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| # | First Name | Last Name | State | Country | Comments |
|---|
| 1 | Vince | Boehm | | | |
| 2 | pamelasue | edwards | ME | US | |
| 3 | Pira | Kelly | OR | US | |
| 4 | Linda | Valentine | MA | US | Relatives & Allies of Psychiatric Survivors (too many died and suffered)/Branch of Mindfreedom also wants to know the answers to the seven demands sent prior to the strike on July 28, 2003. We want to know the facts. We are sick of the repetitive garbage we must listen too concerning the "Illness being Biological" with NO PROOF AT ALL! We get to clean up or try to save our family members from further torture and harm. |
| 5 | Jerri | Lynn | MN | US | Are there any biopsychiatric research studies that are free from bias due to the "last observation carried forward" (LOCF) problem that plagues the bipsychiatric profession? According to a research study published on MedScape, the fact that so many psychiatric research respondents have to drop out of clinical trials prematurely due to adverse reactions to psychotropic medications is causing a big problem for researchers because it reduces the sample size and distorts the results.
Another bias problem in biopsychiatric research was reported by a FDA spokesperson who told the USA Today in July 2002, that many biopsychiatric research participants have been over-diagnosed to meet the qualifications for research studies their psychiatrists were involved in. How many pvictims of forced psychiatric treatment have been misdiagnosed with severe mental illness to meet a research quota?
If the APA knows where unbiased biopsychiatric research is, if any exists at all, then this should be made public immediately.
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| 6 | Joshua | Kriegman | | | |
| 7 | diane | hiatt | TN | US | The apa, nami, and the attorney general can't answer these questions because the "medicalization" of societally "inconvenient"behavior has more to do with segregating certain individuals from mainstream society, than it has to do with concern for anybody's health or illness. Were such activity not neatly masked behing the "guise" of concern and caring for health, we - as a people - might realize that we are living in a "police state". |
| 8 | Lynn | Michaels | NY | US | |
| 9 | Philippa | Willitts | | UK | |
| 10 | ria | fey | MA | | |
| 11 | Marcia | Donovan | CA | US | |
| 12 | Annette | Benkoski | CA | US | |
| 13 | Jenny | Star | MA | US | |
| 14 | Mike | Hall | | UK | |
| 15 | Will | Hall | MA | US | The Fast for Freedom is a courageous and historic effort that deserves everyone's support in the effort to tranform mental health care. |
| 16 | Litto | Teo | NY | US | |
| 17 | sean | fleming | | IE | Biological psychiatry has no sound scientific basis underpinning it . The critical model of psychiatry understands that the personal, societal and environmental factors involved in mental distress are the real issues that need to be addressed. A more holistic approach to mental suffering is the way forward. The biological model working in alliance with multi-national pharmaceuticals does not serve people's real interests. |
| 18 | Oryx | Cohen | MA | US | I stand in solidarity with the brave hunger strikers!!! APA: stop telling lies!!! |
| 19 | Roberto | Bosio | | IT | |
| 20 | Steven | Dufour | CA | US | |
| 21 | Carole | Bressington | | UK | The APA, as with other similar here in the UK should be the servant of the people, not the other way around. 100% respect & solidarity. |
| 22 | Michael | Haan | WA | US | To date the American Psychiatric Association and NAMI have failed to come up with the proof that brain disorders exist. "Where's the Beef?" |
| 23 | Lorri | Doyle | AK | US | |
| 24 | Diane | Hiatt | TN | US | |
| 25 | Michael | Haan | WA | US | The requests are legitimate and the American Psychiatric Association has failed to provide the proof. |
| 26 | Gene | Deegan | MA | US | |
| 27 | george | ebert | NY | US | I support the people who are participating in The Fast For Freedom in Mental Health. |
| 28 | Roy | Bercaw | MA | US | This is a good beginning, to question the extensive institutionalized fraud of the psychiatric industry, the human services corporations and the pharmaceutical industry. It is a large and growing criminal fraud on the US taxpayer and the taxpayers of the 50 states. State departments of mental Health are no more than lobbyists for the psychiatric industry. The numerous alleged advocates among local state and US governments are pimps for more funding. They do not assert the rights of humans; they promote the economic rights of corporations and professionals. |
| 29 | Joshua | Kriegman | | | |
| 30 | Sara | Arenson | | CA | |
| 31 | David | Gonzalez | NY | US | This is a worldwide movement who's time has come. For far too long psychiatric patients have been exploited under the guise of mental health. When an American citizen is locked up in a psychiatric facility because he or she is diagnosed as "mentally-ill," then due process demands that credible and reliable evidence be presented to justify imprisoning and forcibly drugging an individual who has committed no crime. Psychiatrists are the only doctors who are authorized to diagnose illness without taking any diagnostic tests on their patients. If a general MD did that - he or she could be sued for malpractice. |
| 32 | pamela | edwards | ME | US |
To the APA, NAMI and The Surgeon General of the USA: I signed this petion because I was psychiatric patient who like scores of others like me,h ave had very unfortunate and painful consequences from psychiatric treatments.Not the least of these are permanent tardive dyskenesia and severe akathesia.As you know these are 24/7 neurologcal disorders *caused* by the psychotropics.There is yet no medical intervention which I've been given which cures these *very real* neurological disorders. When I stopped taking all psychtropic drugs,these awful nad new *real* disorders did not get better. Because of them, I disabled. I can not do sustained work of any kind, I can not get restful sleep. I am permanently disabled and am in 24/7 real pain *because* of biopsyciatric treatments.
You all need to prove to me that these treatments were *not* the result of my misplaced trust in *scientifically* trained medical doctors.You need to prove to me that all the psychiatrist who diagnosed me with , and treated me for, a brain disorder had valid scientifically justifications to do so.
They assured me that I should and could trust them.
I was a very true believer in biopsychiatry. If I had the knowledge that the psychiatists had had NO solid scientific evidence underpinning these, I woud not have consented to any of the psyciatric treatments. And I would have sought out legal assistance to resist those treatments. It is appears that there *never* was any solid scienctific basis for what I agree to have done to me.
Let me tell you exactly what some of these treatments were and what the consequences of them were and continue to be for me. This is an overview, only
I was given the following (sometimes against my own will):
1. The psychotropic drug* treatment given to me for 35 years years;
2. 20 years I spent in mostly state psychiatric hospitals**
3. The 1.5 years I spent in locked door seclusion rooms , and 8 weeks in 4-point restaints.***
4. The 2.5 years of 40hr/week unpaid labor[ i.e., ' work therapy' ] orderedfor me/ required of me , by psychiatrist inconjuction with the Occupational Therapy depts in these hospitals.****
NOTE : Please read the notes for the *-ed items.
Most sincerely,
Pamela Sue Edwards
25 Deep Cove Rd.
Eastport, ME 04631
Phone # to reach me at :781-447-2251
pamelaedwards12@yahoo.com
*This includes: "old" and "atypical* neuroleptics, antidepressant and mood stabilizers [MAO's,SSRIs.Tricylics, Lithium],Anti-siezure drugs used as antidepressants and mood-stabilizers[e.g. Dilantin].Sometimes cocktails of 3 classes of drugs were given to me. I suffered servere parakasonian reactions to all of the old neuorolectics, and the Cogentin did not adequtely alliviate this.Three times I suffered "malignant neuorleptic syndrome" Each time I had to be sent to a "regular hospital" to keep me from dying from MNS.
I now suffer from severe akasthesia 24/7 which is entirely due to the neuorleptics, though I no longer take any psychtropic drugs.
** One hositaliztion lasted for 5 years. I was 19 years old when I was involuntarily committed there after a suicide attempt. This was due to great grief on losing my father to death from ALS, he was my family. On top of that, I had just lost my job, was living on the street , had to drop out of college for lack of money to pay for it,I had no social supports in place to help me cope: and on top of that, no sympathetic and helpful psychotherapist was available to me. Clearly, if i had that i would have had help with my deep grief and hopelesssness, I would not have tried to kill myself.
And then ,for one whole year I did not get outside to walk on the grass and breathe fresh air because the staffing levels were too low to allow for an ascorted walk out side of that unit.To sum up hospitals were, for me a holding-tanks, while the psychiatrists gave me every known psychotropic agent, on an *as-yet unproven* scientific basis. I believed them because they assured me that they *knew* that I had clear, biologic brain disorder which these drugs would attentuate, if CURE my "brain disorder". They were all medical scientists; some were NIMH researchers. So I Trusted them. As such I *truly believed* they had the scientifically sound knowledge to make these statements and order these treatments. I did not *ask* them to *prove* it to me. I, like so many others trusted them implicitly.
***This was the result of severe rage reactions to Haldol and Prozac. The staff at the hospitals claimed they did not know then that there was any reseach already out there which said that in some case these drugs *do* induce rage reactions.So, my being placed in 4-point restaint in the locked door seclusion rooms for screaming uncontrollably was because of the ignorance unwarrented pracices on the part of the psychiatrists. The psychiatrist insisted that these drugs could *not* cause these rage reactions.However, there IS now evidence is indeed these reactions were known to happen. ****Under threat that my privelages to take part in off-unit social activities, I was required to work as a nursing assisant on a specilial care unit for the termally ill elderly psyciatric pts. Somtimes I was left alone to care for 35 patients while the rest of the non-patient ,hired[i.e,paid] staff chose take their afternoons off grounds . This was a misuse and abuse of psych patient by psychiatric hospitalital staff. But it was a common one. I got lucky. I didn't have to work in the laundry or on the the garbage truck. |
| 33 | Mike | Lawson | | UK | Psychiatry is a complete sham, even honest psychiatrists know this.
The psychiatric system is now simply a means for
profit for the pharmaceutical industry.
We must fight to rehumanise the way distress is dealt with.
|
| 34 | Alasdair | Semple | PA | US | |
| 35 | Laurie | Nadir | | CA | |
| 36 | B J | Sliger | | | |
| 37 | Eleanor | White | | CA | It's about time that psychiatry, which has full
police powers yet no checks and balances,
and no system of defence advocates such as
public defenders, gets challenged to justify the
horrors of psychotropic drugs and imprisonment
without a fair trial.
|
| 38 | Vickie | Miller | UT | US | |
| 39 | michael | walsh | | | |
| 40 | Daniel | Moore | DE | US | |
| 41 | Stephen | Mendelsohn | CT | US | |
| 42 | Sharon | Goodner | TN | US | |
| 43 | Paula | Jolly | IL | US | |
| 44 | terra | friedrichs | MA | US | |
| 45 | Morgan W. | Brown | VT | US | Speaking for myself only of course: the work, that the hunger strikers for Freedom in Mental Health began, will continue.
My peers and I will no longer be silenced and marginalized by those who consider themselves either in the mainstream or in authority, as *they*-[i.e., the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) or the Surgeon General as well as others so aligned] have lost or are certainly have begun to lose what credibility and power *they* once may have held.
*They* have also lost the respect and authority that went with it as well.
*They* no longer have any real power over the lives of those of us who refuse to either give it away or surrender it even when means of force, coercion, deceptive marketing and media campaigns and other tactics are often used.
It would be far better and easier if *they* would simply engage in meaningful dialogue with the Fast for Freedom hunger strikers and those others of us who are calling on *them* to do so.
Of course, this would just be the beginning of a much needed process of beginning to address the concerns raised and requests made by the Fast for Freedom in Mental Health hunger strikers and those who support them and their efforts. |
| 46 | Grant | Balfour | FL | US | |
| 47 | Nicolas | Large | | | |
| 48 | Jim | Gottstein | AK | US | |
| 49 | Carolyn | Price | MT | US | I urge your support.
These people deserve
a face to face response
and respect
The response so far
is very disrespectful
of their efforts. |
| 50 | Dawn | Rider | UT | US | I fully support the objective of this initiative. |
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