when cops become therapists..

[undergroundpanther]

I attended the National Crisis Intervention Training -- or CIT for short -- in Memphis, Tennessee from Monday, August 27 to Thursday, August 30, 2007.

I was a bit leery of going because I was unsure of how to present a workshop to law enforcement officers. Based upon my limited personal experience, I only knew of law enforcement as ultimate authority figures. The uniforms are designed to be threatening and intimidating. Like the military (where many officers were originally trained) most of the attendees wore crew cut hair. It was pretty easy to identify law enforcement officers just by the "look."

Here is information about the creation of CIT from sources on the web:


CIT stands for "Crisis Intervention Team," and refers to a collaborative effort between law enforcement and the mental health community to help law enforcement officers handle incidents involving mentally ill people. The first CIT program began in Memphis, Tennessee.

In 1987, 27 year-old Joseph Dewayne Robinson was shot and killed during an incident with the Memphis Police Department. This shooting outraged the community.

Following this fatal shooting, in 1988, the Memphis Police Department joined in partnership with the Memphis Chapter of the Alliance on Mental Illness (AMI), mental health providers, and two local universities (the University of Memphis and the University of Tennessee) in organizing, training, and implementing a specialized unit.

This unique and creative alliance was established for the purpose of developing a more intelligent, understandable, and safe approach to mental crisis events. This community effort was the genesis of the Memphis Police Department's Crisis Intervention Team.

CIT has now spread to most major cities and over 2300 law enforcement agencies around the country.


Nothing About Us Without Us!


That's great but some thing's missing:

NOTHING ABOUT US WITHOUT US! (see model curriculum at the bottom).

Training for CIT is done by local National Alliance on Mental Illness - a primarily "family member" organization, also known as NAMI, and the local mental health community. Mostly, this means that for 40 hours of training, consumers/survivors/current and former mental patients are pretty much left out.

Yes, we get to do anywhere from two to four hours of the training but that's generally less than 10%.

My first problem with CIT is that we're pretty much left out. My second problem is that the bulk of the training is done by people who are almost totally "medical model" in their belief system.

CIT training allegedly trains law enforcement officers to assess "mental illness." When they feel they are interacting with someone they consider might be "mentally ill" they then practice techniques designed to connect with the person and convince them to go with the officers to some sort of "treatment."

That leads to the next problems I have with CIT.

* First, officers aren't qualified to "assess" based upon 40 hours of training. In my opinion, not even psychiatrists are able to assess to the extent that two of them will agree. Assessment is a judgment call and I am very uncomfortable with law enforcement passing judgment on people in this manner.
* Secondly, I don't believe in "mental illness" and the fact that officers will be judging and then directing people to "treatment" is a dangerous use of implied authority as coercion.


I envision several dangerous scenario's:


Law enforcement could be used to sweep people into forced or coerced "treatment" who are really trying to cope with social issues such as poverty, homelessness and social oppression.

Law enforcement through CIT training develop relationships with "family members" and then when a family member is distressed, they can call and report someone who is allegedly "mentally ill" and have that person taken into the custody of the mental illness "treatment" system.

This enables the ultra right-wing conservative NAMI (heavily influenced by the psycho-pharmaceutical industry) to have law enforcement (quasi-military) as their "enFORCEment" branch. Law enforcement have already started to use "less than lethal force" such as tasers and beanbag guns however, there have been many fatalities.

The fanatical NAMI even supplies most of the "consumers" for the training by using those who are already pretty co-opted and who serve as NAMI poster children. They are trained to recite the medical model mantra about the efficacy of psychiatric drugs without even blinking.

I've nothing against psychiatric drugs but I worry about the recent report that states that those of us who have been psychiatrically labeled live a shortened life span of an average of 25 years less than those who haven't received psychiatric "treatment."

I worry about the connection to those drugs that cause all sorts of debilitating effects from weight gain to diabetes to sudden death. NAMI feels that anything that "controls" us and makes us less of an inconvenience to the families is a good thing and the drugs do that very well.

NAMI and the medical model mental health system feel that a quiet client who causes no community disturbance is deemed "improved" no matter how miserable or incapacitated the person may feel as a result of the "treatment." This is how they are training law enforcement: force people to take drugs, drugs and more drugs and if they won't take them, make them.


Time to Panic?


I wasn't scared when I went to this conference.

I was a bit unsure of how to approach law enforcement officers since I felt that it would not sit well with their "authority figure" persona to have me try to act as if they had something to learn. I did okay. I presented on how to help change from a culture of weapons to a culture of words.

Some attendees seemed almost puzzled because I wasn't typical medical model. I spoke of discrimination and prejudice. I spoke of how the system oppresses mental patients and teaches them learned dependency. A few seemed to understand.

Then I went out and interacted with others at the rest of the conference and I got more and more scared.

I overheard NAMI fanatics and I saw NAMI folks "suck up" to the cops and I saw the cops "suck up" to NAMI folks and in the midst of this mutual admiration society, I started to get panicky.

I recalled another fanatic group in the 1930's and 1940's who used the muscle of a heavily armed law enforcement branch to impose their will. I started to "flashback" to scenes of goose-stepping authorities imposing oppression on those they deemed different and not "pure" - people sort of like those of us who have been labeled as having a brain disease caused by an impure mind due to a chemical imbalance.

I watched the disingenuous smiles of the NAMI folks and I realized that I'd come face to face with the enemy. Those of us who are part of the movement for human rights in opposition to psychiatric oppression need to beware because, unbeknownst to most of us, NAMI is literally building an paramilitary army out of law enforcement that will be the enFORCEment arm of involuntary treatment.


http://mindfreedom.org/kb/police-mental-health/cit

this mixing of psychiatry and law enforcement is troubling considering the lack of ethics in the APA...
http://www.counterpunch.org/bond08232006.html
http://www.antipsychiatry.org/weitz2.htm
Psychiatric careers offer psychopaths a totally control based environment where they can abuse...patients.Is it a surprise when this sort of shit happens? Not to me.
http://www.delmarvanow.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070807/NEWS01/70807026/1002

...if patients believe their illness is an unchangeable genetic destiny requiring a physical solution, they will readily accept a drug prescribed to them when in fact they require quite different treatment. Worse, say the researchers, those who buy the genetic fairytale are less likely to recover. "I hope we soon see a more balanced and evidence-based approach to schizophrenia and people using mental health services being asked what has happened to them and being given help instead of stigmatizing labels and mood-altering drugs," .

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20060514024158data_trunc_sys.shtml

Fascism by any other name ,done for any rationale,directed at any 'inferior' population be they 'crazy,' demon possessed, genetically flawed or 'chemically imbalanced' it does not matter , it is still fascism.

[sandnsea]

1. Did you write this? n/t

[undergroundpanther]

7. no

I get mindfreedoms' email updates and this was one of them.I thought it might be good if people thought about these issues and the implications of them more.

[EFerrari]

2. I hear you, but the alternative for "mental health" calls is being shot.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x305841

CIT isn't enough but it's better than getting dead.

[lvx35]

3. I think the good out weighs the potential for abuse.

I've heard these programs have been successful in other cities, and as somebody who works with the mentally ill, I can tell you law enforcement has absolutely no tools. They beat one of the mentally retarded clients of my company within an inch of his life when he resisted arrest (this is a guy you could have talked into the cop car if you knew the tricks and were willing to take the time) and then after the lawsuit, they won't do anything even if a mentally disabled client actually assaults another, because they fear to take action.

The bottom line is that when you've got a system like this, its fine applied to people committing crimes due to mental illness, and its going to help them deal with the situation in a more targeted manner. I work in this borderline world of mental health and law enforcement, and I can guarantee you that the treatment the mentally ill get from the mental health system is better than the treatment they get in jail.

[EFerrari]

4. Which is frightening considering that our jails are the biggest

providers of mental health "services" in this damn country.

What a disgrace.

[lvx35]

5. BTW, I am against all "pre-emptive" law enforcement.

I certainly agree cops shouldn't go around telling people who aren't commiting crimes to get mental health services, based on the idea that the person might commit a crime in the future. Cops should intervene only when the law is getting broken, whether its with mental health or traditional means.

[undergroundpanther]

6. Have you ever been in a long term

mental health unit?
The potential for abuse is there just by the way it is set up .A psych unit is a totalistic environment where one section of people ,the patients, are under the control and domination of another set of people, the staff.
Read the Stanford Prison expirament.
http://www.prisonexp.org/

Mental hospitals and jails both as situational mileus have "tops" and "bottoms".And some of the things that are called "treatments" are downright sadism.I know I lived through it.About “safe space.” A major problem with these therapistic means of communicating is that they can be so damn manipulative. “Safe space” is perhaps the biggest manipulator....

That could never happen here. Oh but it does, but it’s not the same thing. This is America, we don’t do shit for political reasons. We confine individuals in the mental hospital when there’s something wrong with the individual, full stop.

Individualism, our American credo, gives us this fundamental disconnection between politics and behavior. They do not meet. You break that rule at your own filthy-stinking-pinko-hippie-femanazi peril.

And since we don’t have politics in America what we do is throw people in the psych ward for creative writing, for falling off their medication, because they lack insight, because they distrust NAMI, are paranoid about family lock-em-up motivations, are misinformed about electroshock, and every other intervention we frame as treatment, none of which, including the behaviors that spawned the treatment are to be interpreted as a form of political protest. Ever.

http://writhesafely.wordpress.com/

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/mental_health_advocacy/35970
http://www.toddlertime.com/advocacy/hospitals/hospital-abuse.htm

Psychology suggests that only after healing yourself can you begin to heal the world. I disagree. People do not have to be perfectly functioning, self-actualised human beings in order to create social change.
http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=168

[undergroundpanther]

8. Do you know what sanity is

without a culture that frames what is normal or not in a yard stick for lunatics with one point of view?(the authority)?
Don't feel bad if that answer does not come easy, neither do psychiatrists.

The potential for abuse exists every time there is a situational milieu where one part of a population is empowered as authority and permitted to dominate or control over another population,the deviants to the "norms"..Those 'norms' invented by the leaders of the hierarchical society that demands we all conform ourselves to..Some people conformity to an abusive culture is easy, for others it is torture.And so the ones unable or unwilling to play the game react in rebellion and pain to the demands the sick culture makes upon them.

I am a social heretic,and society for the most part is fucked up and it is always the authority types that get offended at what I am. Some people still want to deny abuses of power hurt me, so these therapists call me sick for being wounded, blame ME for it,and say shit like I may be dangerous because I don't comply with treatment all the time as commanded. Because I hate and blaspheme some of this societies cultural imperatives I find toxic to my being and abusive, that same shit all citizens get rammed down their throats by dutiful parents, until state and corporation finish the job,I am called crazy.

I don't play cultural make believe games like most everyone else,does without even realizing it that's why my ass has been labeled and relabeled with some diagnostic variant of loony by the agents of normalcy.
Can't let survivors speak too loudly it might end the game and break the illusion that the way we are conditioned to live our lives is desperately sick and painful to many also.Can't let awareness get too awake it can interfere with the population keeping pretending this way that hurts most of us is the only option on how to run a society.

Cultural heresy is the most genuine protest this fucked up authoritarian culture ever gets.Problem is if you don't conform you will get hurt and the pain and thinking too much about why it hurts and what the source of that authoritarian disease is may cause some forms of insanity.And the empire cannot tolerate a heretic that does not want to get with the cultural program at some point in their life...

[lvx35]

9. I hear you, and I see a little of both sides.

I suffer from some comparatively mild mental illness issues, and have schizophrenic friends. On the other hand, I work in the mental system, and I see the other side of the picture.

Now first of all, I can tell you horror stories of the mental health system, especially of the mental hospitals and therapists therein.( I have buddies who work there and buddies who've been in there) But I work outside of that level with people trying to get adjusted to society. I can tell you there are great professionals in it all levels too. Anyway, the guy I'm currently working with has schizophrenia and some mental disabilities, and he does things like try to wear holiday clothing (dress like santa claus/easter bunny/leprachaun) and innapropriate times of the year, and part of my duty is to get him to dress normally.

The reason I do this is because the goal of our program is to get them as independant and functional as we can in the world, and this means he's got to dress and act like a 52 year old man is expected to dress and act, otherwise he has no hope of ever getting independant enough to get a job, and have the freedoms "normal" people have. But I the mental health worker am NOT making the value judgement on him, our mission just to get people as functional and we can in THIS society.

Which is what it comes down to, THIS society. And if you look closely at it, nobody is sitting on top making all these value judgements either, its a huge collective process that just happens. History is filled with accounts of utopian peaceful societies, like the native americans who thought the mentally ill were more in touch with the spirit world and treated them reverently. But when these societies clashed with imperial militaristic societies, they were wiped out due to their lack of devotion to warfare. As happened when the europeans came to America, and as happened to the tribal europeans when Roman forces wiped out their cultures.

So the point is that this whole thing is nobody's fault, nobody is sitting on top deciding these things, we just happen to live in Rome; beneath the veneer of all our technology we are as barbaric as ever. Once you accept it and take it upon yourself to survive in this barbaric world, with all the rackets and control and bullshit, I think we all are a lot better off.

[undergroundpanther]

10. The true job of psychiatry in ONE sentence..

Once you

accept it

and take it upon yourself to survive in this barbaric world, with all the rackets and control and bullshit, I think we all are a lot better off.

Accept it, and try to "survive" in a world stacked against you with all the rackets and control bullshit

Just bow your head and accept this SHIT the powers that be dish out and we will be better off..WTF?


I do not accept it.I will not.Fuck that it is capitulation.
Accepting THAT is fucking insane.Acceptance of the intolerable is WHY our culture is still so damn barbaric.

I value my freedom and making my own self identity over capitulated survival or the false security one strives for in the normal land in this barbaric world I hate..One horrible concession that if I "accepted it" The barbaric society would use me to death ,crush my humanity, negate my desires,erase my freedoms and topple my self sovereignty,and tear me down in a billion different ways until I was "normal" another indiscriminate slave to a system that profits from my misery..

Breaking a person to accept the yoke of indiscriminate slave hood begins with very small cognitive takeovers, like telling the client to stop wearing a Christmas hat in June.And telling him the big lie that depending on a psychopath corporation that could care less about his well being but who wants to control his life is "freedom".

[lvx35]

11. What! I'm not saying you have to like it.

I'm just saying to accept that nobody is in control, and this world is a mad free-fer-all. They are already trying to negate your desires, erase your freedoms etc. what I am saying is to accept this as reality, and understand that there is nobody sitting on top deciding that the world should be so who we can complain to, its up to us to change it.

And with the client, he consumes a mass amount of tax-payer dollars for rent, food, full health care etc. all provided to him for free. The policy of the state is to encourage and work with all of these people to get them functional in society and as independant as possible, and its good policy.