On Becoming an Articulate Hand-Grenade Psychiatric strategy and tactics are based on faith-healing, replete with speaking in tongues (language), fortune telling (promises of happiness), and snake oil (drugs).  Their model is the ABC’s of selling; “Always Be Closing”…quiet compliance and enlistment, the goal.  They know what’s best for you. Beware infantilization; it is endemic in […]

In the midst of chaos there is opportunity”   Sun Tzu By June 2013, during the usual fail-replace-repeat treatment ‘plan’ of the state behavioral health providers, I found myself in the perfect storm of bad drugs and deadly ‘care’. Within a 2-week period, it involved Risperdal, tardive dyskinesia-both eyes, Lamictal, NMS, the ER, more Lamictal, anaphylaxis, […]

Editorial Note:  This is the second in Krista Hartmann’s 4 parter on changing her medical records.  See part 1, Unicorn. “What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears”.  Alice Walker When I encountered the psychiatric industry in 2004, I was a 53- year-old, sun-surf-beach chasing artist with a solid education and middle-class origins. I […]

Editorial: This is the first of four posts by Krista Hartmann I am a real Unicorn, something whose existence is suspect, rarely sighted, and discussed even less…by the psychiatric industry, who are, ironically, my creators.  My existence throws a wrench into their meta-narrative; truths inscribed on everlasting stone tablets…. until the next edition of tablets […]

If your doctor wrote in your medical record in the 1940s that you were mentally ill or had a neuropsychiatric disorder, this could have led to sterilization across most of the Western world, or in Germany to elimination. Long before a single Jew was gassed, tens of thousands of lives not worth living were eliminated […]

Gaming is becoming one of the biggest areas of human activity on the planet – bigger than movie-making, newspapers and most other media. Its power to shape the way we view things is clearly huge and likely to increase with Virtual Reality. Some weeks ago, a group released a new Escape from the Asylum game. […]

The examples given in the Kidnapped series of posts are dramatic. They point to growing abuses in healthcare systems. The idea that in every way we are making more and more progress leads people to cut corners to bring the benefits of treatments they know will work to others. Those whose lives have been affected […]

Declaration In the last decade, a new problem has come into focus, illustrated by the posts over the last 4 weeks. Families and communities have traditionally provided the overwhelming bulk of care for relatives whether they were mentally infirm, elderly and dementing, younger with learning disabilities or suffering from physical illness. The impetus to care […]

Editorial Note: This is the fifth post in a medical kidnapping series. There will be at least one more, perhaps two. Lost rights The county asylum system that came into being in 1845 initiated a period of therapeutic optimism, that was extinguished by 1900. Therapeutic optimism re-emerged in the 1950s with the advent of the […]

Editorial Note: The last three posts give examples of medical kidnapping happening now. The Doctor Munchausen series of posts on David Healy in July and August 2014 give some more examples. This post and two to follow outline how we ended up in a position where people can be kidnapped. Medical Kidnapping goes back a […]

Editorial Note: The post below is by Simon Hattenstone and appeared in the Guardian on April 2nd. It fits into the Kidnapped sequence and allows us to draw attention to the #JusticeforLB campaign (Laughing Boy). Once again the point is this could be you or me, could be cardiac or orthopedic or any branch of […]

Editorial Note: This post is by Franke James, Teresa’s sister. The reaction in the US or UK is that things like this couldn’t happen here. Part of the reason no one can believe that treatment is being forced on people who don’t need it is that many of us have the experience of not being […]