New York has created a psychiatric police state.
Governor Cuomo, along with Democrat and Republican legislators, is ramming through a bill to restrict gun ownership, re-classify weapons in order to ban them—and, in a far-reaching move, create psychiatrists as cops who must report patients to law-enforcement, in order to keep the patients from owning a weapon.
Psychiatrists must report patients “who could potentially harm themselves or others.” If such a patient owns a gun, it will be confiscated.
This means a comprehensive data base, accessible by law-enforcement personnel and anyone else involved in doing background checks These “problematic” patients will be kept from buying a new weapon, too. Otherwise, the law would have no teeth.
As usual, the devil is in the details. Psychiatrists will err on the side of caution and report many patients. No shrink wants to blink into television cameras after one of his patients has just shot his father.
Patients who want to own weapons will lie to psychiatrists about their thoughts and feelings, never admitting they’re considering suicide or murder.
After such a murder, a psychiatrist will say: “He never said anything about killing anybody. Here, look at my notes. There’s nothing there.”
For this and other reasons, such as the existence of the data base, doctor-patient confidentiality will go out the window.
Therefore, the practice of psychiatry, which already minimizes talk therapy and merely dispenses drugs, will move even further in that direction. Tight-lipped patients, who don’t want to go on a police list, will seek an office visit with the sole motive of obtaining a drug.
Since all the emphasis is now on “mentally ill patients who are prone to violence,” the possibility of indicting the drugs in violence will recede over the horizon.
SSRI antidepressants (Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, etc.) and other brain drugs do, in fact, cause people to go crazy and commit violent crimes, including murder. This is an open secret in the psychiatric profession, and the public is becoming more aware of it every day.
But it will be swept under the carpet.
Under the new law, a psychiatrist can’t be prosecuted for failing to report a patient who later commits murder, as long as the psychiatrist “acted in good faith.” The meaning of that phrase is broad enough to automatically cast blanket exoneration on most shrinks, which closes off the chance a psychiatrist will be pilloried for prescribing a drug he knows can induce violence in the patient.
This New York law will be copied and passed by other states, and in the end, we will see a national data base of psychiatric patients.
http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/01/15/breaking-new-york-creates-psychiatric-police-state/
Police Foundation convenes policing and mental health experts to develop prevention model for mental health-related gun violence.
Describing the impetus for the meeting, Police Foundation President Jim Bueermann said, “While a national response is important and necessary, we can and should find ways to address mental health-related gun violence at the local level. The police, school officials, mental health specialists, parents, and community leaders need practical, evidence-based suggestions about the prevention of these tragedies. And they need them now. We can leverage the taxpayers’ investment in policing, mental health systems, and research into “what works” by giving the police three clear recommendations.”
The three things every police chief or sheriff should know about preventing mental health-related gun violence are:
1. The police should create local partnerships with mental health service providers, school officials, and appropriate community groups to develop a mental health crisis response capacity;
2. Police chiefs and sheriffs should use the bully pulpit afforded them to keep community focus on the need for mental health services and convene local service providers and community members to enhance knowledge about local needs, services, and the science of mental illness and gun violence; and
3. Police chiefs and sheriffs should adopt policies and practices that help reduce the availability of firearms to people in mental health crisis, institutionalize mental health training for their officers, and facilitate community-wide “mental health first aid” training for all community members.
The group will continue its work to provide the police, community members, and local policy makers with evidence-based tools that build on these recommendations and sharpen the focus on preventing mental health-related gun violence. This is the first of a series of meetings the Foundation will host on critical issues facing the police and the communities they serve.
In addition to the Police Foundation, the following organizations participated in the roundtable discussion: American Psychological Association; National Institute of Mental Health; US Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance, Civil Rights Division, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, and FBI Behavioral Science Unit; International Association of Chiefs of Police; Police Executive Research Forum; Mothers Against Drunk Driving; National Council for Behavioral Health; Office of New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez; Fight Crime: Invest in Kids; US Department of Homeland Security; New Haven CT Police Department; Montgomery County MD Police Department; and researchers from George Mason University’s Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy, the University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins University, University of Virginia, and West Virginia University.
http://www.policefoundation.org/content/police-foundation-convenes-policing-and-mental-health-experts-develop-prevention-model