According to DJ Jaffe, co-founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center which advocates for mandated outpatient treatment laws, California is “eliminating mental illness treatment.”
This, of course, will be a surprise to the tens of thousands of mental health providers in California. Millions of Californians currently receive treatment for their mental disorders, both in the private and public sector.
In fact, Californians wanted to make up for past deficiencies in funding their mental health services, so they passed a law in 2004 that set aside new money specifically to help fund treatment.
Jaffe claims the money isn’t going to the programs it was intended to fund. Should we take his word for it?
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I am not surprised that California is attempting to negate mental illness. There is history of denying appropriate educational and mental health services as seen in The Brown case. It’s unfortunate that legislators still attempt such tactics, but in my estimation it will not happen at this point in time because of the increased legal ramifications.
But California IS NOT trying to eliminate anything. Even in the law’s language treatment seeks to “reduce” the negative outcomes from certain illnesses. This rant isn’t 100% baseless, but it is flawed.
Just re-read the article. Jaffe’s mistake is a logic failure. If A, then B; If not A then not B. If B then C,; if not A then not C. I don’t know all the truth table stuff here but that is a failure of logic.
Bottom line, prevention programs do not seek to eliminate mental illness, only to reduce the negative effects. Prevent some from full diagnosable illness? Of course. But you see that in and of itself will not “eliminate”: mental illness. It will reduce the sum total but not the sum itself.
Oops. That should be If Not A then C. Right? I didn’t do well in Logic class but I know logic failure when I hear it
Thank you, John. I have tried to debate with DJ Jaffe and the like for such a long time and their extremist, idiotic tactics have been driving me up a wall. After awhile, I lose my ability to respond to them. This sums everything up nicely, at least in this case.
You would have my deepest appreciation if, when you have the time, you can go through DJ Jaffe and Fuller Torrey’s other BS and debunk it just as well.
Erika, if you’re going to debate these snakes you need to be aware of their hidden agendas.
Torrey & Jaffe & the TAC are using advocacy of outpatient “treatment” as a way of genociding the mentally ill, homeless, christians, blacks, the poor, jews.
Grohol’s statement that there are no longer strong commitment laws is BUNK. This evil happens everywhere. It has gotten Worse, not better. it is like the nazis saying they stopped genocide. They killed mental patients with pych meds covertly; this was exposed by dr Peter Breggin, who has written many books warning about toxic psych drugs. http://www.breggin.com
There is a hidden agenda behind psychiatry, which is eugenics & genocide of Christians, mental patients, blacks, jews, christians. John Rawlings Rees the head of the World Fed of Mental health said their goal was to infiltrate 4 areas; the church, education, legal and medical. http://www.psychquotes.com This site also has a quote saying over a million mental patients died in a 25 year period, evidence of genocide.
The drugs cause mental illness; & drive people to suicide & homicide.
See my article “the mental health System is a Front for nazi Genocide- an eyewitness account & excerpts from the book The men Behind Hitler- a German warning to the world, which documents that psychiatry was behind Hitler.
My FREE BOOK Manual for Transformational healing-God’s Answer to Psychiatry exposes atheistic psychiatry & their genocide by toxic drugs, & how to heal mental/physical illness. Ch 1 has legal issues. God sent me into the mental health system to be a witness against it & write this book. I saw that 90% of psych patients are not ill; they are Christians. 90% of dr’s are atheists. the problem is theological, not medical.
Mandated in or outpatient treatment is all unconstitutional; the drugs are toxic & deadly by design & constitute cruel & unusual punishment, and slavery & violate the lst amendment for religious freedom, because atheistic psychiatry falsely calls Christians schizophrenic. ch 1 has legal issues.
Those who don’t believe there are mentally ill have probably never had to live with a loved one who suffers with Borderline Personality Disorder or any mentally debilitating disorder.
I’m diagnosed with schizophrenia. I recently started a blog page some I’m keeping up on my news. I’ve spent time in psychiatric wards and dealt with police officers. I read this article first, and then clicked the link to DJ Jaffe’s article. The man is insane. I can only think of a few people that would support him in his efforts, and those would be family members who can’t get their loved ones to take their medications or get to treatment.
I take care of myself. If I lived in California I wouldn’t want to have anxiety from bumping into a a police officer if I had a visual hallucination out of the corner of my eye, and looked that way while I was talking to them. It would be “suspicious” by their training’s standards.
I certainly don’t want to live in a state where there are people virtually defending a 6 (highly trained) vs. 1 (suffering individual) beating.
Hospitalizations are expensive and would eat that 7 billion dollars up much more quickly too. It was approximately $1,000/day 10 years ago in Portland, Oregon.
I blogged too John but didn’t do nearly as well as you did. I just have my unique tongue and cheek personality. I’m new and still finding my voice. Keep up the good work!
DJ Jaffe and E. Fuller Torrey and others illustrate that the mental health profession contains some who have not learned to look into themselves to recognize that their own fears influence everything that they see.
One of the main problems I see right off the bat, is that we, meaning the people who vote in our representatives, are unable to track where funds such as with mental health services, are going. I bet we could ask about the spending for the last five years regarding 1963 type of projects and there would be no way to know if the money is used properly, shared with all communities, or if the funds will be available 1, 3, 5 years from now. Thankfully, there seems to be more support in the private sector to deal with issues, whether or not you want to believe there are levels of mental illness, the definition of severe mental illness should not be long stopping point of discussion, as sorry but it really doesn’t matter. Goals are to keep people safe, if they need or want medication it should be made available, and we should put a real focus on our youth, participation with schools, and addressing the issue of suicide. Our valley near Lake Isabella, had bullying going on regularly, and after a few years of denial and horrifying stories for such a rural high school, we lost two students, or children of parents who suffer such a loss, to suicide. Nobody was able to put together any support even though we are a small community as we expect the government to do it for us. Well, they are gridlocked, and it takes compassion and education, and working together towards a better future, more options, to help push our children up the ladder. NAMI, I want you to know you can kiss my ass, because you get government grants, use volunteers, and don’t return calls. Get rid of NAMI, get our money back for the lack of help. I really don’t see any effective features to this great big money consuming, machine. I would rather see monies go to communities to create their own particular mental health support along with instructions as to how to put it together.Study what works, what has been done before, and then go innovative. Personalize instead of depersonalize…Laura Hart “The bi-polar American” on blogspot.
Hello,
California’s mental health has been a huge mess. My local Shasta County Mental Health does whatever they want. For example, this guy placed a block on me from getting any kind of services from them, including crisis intervention because he feels that if I want help I should have to pay cash for them even though I have both Medi-cal and Medi-care. He sees me getting services in Crisis or being admitted to their voluntary hospital as getting free help. So he blocked me.
I am often brought into the ER by police when suicidal. I am held for 9 or more hours in the ER till Mental Health showes up to tell me they are overturning the 5150 involuntary psych evaluation hold and sending me home. It never matters if I am suicidal at the time or not.
Several times I told the mental health person I was suicidal and as soon as I got home would kill myself. The release paperwork was filled out and I was sent home to be brought back a few hours later for a suicidal attempt. For the attempt, I would be patched up and again sent back home.
And because of mental health not doing anything but sending me back home and refusing to help, the police are taking out their frustraition on me. We have two hospitals here in Redding California. One is kind to me and tries to make the stay as comfortable as possible. The other however goes out of their way to set of the PTSD and threatens me with restraints and painful treatment.
So to punish me for calling a suicide hotline or any other reason to be called out for me, the police take me to the hospital who goes out of their way to make the stay as unpleasent and as uncomfortable as possible.
But before doing anything they scream at me. And I do mean SCREAM at me. They tell me “Why do you keep calling for help. You know no one is going to do anything. We have better things to be doing than coming out to deal with you. If your suicidal, stop calling and just kill yourself already”. Then the officer if he doesn’t take me to the punishment hospital, he just walks away like nothing.
This last August 7th I nearly died because of them. 3 different times I asked for help. Finally I had enough and overdosed on Vicodine and Methadone pills. My therapist showed up and took me to the hospital herself when I called her to say goodbye before passing out. She stayed with me in the ER the whole time. For my current therapist, I have to drive 30 miles away to another town up in the mountains to see her.
Anyway, for the August 7th attempt I got hospitalized for 5 days. But then the psychiatrist told me he was sending me home. He says “You can’t be helped”. My discharge paperwork actually says “Being sent home suicidal”.
It’s not just me either. Recently a man was arrested for bringing a gun into the ER demanding psychiatric help. He had been trying to get Shasta County Mental Health to help him for 8 years. Even the guys mom was begging for help for him. I could relate to the guy because he had serious PTSD like me.
Anyway, he couldn’t take it no more and took a gun into the ER and told the doctor if they didn’t help him, he was going to shoot people and then kill himself. In the end, he didn’t get help. He was instead arrested and while in jail he was taken off and denied all of his psych medication cold terkey for 6 months.
The system is SERIOUSLY broken. How many people need to die before something is done? No one should have to beg for help or bring a gun into the situation. It’s not right.
-Stanley
Important article on Prop 63/MHSA in California in Sacramento News http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/two-tiered-mental-health-system/content?oid=3687288
yes werd all getting kicked to the curb, itsz called government euthinasia at its finest,why take care of the US people who so desperately need it when can affor to send 3.8 billion to the african states and our own politicians fill their pockets and will never have any needs that c@t be met, because they have and will have the best of the best healthwise and monitarily, so why should they really care or invest much time on any of these issues. We all know nothing gets done unless politicians arre affected personally….so expect nothing, then you won’t be disappointed, one less thing to add to your depressive side…..