The Network Against Psychiatric Assault, founded in 1974 by
Leonard Roy Frank and Wade Hudson was one of the most effective and militant groups in the
American movement against psychiatric abuse. Through the Network Against
Psychiatric Assault, laws were passed sharply limiting involuntary electroshock
in California. Shock was stopped entirely in San Francisco for several years,
as the places doing it did not want the bad public relations following a series
of well-publicized demonstrations against them. During a month-long “sleep-in”
at the office of Governor Jerry Brown, the governor met with Network Against
Psychiatric Assault members, viewed a hard-hitting documentary film about abuses
at Metropolitan State Hospital, and ordered an investigation into conditions in
the state hospitals. In 1982, Network Against Psychiatric Assault, as part of
the Coalition to Stop Electroshock, helped put a measure on the Berkeley,
California ballot to ban shock there. Voters in Berkeley decided overwhelmingly
to ban shock in their city. Even more importantly, this fight reached the
general public with the Network Against Psychiatric Assault's message about the
abusive nature of psychiatry, with the major TV networks and even the New York
Times giving its ideas wide circulation. As late as 1997, Network Against
Psychiatric Assault was instrumental in closing one of the most abusive
psychiatric institutions in the Bay Area.
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Psychiatry is out of control.
We recognize that the psychiatric industry, allied with Big
Pharma have massively misled the public to people's and society's great
detriment. In essence, psychiatry has sacrificed the lives of its victims on the
alter of corporate profits.
The story the American Psychiatric Association and individual psychiatrists
(Psychiatry) have been telling their patients and the public is not true.
Millions of children are
being drugged to “treat” the fictitious “disease” of ADHD. Parents who resist
are frequently threatened with losing custody of their child, or the child’s
expulsion from school. 70% or more of children in the “child welfare” system,
who have no parents to defend them, are drugged throughout their childhood.
These children need love and nurturing, but all the mental “health” system
offers them is drugs and despair.
Many of the drugs given to
children long-term, particularly the amphetamines used for ADHD, cause the
inability of the brain to modulate emotion. Such children are then diagnosed as
“bipolar” and put on powerful antipsychotic drugs for the rest of their lives.
In the past fifteen years, there has been a fortyfold increase in children
labeled as “bipolar” and then drugged. There is no other way to describe this
except as a crime against humanity.
The new “diagnostic bible”
of psychiatry, the DSM 5, labels almost all human emotion as mental illness. A
child who talks back, a man who spends “too much” time on the internet, a woman
who grieves the death of her husband or child for more than two weeks are all
labeled mentally ill and told they need to be drugged. Unhappiness is
labeled as “depression,” and people are encouraged to numb themselves with drugs
instead of dealing with the life situations that are causing their unhappiness.
Over two-thirds of the psychiatrists who wrote the DSM 5 have financial ties to
the drug industry.
There is a hue and cry for making psychiatric imprisonment, euphemistically called involuntary commitment, easier This means that almost anyone could be committed with no recourse, as anyone now can easily be labeled “mentally ill.” Psychiatric imprisonment then leads to many thousands of people in most American states being forced to take drugs in their own homes (if they have any).
There is a vicious
campaign of vilification of people diagnosed with serious mental illness such as
schizophrenia because of the recent incidents of killings by people with
psychiatric labels. Psychiatry promotes the idea that people with such labels
should be rounded up and drugged for the protection of the public. But the fact
is that every single one of these horrible incidents was carried out by people
who were already in the mental health system and taking its drugs. This is
completely irrational.
How many more ruined lives
will our society tolerate before we put a stop to this?
The Network Against
Psychiatric Assault calls for:
The Network Against
Psychiatric Assault supports all other movements of people fighting for
liberation and justice. Using ethical and non-violent means, we will work
toward a society where everyone is treated with the respect and nurturing that
all human beings deserve.
Other like minded groups are encouraged to join us.
Sources: Anatomy
of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of
Mental Illness in America, by Robert Whitaker; and Scientific
Research by Topic on
PsychRights' website.
Last modified 2/16/2023