is on its way. Man as a container of predestinated genes to me is an absurd thought, maybe even a little weird."

I agree.

Democracy - Danish

"Gaderummet" (a space in the street) is a community at Copenhagen, providing psychosocial help for young homeless people with existential problems who don't want the "help" of the system. The award-winning facility had been funded by the government, but the funding was withdrawn in May 2007 because the management of "Gaderummet" didn't want to "conform to the mental health system". Since May 2007 the staff and the users of "Gaderummet" have been struggling to keep the facility running in spite of a fundamental lack of money. The day before yesterday they succeeded only just to scrape up 25.000 Dkr to pay the electricity bill, that became due the same day.

The government considers now to summons "Gaderummet" in order to give notice to the lease, and by this means to get rid of "Gaderummet".

In a TV-news item on Thursday it is stated, that the government is willing to give the young people another place to be, instead of "Gaderummet". A place where, among other things, mental health staff has easy access, since, as a Danish politician is quoted, "some of the young people at 'Gaderummet' need medical treatment", which is exactly what many users of "Gaderummet" chose to do without, since they didn't experience psych drugs as helpful to them. Don't the politicians think, that those who WANT medical treatment will seek it themselves?? Personally, I know several young people who bought into the neurotransmitter-hoax, and, with pleasure, leave it to psychiatry to destroy their brains and lives. But sure, we need to get them ALL! EVERYone needs to toe the line! (Hey there, you missed ME! :) )

This is the Danish version of democracy. It can't tolerate ANYONE living a self-determined life, making their own choices, choosing to do without the system's dogmas and indoctrination. It can't tolerate people who think themselves, independently. Designer society's version of "democracy". Emotional and intellectual engineering. Brave New World or Big Brother???

This is the Danish version of democracy. Forcing people with existential problems to have them "solved" (if only the mental ILLNESS system was able to solve anything!) the only way accepted by the AUTHORITIES: the psychiatric way, using mind-altering drugs (in a psychiatric setting called "medicine", otherwise called "street drugs", note the hypocrisy!).

Obviously the Danish version of democracy doesn't rest before we all have been turned into "lonely robots".

Support "Gaderummet": Arbejdernes Landsbank reg.5361,account no.0415718, or: Danske Bank reg.0274, account no.0766399.

"Mental illness" - a myth

Here's the second of my posts on LAP's and the Sindnet-users' demand for more beds at psychiatric wards, which I wrote since my thoughts about psychiatry in general and its illness-concept in particular didn't seem to have been understood by some people. The two last paragraphs refer to a proposal to convert private wards into wards with several beds in order to establish more beds in general.


"Mental illness" is a myth, Thomas Szasz says. - And at this occasion I'd like to stress that I am NOT a scientologist, since I can hear some people mumble something along those lines, already, while I allow myself to quote Thomas Szasz. Whom I, by the way, am a great admirer of. - He's often misinterpreted (on purpose?), alleged to say that there were no such thing as psychological suffering. The point with his statement is that a metaphorical entity, such as the mind, can't be or fall ill in the same way the body can. The term "illness", mentioned in context with a metaphorical entity like the mind, thus functions as a metaphor itself, just as a "broken heart" is a metaphor and not a real, physical heart injury.

However, what psychiatry does is to equal the mind, the soul, to the brain. In the eyes of psychiatry the mind IS the brain. Why psychiatry almost exclusively concentrates on trying to find a defect, an injury in the brains of people who suffer from an injury to their soul. This is the same as to try to locate the break in the heart of someone who has a "broken heart". Psychiatry has been looking for more than a hundred years by now and hasn't found a scrap. But instead of expanding the search field, instead of taking others than the purely physical possibilities into account for closer investigation, psychiatry persistently adheres to the theory that the only possible cause of a broken heart would have to be a physically broken heart. - I once heard a neurosurgeon tell that he'd looked into uncountable brains during his career but he'd never seen a thought yet.

It is not without reason that psychiatry adheres so persistently - and actually unscientifically; true science never excludes any possibility unless real evidence is found - to its hypotheses about brain diseases. An expansion of the research that acknowledges the metaphorical nature of the mind, would automatically mean an admission of failure to psychiatry in favour of psychology, philosophy and sociology. One has to be aware of that psychiatrists by definition and training are medical doctors, experts in human physics, not humanists, whose speciality are human existential conditions, interpersonal relations or sociological conditions. Their psychiatric training is of no use in the humanistic field. Just as a training as an auto mechanic would be of no use in this field. In order to continuously be able to participate on a scientific level, psychiatrists would need to start completely from scratch and get themselves an education. A humanistic education, like Thomas Szasz has got it in addition to his training as a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists would have to face that their scientific, medical interest matches badly respectively not at all with a possible interest for the human psyche. "Possible" because with most psychiatrists I have a hard time tracing such an interest at all, except if the psyche, the mind, is equalled to the brain, or, and this is the crucial point, if the interest is all about how to control the human mind.

Personally, I, just as Thomas Szasz and many other humanists, count among those people who do not distinguish between "mental illness" and an existential crisis as psychiatry does. To me, the first is psychiatry's and society's discriminating term for the latter. And at the same time a view of existential crises being brain diseases, provides the only, in a democracy morally acceptable raison d'etre to psychiatry. Even though, seen in a medical context, it doesn't even quite hold, since brain diseases are the speciality of neurology, not psychiatry.

The moment "mental illness" were regarded an existential crisis, a reaction to one's life story instead of an imbalance in brain chemistry, psychiatry would appear as what I in accordance with the Swiss therapist Marc Rufer think it really is: a force of law and order. And as such its maintenance would no longer be acceptable in a democracy. Psychiatry, as the force of law and order it is, is a phenomenon that belongs in totalitarian systems. Since only totalitarian systems control their citizens' thoughts and emotions as psychiatry controls its clients' thoughts and emotions - with the help of drugs, ect and indoctrination. In a democracy the single individual's thoughts and emotions are free, disregarded their nature, the individual is free to believe, think and experience whatsoever and however he wants, both in relation to himself and his surroundings. Real democracy would never devalue an individual's self-image or scheme of things as "delusion", it would never devalue an individual's experience of himself and his surroundings as "hallucination", as meaningless "symptom" of a disease.

This is why neurology doesn't like to get mixed up with psychiatry, doesn't show much interest in the so called "mental illnesses", which, as mentioned, would come under neurology's field if there were any reason to believe they really were brain diseases. Psychiatry is a speciality that deals with finding ways to manipulate people's thoughts, emotions and actions for the purpose of gaining greatest possible control and power over them. We saw this more clearly than ever before or after in Nazi-Germany. There are other examples, although not as clear and well-known, such as the CIA's mind control programs, and psychiatry's role in general in openly totalitarian systems throughout history. In fact, it is this control task which delimits psychiatry from neurology on the one hand and the humanistic sciences on the other, and thus legitimates the speciality.

Least clearly this, psychiatry's real, totalitarian interest and task, appears if you can make people in crisis, voluntarily - although..., term and understand themselves as ill, and make them want psychiatry's help, make them want psychiatry to interfere and take over control, so that you, in this way, easily and effectively can cover up your totalitarian ideology and sell it as being a democratic service, part of the health system of a state whose political system goes under the name "democracy". It is quite a feat to get a victim of assault to want the assaults to happen himself. The Nazis in Germany weren't yet that advanced that they would have succeeded in this. They still only concentrated on justifying the discrimination of certain communities, sections of the population, towards the rest of society. Today we're about to have reached the point where this discrimination also is wanted by the discriminated. Not only concerning psychiatry.

That even the most "ill" people, those who are most severely hit by crisis, can be helped without the interference of pychiatry, by using non-psychiatric methods alone, and with far better outcomes than psychiatry's, among others, Laing has proven at Kingsley Hall. That both his and other's (Loren Mosher, John Weir Perry, Edward Podvoll, Bertram P. Karon etc.) ideas and results still today, almost half a century later, are almost completely ignored, tells me something about the society we're living in, and about the political system we're living under, which Ghandi named "nominal democracy" - democracy on paper (and only on paper).

The term and concept of "mental illness" serves, as mentioned, primarily the purpose of discriminating the individual who is named "mentally ill". An individual with a brain disease can't be taken seriously. Neither this individual can be allowed to be responsible for himself which results in paternalism and patronizing. That such an attitude actually is a (sad) reality in today's Denmark, the media's coverage of "the mentally ill" shows time and time again. Often it isn't even considered the least to speak with a member of this community himself when it comes to matters concerning "the mentally ill".

Furthermore, the term and concept serves to clear society of any responsibility in context with an individual's unhappiness in life, in society. Because, obviously, if the unhappiness is due to genes and brain chemistry, society can do nothing about it, and hasn't the slightest responsibility for the problems' emergence.

Last but not least it serves to clear the individual in crisis himself: "If I believe that it is my genes and neurotransmitters that's something wrong with", if I believe I suffer from a genetically caused, chronic and incurable brain disease, "I can do just as little about it as I can do about having brown and not blue eyes", Jakob Litschig (ex-psychiatrist, therapist and psychosis-experienced) says. I only can follow psychiatry's orders concerning medication, and thus leave responsibility for myself to psychiatry.

It can be a huge relief for some people to, via psychiatry's illness concept, be deprived responsibility for their thoughts, emotions and actions. All in all though, such a self-conception only contributes to paternalism and patronizing, and increases helplessness to a considerable amount. Quite often with the result that full recovery as a possibility is excluded beforehand, and therefor neither is achieved. A self fulfilling prophecy, so to speak. And in addition, when taking psychiatry's role as a force of law and order into consideration, the desired result.

Concerning Michalla's remark about private wards, my opinion is that everybody has the right to a such. Especially people who are psychotic need privacy. As far as I am concerned, it would have meant additional pills, if I 'd been asked to share a room with as much as one other person since I couldn't do without the possibility to withdraw when psychotic. Now, psychiatry regards this withdrawal as being a "symptom" which needs to be combated. However, my own experience was that the possibility for withdrawal and undisturbed self-reflection was crucial to my recovery. And I am not alone in this.

Some people might object that more private wards are far too expensive. Yes, if they are located at a psychiatric facility. The single rooms Soteria and projects alike of course provide, are much cheaper than a private ward at a hospital, just as the whole Soteria-model is much cheaper than psychiatry, without being as ineffective as the crisis center Michalla talks about in her comment on my previous post. As mentioned above in context with Kingsley Hall, Soteria and the like are proven to be far more effective than psychiatry. Although not at a "mind control level"... Soteria doesn't control, Soteria liberates.

Out of the frying pan into the fire - or: Out of one abuse into another

They are in ecstasies on Funen (an island, one of the three major geographic parts of Denmark): 7 out of 10 alcoholics stop drinking when treated by the Alkoholbehandlingscenter Fyn. For, among other things, this advanced treatment center sends alcoholics to a psychiatrist. As we all know, many addicts are "mentally ill", so their addiction can and has to be viewed as self-medication.

So, the alcoholics are sent to a psychiatrist who then, of course, will find one or another diagnosis to label the person with. Preferably "anxiety" or "depression". Well, and after the person is diagnosed, "treatment" in the shape of psych drugs needs to get started. The sooner the better. The consumption of these pills, of course, is not termed "abuse" but "treatment", even if their effect by and large is just the same as the effect of alcohol: They influence an individuals state of mind by creating an imbalance in brain chemistry, and thus they see to that the individual is no longer capable of sensing himself and his emotional reactions as he'd be in an uninfluenced condition.

The pills are called "medicine" even though most psych drugs, especially benzodiazepines, are far more addictive than recreational drugs like cannabis, heroin, cocaine and, well, alcohol, and often cause severe withdrawal symptoms, as soon as you, against psychiatry's urgent request to stay on them for the rest of your life, try to quit them. Heroin, yah. Indeed, it is easier to quit heroin than to quit most psych drugs.

The pills are called "medicine" even though all psych drugs, just like synthetic processed recreational drugs like Ecstasy, cause brain shrinkage and cell death on a long-term basis, and to, at least, the same if not a greater extent than alcohol e.g. But this is of course the intended effect, as it is with all psychiatric "treatment".

The advantage of psychiatrically prescribed pill-abuse to self-determined, private alcohol-abuse is that the psychiatrically prescribed version of abuse through the public institution psychiatry provides total control of the individual's abuse, and thereby of the individual himself, to society. Something which can't be said of a private alcohol or drug abuse.

The advantage for the abusing individual is that the coveted, self-anaesthetizing effect doesn't cost the individual half of the money an alcohol- or drug-abuse would cost him, if achieved with the help of prescribed pills. Health insurance pays, up to nearly the whole price, depending on the individual's private economy.

Out of private into state sponsored (and controlled) abuse. Truly a great success! As they call it on Funen.