Law Project for Psychiatric Rights

Law Project for Psychiatric Rights Psychiatry: Force of Law by James B. Gottstein, Esq. November, 2002 The purpose of this article is to set forth just the basic legal principles, underpinnings and practices employed in the widespread use of legal force to compel unwilling patients into locked psychiatric hospitals and, most importantly, force brain damaging drugs and other brain damaging treatments such as Electroshock upon them over their desperate, but hopeless objections. The companion article, Unwarranted Court Ordered Medication: A Call to Action, describes what might be done about it and this article is really background for that one. In addition, there are a number of excellent law review articles on the subject, a small sampling of which are listed at the end of this article. The impetus for this article is the realization that the scientific basis for these forced treatments is non-existent and they are permanently damaging hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people. No other field of medicine allows this sort of forced treatment. Of course, there are many people who see psychiatrists and voluntarily, even eagerly, take psychiatric medications. This article has absolutely no complaint about this. It is unwarranted forced treatment that is being addressed. This article also does not address the issue of somewhat more subtle coercion such as "if you don't take the medication, we will take your housing away from you" or "if you don't take your medication, we will have you committed to the mental hospital." This article is solely concerned with using the force of law (court orders) to compel people to submit to unwarranted psychiatric treatments they do not want. What unfolds is a legal system of Catch-22's for the patients and one where the courts have not only abdicated to "professionals" their responsibility to protect the rights of people coming before them, but also condones perjury in furtherance of this abdication. This outright disregard of the law is done in the name of "we know what is right for the person" and therefore it is okay to ignore the law. It is not the purpose here to show that this assertion (of knowing what is right) is scientifically invalid. See, Psychiatric Myths and Scientific Research by Topic for places to learn about that. There is a growing revolt among principled psychiatrists over the abuses of forced psychiatry. For purposes here, it will only be suggested that one should be very skeptical of the validity of a process that relies on lies to achieve its results.