Mind freedom wins victory over forced electroshock in New York State

Update 18 April 2012

VICTORY!

Forced Electroshock of Glen K. in a
New York Psychiatric Institution Halted!

Within 48 hours of the launch of a MindFreedom International Alert Campaign, the Attorney General for New York State announced today that Glen K. will receive no more forced electroshock under his court order. Rockland Psychiatric Center was giving involuntary electroshock over and against Glen’s expressed wishes.

Glen has been told. He is thrilled.

He won! Thank you to everyone who spoke out for Glen!

Glen’s attorneys got a call from the NY Attorney General earlier today. Under the guise that Glen is doing so well, the Attorney General said they are no longer defending the court order to give Glen electroshock, and are withdrawing that order.

Glen won’t be forcibly shocked any more under this order.

Given this Attorney General decision, Glen may be creating an advanced directive to help protect him in the future.

MindFreedom contacted Mental Hygiene Legal Services, which has defended Glen and a number of other New York psychiatric survivors against forced shock. We spoke with Glen’s attorneys Dennis Feld and Arthur Bear, who made this public statement:

“We feel that our client has been vindicated, and what we thought was one of the most onerous for forced treatments we ever saw has now been nullified.”

And there’s no need to go to Brooklyn for Glen’s hearing tomorrow, 19 April 2012, because Glen won!

MFI director David Oaks said, “Thank you everyone for your quick response on this campaign. Keep contacting Governor Cuomo and ask him to issue a moratorium on all involuntary electroshock in New York State!”

BELOW are other updates from the last two days, including how to hear a brief recording of an interview with Glen conducted yesterday by MFI.

For live links and the original alert go to:
http://bit.ly/cuomo-forced-ect

~~~~~~~~~~

Updates from yesterday, 17 April 2012:

** You can now hear a nine-minute MP3 audio excerpt of a phone interview conducted today with Glen K., by MFI. You may also read the text notes of the interview. [Find links at http://bit.ly/cuomo-forced-ect

]

** The first 24 hours of Glen’s campaign already had an impact. MFI received a call from John Allen, director of Consumer Affairs for NY State Office of Mental Health, who claimed: “While we can’t comment on this individual case, we have suspended and are reviewing policy and procedure that would lead to these kinds of circumstances in the future.” While this is positive news, MFI will wait until Glen or his representative declare victory.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Update 16 April 2012:

Glen K. has reasonable objections to on his forced electroshock, and states:

“ECT causes profound memory loss, it causes universal brain damage , and it is a harsh, harsh treatment…”

~~~~~~~~~~~

BELOW is Excerpt from Original MindFreedom Alert that Apparently Helped Glen Win His Campaign to Say “No!” to Forced Electroshock

Thank you everyone! Congratulations Glen!

“No one is tired on victory day.” – ancient Persian expression

~~~~~~~~~~~

MFI News Exclusive

April 16, 2012

Your Tax Dollars At Work:

Does Governor Cuomo Know His NY State Institution is Forcibly Electroshocking Glen K.?

by MindFreedom International

It’s in the public record:

Glen K. is being forcibly subjected twice a week to electroconsulvive therapy (ECT), also known as shock treatment, in a New York state mental health institution – Rockland Psychiatric Centerphoto on right – where he is being held involuntarily. These shocks are administered to Glen K. over his clear and consistent protest, under the authority of a court order which authorizes a series of 120 shock treatments over a period of 12 months.

This order also authorizes the hospital to chemically restrain Glen K. with involuntary psychiatric drugs, when he refuses medical procedures in preparation for ECT. On many occasions, the hospital has also employed physical and chemical restraints to overcome his resistance to ECT.

FOR REST OF ORIGINAL ALERT, AND LIVE LINKS IN UPDATES, GO TO:

http://bit.ly/cuomo-forced-ect

 

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Thanks for listening

Are You Listening? (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Of of the skills I bring to being a certified peer specialist I believe that the most important is my willingness and ability to listen. I try to blot out whatever distractions may be present including the sounds of others in the room and offer my attention. And sometimes I’ll just keep listening as long as it takes without needing to say much. I always hate it when people impatiently say “hello” after I’ve been listening to them. As if they expected an instant response.

Recently I communicated with several friends concerning my misgivings regarding today’s colonoscopy and was grateful that three of them offered to take me to the veterans administration for the procedure. And some other friends offered reassurance. They “heard” what I was saying although I had not spoke a word. One of my friends is a blogger Jan Wilberg who writes Red’s Wrap and I left a note on her facebook page about how things have been going on her blog.Today her entry is a bittersweet tale of  not being heard. She wrote about experiencing hearing loss and being at an event where her husband was being honored.

Tonight I just told a very nice man whose name tag indicated to me that I ought to talk to him that it was not going to be possible to have a conversation.  I pointed to my hearing aids, waved my arms around the room filled with hundreds of chattering people, I’m sorry.  He looked at me like oh, ok, should I write you a note? But then he eventually wandered off to the next prospect.  It was then I decided to pack it in and come home.

I can just imagine how I would have felt in that  situation because I sometimes find that people I attempt to talk with at those types of gatherings are looking for someone else. They have mentally tuned me out because I’m distracting them from more productive mingling. In addition I sometimes miss parts of conversation and find it very isolating

It takes much more effort to listen and now that I have learned of my friend’s challenge I will seek out more alternative means to communicate. We need to engage everyone, not just those with normal hearing.

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Why am I always opposite?

Anyone who has never been diagnosed with a mental illness should leave this blog entry immediately

Rethink Mental Illness (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

, because I’m not talking to you. I want to talk with people who have experienced trauma and gone on in their lives. There are more people than you would care to know who have had life changing events, such as abuse, witnessing abuse done to others, served in the military or been traumatized in civilian jobs. In fact trauma informed is the key phrase in peer support these days right alongside person-centered. We are recognizing that we are not just a mass of chemicals to be balanced. It’s just not enough to adjust one’s serotonin levels and believe that everything will be fine.

One of the ways things will continue to remain difficult is when we seek out romance. Most of the women I have been involved with as an adult have been in recovery from a severe mental illness. One of the major struggles in these relationships was whether I too had a mental illness. As it happened, I had a problem that I was unwilling to acknowledge for many years. My failure to acknowledge what I was experiencing cost me dearly.

Even more painful was the recognition that just because my significant others had acknowledged their issues did not make having a relationship any easier.When I wrote the title, why am I always opposite I had in mind the phrase “opposites attract.” A woman experiencing bipolar disorder today may act far differently than 5 years ago. Just as I act far differently today than I did 5 years ago.b I’m much quieter than I was, I like larger living spaces and I enjoy my own counsel more than ever. I have positive communications at work that never had seemed possible in the not too distant past.

I learned a lot from the way that I sabotaged my previous relationships. At first glance the woman I am dating currently is as different from me as night and day. But I am committed to seeing what we have in common and how it bring us together. I am tired of being the opposite of every woman that I meet. Sometimes it’s good not to be so different. Otherwise I may traumatize myself.

Português: Gato Psicótico criado pelo autor. English: Drawn by early 20th-century commercial cat illustrator Louis Wain near the beginning of his mental illness (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

V.I.D.A. (Photo credit: Pensamentos Filmados)

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One of the 44%

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has published a front page story about the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Center for Development about the disappearance from the job market of African American men. Over the past 40 years employment levels for men 16 to 64, a group which includes me, have fallen from 73% to just barely 44%.  At the same time, incarceration rates have risen dramatically. Even for men not incarcerated, it’s not uncommon to find they are paying off tickets for disorderly conduct or other offenses.  At the same time, they we are leaving the job scene, we are actually becoming less employable.

According to the UWM study, the bottom 5 cities for black male employment were

1. Chicago 48.3%
2. Cleveland 47.7%
3. Milwaukee44.7%
4. Buffalo 43.9%
5. Detroit43.0%

The top 5 were

1. Washington 66.6%
2. Dallas 61.%
3. Boston 59.7%
4. Minneapolis 59.3%
5. Atlanta 59.0%

You will notice that those top levels of employment are nowhere near the peak level from 40 years ago.  Further, the declines in employment levels covered white, Hispanic and black men. It is a trend that mirrored the de-industrialization of northern cities.  As our jobs fled south and later to China (that giant sucking sound Ross Perot  warned  us about) we have been left with lower paid positions in the service industry.

The factory jobs that remain are largely performed by robots that do all the manual labor that our parents used to do. It’s called getting more out of workers or some fancy term like “productivity.”

As an African-American male I find this situation troubling. When I left Buffalo in 1980 it was already in decline. Although things looked better in my new home of Milwaukee, it, too was on the way down. Despite two college degrees I found it difficult to develop and sustain a satisfactory career.  In recent years I have created a new career, as a peer specialist and for the first time my income and hours worked began to rise. I guess I should feel grateful but I worry about the long term implications of the UWM study.

My nephew John has started a family in Buffalo. Will he fall victim, too? Is America prepared to ignore the skills of millions men who play by the rules and strive for a piece of the dream? Are we going to recapture those jobs that fled our shores? Can a man who creates jobs in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland understand the plight of American workers? I don’t think so, Mitt! Can a man who labelled Barack Obama “the food stamp president” identify with the issues facing low income workers? No way, Newt. Will the former publisher of racist newsletters give a damn whether black men and women drown in this economy?

Barack Obama’s future is tied to our success. We may not return to the employment levels of the 1970s overnight but that’s the only way we can create an America that is born to succeed.

Related articles

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Little Known Support Groups You Should Join

Image via Wikipedia

As a peer specialist part of my job is finding resources for people who are experiencing emotional distress. Having revitalized my wildly successful blog last year I have been flooded with tips for my many dedicated followers.

These are among the many support groups I recently uncovered

1. PTAA, Post Traumatic Alien Abductions. If you’ve ever met someone who has been probed by aliens and survived long distance relationships with those fabulously interesting Martians, you know how annoying these people can become. They kill dinner conversation by quoting the latest SF movie and insist upon showing you exactly where ET and his friends had sex with them. Have you ever wondered whether  there wasn’t some place you could send them? Well, now there is hope. Just follow the link at the end of this blog and you and Jan Brewer will be free of aliens.
2. IMVGFDSFUIGE, If My Vegan Girl Friend Doesn’t Shut the Fuck Up, I’m Gonna Explode. If you’re like me, you want to shove a piece of meat in front of some smug vegan and say, bite me.As justified as your actions might seem at the time, some people would consider them morally repugnant. And someone might actually take you up on your offer. A safer alternative might be retiring to your nearest steakhouse for a couple of hours eating some of natures tastiest animals.
3. HCBMH, Herman Cain Broke My Heart. For those true believers who clung to his every word  and understood  the genius behind his 69/69 tax proposal I know you mourn for the one who was too intellectual for America. An early dropout from the Clown Car of Republican Presidential Comedians, he thrilled Jon Stewart and other irresponsible so-called journalists.  Your man, Herman, shall rise again, in bedrooms across America.
4. WNAWNM, We Need a War Now Mommy, for those deeply worried about the threat of peace breaking out in the next 4 years. There are deeply, sincerely, pro-life, sitting around pondering the death of Iranians just in time for next Christmas. Instead of saying all you  want is your two front teeth, you wish for dead children in some distant land. You may get your wish, just ask who god told Pat Robertson will be the next president.
   

   Image via Wikipedia

   

   Image via Wikipedia

    

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Celebrate Real Love

Image by @Doug88888 via Flickr

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

I was looking at the Celebrate me home video once more  and I was struck but the ordinariness of love. There were not big boobed women from men’s fantasies in those pictures. They all passed the “put my arms around you” test but beyond that I didn’t see anything special about them. I found things to like about all of them. The children were equally adorable. I could not imagine any of them giving anyone fits like what I heard about on the bus yesterday.

There was a mother with her daughter talking to a friend about her son and the way that he had kicked the door off its hinges at home in a fit of rage. He was a tall violent child who scared and exhausted her.

I remember an acquaintance with a similar problem whose son frightened her with his mental health issues. I was thinking about that mother when I worked today and saw the artwork on the wall. Someone with a wonderful talent had created it. He is not an artist you would recognize. He is a man of vast potential and sometimes incredible rage.

I realize that rage, hatred and calm can be mixed together. I remember the movie Canvas, which tenderly portrayed the struggle of of someone living with a mental illness. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780492/  Today my friends of potential, rage and tenderness reunited  with their friends and family. That was the portrayal of real love. It’s not always “handsome guy meets beautiful woman” the way that we see in a lot of movies. Real love involves working out a lot of things. Including understanding that the handsome guy might actually be attracted to another man he met along the way in the mental health center.

What can we do as a community to nurture love in all its forms and not the things which were ingrained in our minds for so long? Home and who is returning home to whom has changed but it still feels the same once we put our arms around one another. Go ahead and celebrate the diversity and wonder of love.

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Is it Simple to Change?

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

I was just listening to a story on Marketplace about an organization called Simple. https://www.simple.com/. It’s a way to leave your bank and avoid a  lot of these horrible fees banks have been using to steal our money. Apparently the company gets money from banks to work in a more friendly way with their customers. These are mostly small banks that want a way to diffuse consumer anger. It’s a curious idea and I’m thinking about this.

I wrote this blog a few hours ago without knowing where I was going with it and I found that after a while I started realizing that the phrase “is it simple” was the key thing I was questioning. What was simple? And the more I went along, I started thinking about the character Jim Parsons plays on The Big Bang Theory. http://www.cbs.com/shows/big_bang_theory/

What were the ways that I could explore change in my life and how had I resisted change? There were a few specific areas I thought about. I looked at the Goodwill stores and how the organization had changed over time.  I thought about my life and how I might be able to change it. And finally I wondered about the whole concept of change. It seems so ironic because I work with people on the question of change and I read an excellent book Changing For Good during an AODA class last spring. http://www.timlebon.com/stagesofchangemodelprochaska.html

Is there a lot of Goodwill available? I remember my family going to the Goodwill stores back in the 60s. Several years ago Goodwill got its maw stuck in honey jar by becoming a provider under the Wisconsin Works (W2) program that replaced welfare. Eventually Goodwill was forced to withdraw from W-2. Despite the bad publicity from the mess resulting from a series of missteps Goodwill had created a wall between the W2 program and its other operations.

The streets are full of ads promoting shopping at Goodwill as a fashion place. I went to a store on the east side of Milwaukee and purchased two pairs of running shoes for which I receive compliments on a regular basis. Last night I looked at the Goodwill.com site and saw that they had a major presence resembling ebay where people bid on thousands of items.

I was clutching my Goodwill frequent shopper card and barely resisted the urge to join in the bidding. This is not my mother’s Goodwill.

I definitely want to improve my living conditions including getting rid of some junk. I am typing on a keyboard that disgusts me. There was a much better looking keyboard at the store. This apartment, too, must go. I have written, somewhat facetiously, about my interest in becoming a member of a housing cooperative. I thought, how simple could that be? I have been favorably impressed with the progress that Eight Limbs Cooperative has made. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Yogashalahousingcoop/

I enjoyed the fundraising event for Eight Limbs that I wrote about.  I have struggled in my efforts to live in  community. In fact I remember being irritated when my partner would open the front curtains in our apartment. Is it simple to let others into your life? Can you trust that seemingly small changes in your life are really safe for you?

Could you accept the pitter patter of all those other people scrambling about lowering or even removing curtains at will? I am going to talk with one of the people who has been encouraging cooperatives and co-housing in Milwaukee to discuss my idea for transforming a small four unit building into a housing cooperative.

Here is the message I wrote about my protect. This is the message I plan to use on COLOG:  There is a wonderful 4 unit building owned by a longtime Riverwest couple who would love to see it to a cooperative. Let’s cooperate. Let’s put our heads together an incorporate a cooperative. Let’s find a name for this new venture and create a self governing organization. Let’s increase diversity in Milwaukee housing. Let’s show that there is an independent spirit in Milwaukee. Send me a message off list and we will get this ball rolling. On to cooperation. Kenyatta

Maybe it is that simple or maybe change is something we must struggle over until it wrestles us to the ground and makes us accept its necessity.

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If I Didn’t Care, I Wouldn’t Have Been Angry

When I came home from the military I got a job as a worker in a recreation center in Buffalo, New York. I was in my early 20′s and I had no concept of work. It was easy to get a job because there were people in power who believed that it would be better in people were working. I had an apartment in a building that my mother owned. I was part of the New Left. Having been an anti-war activist before I was drafted, I was even more against the war once I returned.

I thing that a lot of people don’t understand that the leftists of the 60′s and 70′s worked good solid jobs in factories and municipal services. The guy who I looked up to in the movement, Dan, worked in the sewerage department. I was in the recreation department but like I said, I had no concept of working.

One of my uncles also worked in the recreation department. But there was a catch. The funding that created my job also established a two-tier wage system. I was working alongside people who made a lot more money than I was making and were union members. But all I cared about was having a paycheck. However even that incentive did not always work. Sometimes, I would show up, but after a while I didn’t.

Today I work with people a lot younger than me, we’re not in a union and we perform a job that did not exist in the 70s. It would seem that occasionally the shoe is on the other foot. I’m now the one who becomes angry when a co-worker talks about not feeling well and leaving. I use different techniques depending upon the person and the situation. Today I became angry. I said “that’s not fair for me or the program.”

I have a couple of different personas so I may seem easy going and a bit of a goofball. I tell lots of jokes, especially with peers, because I feel that laughter is a wonderful medicine. If the work we do didn’t matter, I would not bother. But it does. If I did not have my history I would understand that when you’re young and in distress, it’s time to leave. If I did not think you were worth keeping, I would say, go ahead and leave.

Having survived, I continue to believe that we all must keep showing up and good things will happen.

Is it Genetic or Do I Really Care?

I saw an item posted on a National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) site today that made reference to a study about the genetic basis for depression. Scientists are  looking to find the gene that may help them predict evidence of depression. Although I respect NAMI’s work and was an intern at NAMI Greater Milwaukee I found myself wondering whether I cared that there might be a depression gene in me. From talking with my older sister and my mother I have learned that all of us are subject to depression. That was all the information I needed.

Who wouldn’t be depressed about the way our country is going? There was an article last week about the increasing number of people who have been prescribed anti-depressants. I think it was 1 in 10 are using these drugs and the number is predicted to keep increasing. Baby boomers like me who protested the Vietnam War have found our country mired in endless war. Drone technology has made launching attacks against other countries more akin to playing a video game.

The modern pilots can sit at their comfortable office desks  and never worry about whether that convoy in Afghanistan was a group of insurgents or a wedding party.  We now have the ability to send a mini plane over a territory or a building and locate targets and bomb them as casually as one might make a chess move. That’s both depressing and frightening.

Unemployment rising, bank fees out of control, the rich owning more while everyone else gets less. All of these are signs of the brutality that has swept our country. So, what should we do? Look for the famous depression gene, or a schizophrenia gene or join a demonstration?

The growing  Occupy Movement has revived the popularity of protesting conditions that we don’t like and  which make us feel hopeless. Demonstrations offer strength in numbers. They give people a chance to resist the Tea Party Know Nothingness. And hot damn if they aren’t cheaper than anti-depressants. Sorry, NAMI, I’m not looking for genes, I’m going to occupy America.

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Are You at Baseline Today?

Today I asked my supervisor, “are you at baseline today?” She was surprised and unable to figure out the meaning of my remark. This was not the first time that this had happened. I like to come out with remarks from center field. What in the hell was I talking about now? Especially with a woman who had recently given me a favorable review.

I have seen this word used to label the behavior of mental health consumers and I felt much the same as when I saw words like “high-functioning” and “frequent-flyer.” That is, I considered it pejorative language created by mental health professionals to suggest that we know something about the people we are attempting to assist. Taken out of the context as a descriptor for mental health consumers, does ” baseline” convey anything? I don’t think so.

And yet we have reports filled with this word in the absence of any proper description of someone’s behavior. Readers are supposed to assume that Person X has always acting a certain way for as long as we are allowed to imagine and presumably will continue to do so. If the person came in one day and performed a Beethoven symphony that would be outside of baseline. Is baseline the most that we think that Person X could do, the upper limits of our expectations, and have we set our expectations too low? More likely, the baseline is the most common behavior that professionals have observed the person performing. If so, why don’t we just say that? “I have often observed John doing the following things?”

Are we setting limits or being lazy? To me, I believe that users of the word “baseline” should experience an increasingly painful electric jolt until they remove that awful jargon from their vocabulary.

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