The Irish Times headlined: Champion of mental health awareness dies

LEADING MENTAL health campaigner John McCarthy (61) passed away at his home in Cork city yesterday morning.

Mr McCarthy set up Mad Pride in 2008 to campaign against the stigmatisation of mental illness as well as fight for the rights of those diagnosed with such illnesses.

The group sought "to promote the normality of madness" and last August made submissions to the Department of Justice on the proposed new mental health capacity law.

"Our mental health laws allow two psychiatrists to sign a piece of paper and lock you up for the rest of your life because you've been diagnosed with a mental health problem," he said. "It's based on nothing more than opinion, and that's part of the cruelty of the mental health system. You can be incarcerated and force-treated against your will."

Mr McCarthy, who wrote for The Irish Times about his battle with motor neurone disease, passed away at 11am yesterday. Read more here.The Irish Examiner headlined: Death of tireless campaigner for the vulnerable:

By Jennifer Hough

Wednesday, January 11, 2012
 
He spent his life fighting for the rights of the most vulnerable in society.

He liked to be known as a human rights activist, author, poet, columnist — and he was all of those, as well as a loving and devoted husband, father and grandfather.

John McCarthy, 61, passed away at his home at 11am yesterday following a two-year battle with motor neurone disease.

His health deteriorated over Christmas and it is understood he had been suffering with respiratory problems, which, in the end, caused his death.

John's legacy will be his dogged attempts to show up what he deemed the country's biggest hidden abuse scandal — the treatment of those with mental health problems. Or what he simply termed, people suffering emotional distress.  Read more here.

Dr. Breggin has been documenting and discussing the wealth of material and studies showing brain damage from the neuroleptic drugs, now often called antipsychotics, for several decades.  Now, in a 7 year study of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, repeated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans have documented "The main finding that more antipsychotic treatment is associated with smaller volumes of gray matter and with greater reductions in white matter volume over time," according to lead study author Beng-Choon Ho, MD, associate professor of psychiatry in the UI Carver College of Medicine.

The Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy has launched a new project that will be increasingly documenting these studies as they are published.  ToxicPsychiatry.org is an online library and newspaper project of the 501c3 nonprofit Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy, Education & Living, founded by Peter R. Breggin, MD and Ginger Breggin, working toward replacing the biological theories, diagnoses and treatments of "modern" psychiatry with better therapeutic and educational approaches.  To read more about the Beng-Choon Ho study and others please see the ToxicPsychiatry.org page about antipsychotics. 

           
Study the Research? Or the Researcher?
by Ginger Ross Breggin
First Posted: 01/27/2012 6:42 pm, The Huffington Post

A paper just published in the journal History of Psychology provides a fresh look at one of the most often-discussed early studies of human behavior.

The study, referred to as the "Little Albert Experiment," was performed by John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner in 1920 while they were with Johns Hopkins University. Watson took 9-month-old baby Albert B. and set out to study how an infant's reactions might be conditioned. He exposed the baby to a white rat which was allowed to approach and climb on the child, who had little reaction. Then Watson exposed the child to the rat while making a loud smashing sound, resulting in the infant crying. After several exposures to simultaneous rat views accompanied by the raucous sound, the baby began to cry upon seeing the rat, even with no sounds. From this study, Watson concluded humans were impressionable and could be deeply manipulated. Generations of psychology students have read the "Little Albert" experiment. The experiment has often been used as a spring board for ethics discussions.

Watson established the psychological school of behaviorism in America. In 1924 he boasted: "Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specialized world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee you to take any one of them at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select -- doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors."

Now, in a splendid example of first-class historical investigation, the authors of "Little Albert: A Neurologically Impaired Child" have exposed Watson's study as fraudulent and even more unethical than it appeared on its face. This new paper documents the discovery that Albert B. was actually a child named Douglas Merritte. Young Douglas, the son of a wet nurse who worked at Johns Hopkins University, was a very sick child, born with hydrocephalus, infected with meningitis (probably from earlier experiments or treatments at Hopkins) and suffering from severe vision impairment.

The so-called "normal" human research specimen could barely see, was deeply cognitively impaired and desperately ill. Young Douglas only lived until the age of six. Yet this child's non-reactions and reactions were exhibited as examples of normal human behavior and development. And upon this sorry beginning the field of behaviorism has been built. Read more here.

Eyewitness to the Ruination of a Public Mental Health System by Biopsychiatry
by Michael Cornwall, PhD

[Editor's note: Dr. Cornwall's personal analysis of how biopsychiatry took over California's mental health system is of vast historical significance. Peter R Breggin, MD]

Here is my story as a witness from 1980-2007 of the destruction of a large California public mental health system by the relentless efforts of biopsychiatry, big pharma, and NAMI to eliminate psychotherapy and replace it with medication and case management in both the adult and child and adolescent divisions of the county system. I worked in this county system full time as a front line licensed psychotherapist.
 
The ruination of the mental health system at the hands of the unholy alliance I described above was probably more painful for me to witness because I started there in 1980 on a free standing, unlocked, 20 bed unit where no medications at all were used, no restraints were used, and no diagnoses utilized for early episode young adults who were psychotic!
 
Hundreds of young people were diverted in the 8 years of I-Ward's existence from being stuck in the system for probably the rest of their lives. Their psychotic processes were allowed to run their course in a loving, empathy filled setting without that transformative developmental process being aborted by meds.
 
It was a sanctuary really.
 
But all the Bay Area sanctuaries were shut down under the dictates of mental health policy makers and politicians who were intimidated by the ever growing power of bio-psychiatry.
 
Everyone knew the push for a direct service, Medicaid funded monopoly of DSM defined psychiatric 'best practices' was bank rolled by the drug companies and made possible through their brilliant strategy of cynically and tragically using the wounded family members of NAMI as the human face of mental illness to push their agenda.
 
From the level of local mental health advisory boards to the legislative hearings where laws were passed that locked in biopsychiatry's domination, NAMI family members carried their powerful stories of  personal heartbreak and accounts of suicides by their loved ones in a compelling message.
 
The message was held out and received as proof of the reality of the brain disease medical model, and the need for more medication and the elimination of therapy- but all the NAMI testimony was in fact cynically pre-packaged for them. It was and still is biopsychiatry and big pharma propaganda.
 
I-ward where I worked was one of three SF Bay med-free, psychosis, system diversion programs that fell victim to the mounting political power of  bio-psychiatry.
 
Like I-Ward, Loren Mosher's Soteria House and John Weir Perry's Diabasis House (which I did my doctoral follow-up study on) also were designed to let young psychotic folks go through their process without meds based on the efficacy results of the NIMH funded, Agnews Project State Hospital study.
 
That gold standard research project whose results were hugely suppressed by biopsychiatry,  demonstrated a 75% lower re-hospitalization rate for the group of almost 100 first episode psychotic young men who got placebo, versus the 100 young men who got Thorazine.
 
When I-Ward closed I was transferred to an adult clinic as a therapist for about 3 years until the biopsychiatry, big pharma agenda made possible by NAMI testimony got the statewide Bronson legislation passed.
 
That law said that only so-called chronically and persistently mentally ill adults should be allocated adult services based on their incurable brain disease that was best served to be maintained by medication and case management.
 
The law didn't say therapy had to be eliminated, but the statewide cowardly mental health director's association saw the handwriting on the wall and decided to announce the wisdom of eliminating therapy ASAP to placate NAMI, and the growing power of psychiatry in every county system.
 
When I heard our mental director announce his plans to do this, I knew that several high risk suicidal, depressed clients I saw who didn't have extensive hospitalizations, which was what defined chronicity under the new regime, were going to be left in the lurch and may perish without therapy.
 
I guess that is when I remembered the charge I was given at 18 years of age as a new medic in the Army when a Medical Corps training Officer put the fear of God in me by grilling me- "Private Cornwall, are you fully aware of your responsibility? If your unit goes into combat you, and only you are responsible for the wounded coming home with all their arms and legs and eyes and not in a body bag! Do you understand me soldier!" "Yes sir"- I automatically croaked.  But I understood.
 
So, after I heard our mental health director announce his plans to eliminate therapy for the at-risk clients I served in only 3 months time, I wrote and circulated a vote of no-confidence petition among the 300 mental health staff on our blow dried, Armani suited, ambitious director- who made sure I got a personal message from him via one of my friends- "Tell Cornwall he is working to lose his job."
 
But I didn't care about that because it was either him going or my clients possibly dying. So I went to the local press with the petition for his removal signed by enough professional staff that it was news. The paper carried the story which was picked up by the top monthly statewide political journal and in 2 months he was gone.
 
It took 18 months before the backlash against me and the staff who were tying to preserve therapy was effectively mobilized by the Chief Psychiatrist under a new director. Then, they finally got rid of therapy in adult services in my county while all the other counties had done it very quickly after the Bronson legislation passed.
 
I'd like to think there are some folks above ground because of what I did.
 
The Chief Psychiatrist made sure we had a moment alone in the hallway after the county board of supervisors voted to pass his plan to eliminate therapists from adult services. He smiled ever so patronizingly/sadistically as he told me his obviously rehearsed little message:  "Michael this is really a banner day for me. You must know that as far as I am concerned the last of you therapists to leave the county can turn off the lights on you way out."
 
I just laughed and said, "Well Joe, we will see who has the last laugh amigo."
 
Of course all of this awful statewide destruction of vitally needed therapy was hugely supported and was happening against the backdrop of the new generation antipsychotics which were being touted by Joe and other psychiatrists across the state as the miracle drugs that proved the brain disease model that the Bronson legislation had memorialized.
 
So I got re-classified to be a case manager, but I made sure that every client I saw received therapy from me once the door was closed and we were alone in my office!
 
During this time I also got rid of another draconian, consumer  unfriendly mental health director and blocked her worse replacement from getting the job by using my role as president of the white collar union mental health workers unit that I was elected as leader of for 16 years.
 
I did an unprecedented manager performance evaluation on the director and her top managers by union line staff that came back so damning, that the night before I was going to go to the press with it, the big boss of the whole county health services made a deal with me in the parking lot.
 
He told me that the current director was leaving because she didn't want the public disgrace and when I demanded her  equally bad, groomed successor  must not get the job either, the big boss swore loudly but agreed.
 
I never felt it was enough to just give from my heart to my clients. Policy and destructive practices and real people who do harm to clients through their wrong actions as administrators and true believes in the medical model must be opposed too.
 
During a fake budget cut move, even more staff were rotated from adult services and so I spent over the next 12 years as a therapist for families, teens, and children.
 
It was during this era that I witnessed the awful progression of less then 10 percent of the hundreds of young folks in the county system being on meds for nonexistent ADHD, to the now 90% of teens and kids on  multiple meds, almost all with Abilify, or Rispirdal [antipsychotics] no matter what their diagnosis.
 
I also saw the rise from zero kids being diagnosed bipolar, to the unbelievably huge numbers of kids and teens who started to get diagnosed with bipolar thanks to big pharma and guys like Dr. Biederman who I believe should be doing hard time in an orange jumpsuit somewhere!
 
I never have and never will diagnose a child or teen with ADHD or bipolar disorder.
 
I was there in the late 80's before Biederman did his more recent dark deeds, when another smug chief psychiatrist convened an all staff training to announce that the new SSRI's have proven the chemical imbalance theory of depression.
 
He said that since Prozac is an SSRI, and it helps dramatically with depression, then of course that proves that the cause of depression is a lack of serotonin in the brain and that therapy should now play a minor role since medication is so clearly able to address the underlying cause of depression.
 
I was there at another training when it was announced that the days of folks getting addicted to Valium were over because a totally non-addictive replacement Xanax, had been developed that was completely safe to use to treat anxiety and panic disorders.
 
I was there when foster child after foster child was drugged into oblivion.
 
I was in the room when the psychiatrist, with his back to the mother and the psychotic 17 year old young man I was seeing in therapy said without looking up from typing his notes: "Your son has schizophrenia and will need to be on medications for the rest of his life in my opinion. It is similar to having diabetes, a disease that must be managed by medication long term and probably forever."
 
The young man started to rock slowly back and forth softly repeating, "Forever, forever, forever, forever..."
 
I spoke up and said "Well, I don't believe that to be true. I have worked with a lot of young men like you in the past 25 years and I believe you can get through what you need to and not need medications."
 
Of course that earned me a look of anger from the MD, but we had bumped heads before and he didn't want to go there with me again, so he didn't say anything more.
 
And finally I was there when a mother and father brought in their 6 year old, 40 lb daughter who was so over-medicated she was slurring her words and could hardly keep her eyes open. They had been referred to me for therapy from a clinic psychiatrist who was starting to get uneasy about diagnosing little girls and boys like this with bipolar and only having them on meds.
 
So I gladly told the parents that I was confident that with family and individual therapy, their daughter would be able to taper off and be off mnedication as we resolved the issues that were causing her tantrums and and crying spells.
 
The parents knowingly looked at each other, and the mother spoke and said "Thank you doctor Cornwall, but we believe there really aren't any issues in our family that need addressing. She has bipolar disease like the doctor told us, and we really don't know why we are here to see you. She is much better now, no tantrums and sleeps through the night. Thank you but we will stick with the medications." They got up and left the office, the little girl shuffling along silently behind them.
 
I wanted to weep and put my fist through the wall at the same time.
 
And then it wasn't long after that that it was announced that many therapists were to be cut from children services. "So at last I said to myself, they have come for the children."
 
As the long time leader of both the therapist union and chairperson of the county mental health coalition of all the diverse mental health stakeholder groups, I stood with that assembled group behind me in the crowded board of supervisor chambers as the vote on cutting children therapists was about to be taken. I spoke to the 6 supervisors who I had known for years. None of them could look at me.
 
I said "What we are here to tell you with one unwavering voice is that if you take these therapists away from serving the high risk children and teens in need, that those children and teens will surely suffer and some may die. What would be worse, that you don't believe us, your long time advisors on mental health care, and you vote for these young ones to suffer and maybe some to die, or that you do and believe us and still vote for them all to suffer and some maybe to die? Either way, if you vote for them to suffer and some to maybe die, you will have lost your moral authority to govern."
 
They voted unanimously for the children to suffer and some maybe to die.
 
Through it all over those decades, I want you to know I was emboldened by one of my role models and heroes--you, Peter Breggin who showed no fear in standing up against the whole damn world of psychiatry and the drug companies and the politicians who cater to them because you care first and foremost about relieving suffering and saving lives, too.
 
Bless you both, Michael

Michael Cornwall worked for almost 30 years as a front line therapist in a large California County Mental Health System with adults, teens and children. For the first 3 years he served in a 20 bed, free standing, open door first episode psychosis, system diversion program that used no medications or restraints and opposed the medical model. There he learned the power of empathic therapy to help people through their journey of madness and come out the other side-"Weller than well" as Karl Menninger famously said. Up until his retirement, Michael was also an elected advocacy group political leader who actively fought against the ever progressing harmful take-over of the county system by bio-psychiatry.  Michael currently is a CEU trainer, alternative services conference presenter and psychology graduate school lecturer, and has recently been an Esalen Institute workshop leader on alternative approaches to madness.  He is a designated blogger on Robert Whitaker's Mad In America web magazine and is on the steering committee of the newly forming family support network that will provide and alternative to NAMI, called the Mother Bear Community Action Network. Michael is also the newest Advisory Council member of the Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy.         
           

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