Behaviorism and Mental Health

Alternative perspective on psychiatry's so-called mental disorders | PHILIP HICKEY, PH.D.

  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Tell Your Story
  • Submit Your Story
  • Moderation Policy

Murphy’s Mental Health Bill: An Update

December 27, 2013 By Phil Hickey |

Yesterday, December 26, at 8:25 p.m., the following comment was posted on my December 16 post on the Murphy Mental Health Bill.

“Read the article in today’s Wall Street Journal (12/26/13), ‘A Mental-Health Overhaul’, and you cannot help but be in favor of the Murphy Bill. It is a huge misrepresentation to say it is about ‘coercive tactics’. Take the bill piece by piece and debate it. If you have experienced the mental healthcare system you would recognize that this legislation is badly needed and long over due.”

I read the Wall Street Journal article, and it is truly a disturbing document.  Here are some quotes:

“Severe mental illness is the common link among the recent mass shootings…”

I know of no study that supports this contention.  What is clear is that many, perhaps most, of the individuals in question had been taking psycho-pharma products, but neither the government, nor pharma, nor psychiatry has undertaken to explore this relationship.

 “Mr. Murphy, a psychologist, has spent the year since Sandy Hook studying the problem.  His House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations has dug into federal policies, and his reform is aimed at helping the next Adam Lanza before he strikes.”

There is no way to identify the “next Adam Lanza.”  Any attempt to move pre-emptively against the “next Adam Lanza” will inevitably deprive numerous young people of their civil rights while missing the one-in-ten-million person who actually poses a genuine threat.  What’s going to happen here is that we will effectively criminalize social awkwardness.

“The secretary would have to be a medical professional and would be responsible for promoting the medically oriented models of care adopted by the National Institute of Mental Health, or NIMH.”

These are the same medically oriented models of care that prescribe neuroleptics for 2-year-olds and have turned neuroleptics and antidepressants into block-buster drugs.

“The Murphy bill also uses grant money to push states to modernize their mental-illness laws.  Some 23 states still allow for involuntary commitment only if a mentally ill person is an imminent danger to himself or others. This standard is nearly impossible to meet, and even psychotics are often able to present a brief façade of normality.  Many are unaware they’re even ill and won’t voluntarily get help.”

If anything, the present laws make it too easy to commit someone.  Also note the dismissive, disparaging language – “even psychotics”!

The article takes a back-handed swipe at the survivor movement:

“The Murphy legislation also addresses one of the more destructive forces in the mental-health system:  the legal lobby.  Many Americans may be shocked to know their tax dollars are funding a small army of self-anointed ‘advocates’ who encourage the mentally ill to avoid treatment, and who fight parental and court attempts to get them care.  The Murphy bill stops this funding.”

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

This comment, by avignonplace, and the Wall Street Journal article are clearly parts of a coordinated attempt to use the public concern over the mass murders to expand psychiatric influence, to sell more drugs, and to facilitate the use of involuntary commiment.  I have been unable to uncover any information about avignonplace, and the WSJ article is unsigned!

Psychiatry has come under a great deal of criticism in recent years.  They have no legitimate response to these criticisms.  So they hit back with this regressive legislation.  Just when we think psychiatry can’t go any lower, guess what – they go lower.  How many psychiatrists are speaking out against this bill?

Please, if you have not already done so, contact your political representatives and ask them not to support this bill.  Your voice counts.

Filed Under: A Behavioral Approach to Mental Disorders Tagged With: expansion of psychiatric turf, survivors of psychiatry

About Phil Hickey

I am a licensed psychologist, presently retired. I have worked in clinical and managerial positions in the mental health, corrections, and addictions fields in the United States and England. My wife Nancy and I have been married since 1970 and have four grown children.

 

Recent Articles

  • AND FINALLY
  • RESPONDING TO DR. MOREHEAD’S SECOND ATTACK ON ANTI-PSYCHIATRY
  • DR. PIES STILL TRYING TO EXCULPATE PSYCHIATRY FOR THE CHEMICAL IMBALANCE THEORY OF DEPRESSION
  • RESPONDING TO DANIEL MOREHEAD, MD,  PSYCHIATRY’S LATEST CHAMPION
  • PROBLEMS AT A COLORADO MENTAL HEALTH CENTER
  • THE ENIGMA-MDD PROJECT: SEARCHING FOR THE NEUROPATHOLOGY OF “MAJOR DEPRESSIVE DISORDER”
  • ILLNESSES OR LOOSE COLLECTIONS OF VAGUELY DESCRIBED PROBLEMS?
  • WHY IS PSYCHIATRY SO DEFENSIVE ABOUT CRITICISM OF PSYCHIATRY? Part 2
  • WHY IS PSYCHIATRY SO DEFENSIVE ABOUT CRITICISM OF PSYCHIATRY? Part 1
  • ADDRESSING THE SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF MENTAL HEALTH – OR PERHAPS NOT

The phrase "mental health" as used in the name of this website is simply a term of convenience. It specifically does not imply that the human problems embraced by this term are illnesses, or that their absence constitutes health. Indeed, the fundamental tenet of this site is that there are no mental illnesses, and that conceptualizing human problems in this way is spurious, destructive, disempowering, and stigmatizing.

Disclaimer

The purpose of this website is to provide a forum where current practices and ideas in the mental health field can be critically examined and discussed. It is not possible in this kind of context to provide psychological help or advice to individuals who may read this site, and nothing written here should be construed in this manner. Readers seeking psychological help should consult a qualified practitioner in their own local area. They should explain their concerns to this person and develop a trusting working relationship. It is only in a one-to-one relationship of this kind that specific advice should be given or taken.

Privacy Policy

Popular Topics…

ADHD akathisia alcohol alcohol/drugs antidepressants antipsychotics anxiety benzodiazepines bipolar books worth reading case study chemical imbalance theory conflict of interest dealing with problems of daily living dementia dependence depression drug DSM DSM-5 ECT expansion of psychiatric turf IF THEY'RE NOT ILLNESSES WHAT ARE THEY? involuntary commitment Mad in America major tranquilizers myth of chemical imbalance myth of mental illness neuroleptics over-medicalization of everyday life parenting pharmaceutical industry placebo posttraumatic stress disorder Psychiatric "spin" research corruption schizophrenia shock "treatment" side effects somatic symptom disorder SSRI's suicide survivors of psychiatry tardive dyskinesia violence

© 2009–2023