Well, fuck you too, buddy!

Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 06:51:32 -0600
Message-Id: 
To: phloem@fumbling.com
From: stopshrinksORG 
Subject: ER, real situation of the "mentally ill"
Status: RO

To all "Free and Sane" Screenwriters,

Rather than being 'psychotic killers' running amuck, the grist of 
masturbatory capitalist "entertainment" profit, this is the REAL 
situation for the mass of the worlds' labeled mentally ill.  The 
"enlightened" US leads the way in forced drugging with pychotropics 
known to  SHRINK the brain and cause Tardive Dyskenisia in over half 
those who ingest these drugs long term, and brain damaging 
electroshock, a holdover from Nazi psychiatry.  Of course for the 
"free and sane" like you, this is just part of the natural order of 
things.

Expletives deleted,

Webmaster
www.stopshrinks.org

BBC News
Friday, 18 February, 2000, 04:03 GMT

Mexico 'fails mental health patients'
The report said some hospitals were dehumanising

By Peter Greste in Mexico City

An international organisation that defends the right of the mentally
disabled has accused the Mexican Government of gross human rights abuses
against thousands of psychiatric patients.

The organisation, Mental Disability Rights International, has completed a
three-year investigation into Mexico's mental institutions.

It concluded that the government was guilty of violating both its own and
international laws by relegating some patients to a sub-human status.

  The team found children tied to window screens

The report paints a deeply disturbing picture of the plight of Mexico's
mentally ill, placing them squarely among the most abused in the world.

In a news conference releasing the report, one of its authors said some of
the mental institutions were at best degrading and at worst dehumanising.

The report told of finding badly malnourished patients who had lost their
teeth through decay.

Some institutions left their charges sitting all day on concrete floors
covered in their own urine and faeces.

In one hospital outside the city of Guadelahare, the team said it found
children tied to window screens, benches and beds, while others were
permanently kept in physical restraints.

Government responsibility

But the team of experienced psychiatrists said there was no reason why the
vast majority of people inside the institutions could not be taught to live
happily in the community.

The blame, the investigators said, lay with the Mexican Government, which
had failed to honour even its own inadequate laws as well as international
human rights law.

One of the report's authors, the chief of psychiatry at the San Francisco
general hospital, Dr Robert Okin, said while a lack of funds made treatment
difficult, it was more a question of a lack of will to deal with the
problem.

Many poor countries used finances as an excuse for not providing help, he
said, but it is clear that this was more often an issue of priorities and
will, rather than national wealth.

The authors said the Mexican Government was starting to respond slowly by
improving conditions in some of the worst institutions.

But they still planned to present their report to a hearing of the
inter-American commission on human rights in Washington to hold Mexico
accountable for the abuses.

These people may have a legitimate gripe, but I wouldn't know, because I will now proceed to tune them out at every opportunity. Hint: Pissing people off is not a useful way to effect social change.

Part of me wishes I'd replied to this at the time to figure out exactly what they were hoping to accomplish. If they're unable to differentiate between me, phloem, Webmaster and.. some guy at Warner Brothers.. well, maybe they should see a psychiatrist. (Either that, or learn to fucking read already.)