Friday Funny: WASHINGTON IN TURMOIL AFTER PSYCHIATRY GROUP DISCLOSES 300 MILLION AMERICANS ARE MENTALLY ILL

WASHINGTON IN TURMOIL AFTER PSYCHIATRY GROUP DISCLOSES 300 MILLION AMERICANS ARE MENTALLY ILL

by Ted Chabasinski
(special to the New York Times)
May 15, 2012

The American Psychiatric Association announced yesterday that rigorous scientific analysis of the newly adopted fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, often called its "diagnostic bible" and itself promulgated after rigorous scientific analysis, revealed that over 300 million Americans, or 95 per cent of the U.S. population, suffer from mental illness. The organization's newly elected president, Joseph Mengele IV, urged the country to "set other, petty concerns aside, and rally to ensure that these poor sick people get the help they so desperately need. Our rigorous scientific analysis tells us this is a problem that must not be ignored."

The announcement threw the government into immediate crisis mode. Both President Obama and his Republican opponent in the presidential election, Mitt Romney, conceded that the newly discovered mental health crisis had to be addressed immediately. Obama said, ”You can’t argue with science,” and called on all Americans to support the “war on mental illness” that would have to be fought.

Romney issued a statement that read in part, ”This is real...But the crisis would never have happened but for President Obama’s reckless tax and spend policies. As President, I will use my business experience to solve this problem.”

U.S. Senator Paul Windebotham (D-Minnesota), chair of the Senate Special Committee on Mental Health, announced that his committee will hold immediate hearings on what he called "the gravest mental health crisis this country has ever faced." Windebotham, a member of the National Alliance for Mental Illness and a noted advocate for more mental health funding, said, ”We must do all we can to assure that these poor sick people get the help they so desperately need.”

But economic advisors to the president warned that the cost of treating so many mentally ill patients would likely cause the American economy to go back into recession or worse.

Meanwhile, psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey of the Treatment Advocacy Center, known for his support of the right of psychiatric patients to be treated without their consent, said that, “Three hundred million untreated mentally ill people allowed to walk the streets means three hundred million walking time bombs that might explode at any minute.” He called on the president to use the army to round up any untreated patients and take them to treatment centers “where they can receive the medications they so desperately need.”

According to Dr. Torrey, “This is not the time to be concerned with the trivial niceties of ‘constitutional rights’ when our country’s survival is at stake. This problem could have been averted, were it not for misguided civil libertarians who don’t recognize the only important right for mentally ill people is their right to treatment.”

However, a meeting of the National Security Council convened by the president ruled out the use of the army, since over ninety-five percent of the soldiers would also be mentally ill.

GlaxoNovartisPfizerLillyMerck, the world's largest pharmaceutical manufacturer and the owner of the psychiatric association, pointed out that this newly discovered crisis meant that the U.S. would be facing an unprecedented shortage of psychiatric drugs. But it pledged that it would do its part to produce the needed medications, provided that certain safety regulations were suspended and no taxes were levied on any profits it might make. It suggested the government enter into a “cost plus” arrangement used in previous wars, where companies were paid their cost plus a certain amount beyond cost, in this case, five hundred percent

A GlaxoNovartisPfizerLillyMerck spokesperson said that the company wanted to be a good corporate citizen, and realized its obligation to do its part to help deal with the crisis. According to the spokesman, "We recognize that all of us, no matter how much of a sacrifice it may be, must pitch in to make sure these poor sick people get the help they so desperately need."

Meanwhile, Bob DeMent (R-Miss.), speaker of the House of Representatives, said his party was willing to make compromises to address the crisis. He proposed that the money to purchase the necessary medications be found by stopping all federal payments for education, food aid, unemployment insurance, Social Security, and 
Medicare, and reducing all taxes to zero on corporations and people earning more than $1,000,000. "These socialist giveaway programs only benefit useless eaters anyway. This way, we can help our patriotic corporations while making sure these millions of poor sick people get the help they so desperately need."

Representative DeMent said he was willing to work with the Democrats to address this issue, in spite of the fact that many members of his party believe that the real problem facing the country is not mental illness, but witchcraft.

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Saturday Survivors: Ted Chabasinski

"Those who profess to favor freedom yet deprecate agitation, 

are people who want crops without plowing up the ground. 

Power concedes nothing without a struggle. 

It never has and it never will." 

Frederick Douglass 

Today's Saturday Survivor is long time Civil Rights activist and MindFreedom International member, Ted Chabasinski. Ted's incredible story of psychiatric trauma inflicted upon him in psychiatric facilities for most of his childhood, and his recovery are a triumphant testimony of his innate indomitable spirit.
via Mind Freedom International

Ted Chabasinski

"When Miss Callaghan had discovered enough "symptoms," I was sent to the Bellevue children's psychiatric ward, to be officially diagnosed and to made an experimental animal for Doctor Bender. I was one of the first children to be "treated" with electric shock. I was six years old."
Born: 20 March 1937

Contact info: Berkeley, California, USA


Currently doing: Ted is working as the directing attorney for Mental Health Consumer Concerns (MHCC).


Mental health experience: Shocked, Inpatient, Outpatient, Forced Treatment, Raped, Restraints, Tortured, Solitary Confinement


Psychiatric labels: Schizophrenia


Recovery methods: Peer Support, Self-Help, Social Activism, One-on-one Therapy, Group Therapy, Diet, Exercise, Art/Music, Family/Friends


Brief History:
Psychiatrists and social workers had already decided before I was born that I was going to be a mental patient. My natural mother had been locked up just before she gave birth to me and was locked up again soon after. The social worker from the Foundling Hospital told my foster parents that my mother was "peculiar," and Miss Callaghan soon had them looking for symptoms in me, too. Every month Miss Callaghan would come and discuss my "problems" with my foster parents. If I only wanted to stay in the back yard with my sister and make mud pies, this was a sign that I was too passive and withdrawn, and my mommy and daddy were supposed to encourage me to explore the neighborhood more. When I started to wander around the neighborhood, I went to a neighbor's garden and picked some flowers. The neighbor complained, and Miss Callaghan held a long session with my parents about curbing my "hostile" impulses. read here.

Ted has been active in the psychiatric survivor movement for decades. In the summer of 1970, there was a gathering of psychiatric survivors at the Highlander Center in Tennessee. Ted and the other survivors who gathered forty one years ago are the leaders in the Civil Rights Movement for people with psychiatric diagnoses in the United States. See: "Nothing About Us Without Us History" page above for more.


The general public is largely unaware of the history of the psychiatric survivor movement. Even worse is the fact that the public has been misinformed about the efforts of Ted Chabasinski and other survivors to obtain basic Human Rights for people who have a psychiatric diagnois. Ted Chabasinski and other survivors in the psychiatric survivor Civil Rights movement have been diligently pursuing basic Human Rights for decades. This Civil Rights movement is following the examples of Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King Jr., among others. Ted and other survivors have been seeking basic Human Rights for themselves and for all people who are denied equal rights under the law, due to a psychiatric diagnosis. Our Founding Fathers declared that human equality is "self-evident" in the Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

The rights of all individuals were effectively and adequately defined and secured by the framers of The Constitution of the United States; yet these rights are denied people who have a psychiatric diagnosis as a matter of course; as they have been denied to other people based on heritage or gender historically in this Nation. 235 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Ted Chabasinski, a member of Mind Freedom International, is advocating for Individual Rights that the Constitution of the United States of America declared belong to all American equally. Rights are not effectively secured if they are not protected and defended, these are Human Rights, and are applicable to all Americans equally. September 17th of 2011 it will have been 224 years since this document was sent to individual States to be ratified. Isn't it time that the Law of the Land is applied equally to all Americans?

Ted survived horrific treatment as a child and adolescent, and has spent much of his adult life helping others by sharing his experience and demonstrating his devotion to the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. Ted knows these principles are applicable to every one of us, and he knows the harm that happens to people when their Individual Rights are not protected or defended.

Ted became an attorney to more effectively help psychiatric survivors; his advocacy benefits all of us, it is a service to humanity.

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Ted Chabasinski on Wikipedia