|
will brady's >online< journal ||
bookmark this page write me | reference | favorites | contents | rondak.org | What's up with this? | main page | |
get notice of diary updates | what do you think? | |
"Short Notes" | will's weblog |
|
21-23 jan |
28 jan |
feb-mar |
5-7 april |
8 april |
04-16-01 ||
NY State's OMH chooses to practice Parnerships in Torture | Amnesty International was wise and insightful to
recognize the forced treatment is a 20th (and, indeed, 21st) century form of torture. The international exposure of
such practices in oppressive dictatorships such as that which was once Argentina's, and
Chile's Augusto Pinochet, were rightfully condemned.
When Soviet psychiatrists were found to be torturing the USSR's 
political dissidents by using forced drugging, electroshock, sensory deprivation and the like,
the august New York Times saw fit to write impassioned editorials castigating the perpetrators.
Which makes the combined efforts and decision making acumen of the clinical and administrative management teams at Pilgrim Psychiatric Center in West Brentwood, New York, State Supreme Court Justice W. Bromley Hall, together with administrators from New York State's Office of Mental Health, all the more disturbing. What efforts are those of this group? Essentially, that they all feel it is perfectly acceptable to continue to subject Haitian human rights activist Paul Henri Thomas to a battery of intense and memory-damaging series of forced electroshock treatments. No small irony that New York State's Office of Mental Health is gearing up for a big national conference with a focus on Best Practices in the care and treatment of persons with psychiatric disabilities. Among the principles espoused as underpinnings to that conference are: • illness self-management • accountability for results • attending to consumer demand It may come in handy right now to remind New York State's OMH of its stated mission and purposes which include the statements that OMH: • promotes hope and recovery for people with psychiatric disabilities. • works toward a more effective public mental health system which values recovery, hope, excellence, respect and safety. But then, in a move rather like the old Soviet Union's apparatchiks, perhaps it is better to say one thing, while practicing another. Orwellian to say the least. I only hope that, someday, those who use their positions of power to strip others of their personal decision-making abilities, and for those who find it acceptable to sign their names on to documents that are, effectively, instruments endorsing torture, that those same persons get to personally experience the effect of their own actions. Mind you, NY State's OMH management team are not unique in their decision making, i.e. in promoting torture while calling it treatment and care. This is not unlike the actions of many totalitarian regimes. Nor is it any different from the long history of what has been done in the name of care...but entirely against the needs of those who have been so subjected to treatment for the panalopy of disorders collectively referred to as "mental illness." But even if the persons against whom they approve torturous practices committed henious crimes (which has not been the case in Mr. Thomas's situation), this doesn't make Pilgrim Psychiatric, NY State OMH nor Judge Bromley's actions either ethical or morally sound. There is no courage in one imposing forced treatment upon another. Only bullying, abusive, hurtful and malicious action. He or she who asserts otherwise lies to both society and to themselves. And history has ways of showing that atrocities are just that ~atrocities and eventually the perpetrators are exposed.
"The significant problems we face
cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them"
-- Albert Einstein
04-09-01 || Planning to Implement Olmstead | Safe Affordable Housing is where it starts.
What's that you ask? What is Olmstead? What does it mean to anybody?
And I'm (as the exprssion goes) ...I'm "...free white and 21..." so don't I
(and everyone else) choose to live where I live, associate with whom I
want, and pick what I want to buy, and for what?Well, not exactly. People with disabilities are still the poorest group in this country. Their rights and services are being attacked daily. Even 10 years after Dubya's father signed the Amercians with Disabilities Act into law, there are still far too many who think that people in wheelchairs should be neither seen nor heard. Mind you, the folks in wheelchairs are only the most visible of folks with disabilities. And for those who suffer from the social delusion that laws designed to ensure that the ignored and downtrodden are "special protections" let's clear this up right away. The ADA is designed only to make certain that people who have historically been denied the same privileges and opportunities as anyone else to have the same chances as that, ...you know, that "free white and 21" group. I'm getting off topic here, since I'm really trying to talk about Olmstead. This is intellectual shorthand for a lawsuit that pitted the [USA] State of Georgia's Tommy Olmstead, then Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation, against two elderly women who had long been warehoused in institutions, whom clinical care staff soundly agreed did not belong there. Olmstead basically argued that if the state found it inconvenient to help these women decent housing and the opportunity to live the rest of their lives lik any other citizen ~free and with the chance to do as they pleased, which was typical to those of most other individuals. Olmstead took his case all the way to the USA Supreme Court, where even a conservative bench found that Olmstead was trying to deprive these women of normal lives and was, effectively, intentionally discriminating against and wrongly segregating them from the rest of society. Anyway, what gets me on this is that I went last week to a brainstorming session that included disability rights activists and Connecticut State officicals in working at coming up with and (most likely) finalizing the state's efforts to plan, develop and make available that safe, affordable housing for the multitudes who live with limited means and who are also disabled. Now, even if the state gets the grant money from the federal government, it will still have to deal with bigoted Housing Authority administrators around the state (not all of them, thankfully) who are quick to blame "the disabled" when some low level bureaucrat neglects to decently maintain public housing complexes, or who won't evict the violent crack whore tenant whose been ripping off the elderly neighbors [a sterotype, I'll admit, but I hope the reader gets my point here]. Connectict has a role to play here. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal's office issued a statement about the Olmstead decision and what the state could do to ensure this might no longer occur in Connecticut [the segregation of disabled persons does occur ~with distressing predictability in this, the USA's wealthiest state]. And !if you can believe it, even the state's Department of Social Services has come out with a Working Paper on Addressing Olmstead concerns BUT ...and it's a big one, none of the high-minded statements that the bureaucrats bandy about amongsth themselves will ever come to pass if people don't continue to hold their bureaucratic (and legislative) feet to the fires of inclusion. So while you are thinking about it, call your leislator, call your local housing bureaucrat, mayor, selectman and even merely influential peoples, to give support to this worthly effort. For examples of how folks have been able to gain freedom thanks to the ADA, check out the US Department of Justice's Faces of the ADA || PHOTO CREDIT: from ThinkQuest's Housing in Cuba. I could write about that as a separate topic. Just liked the photo for this however. Other sites where you can get more info on Olmstead include |
21-23 jan |
28 jan |
feb-mar |
5-7 april |
8 april |
|
|
|
|
Recent Stories: 
are you Fringe ?
a modest proposal:nuclear waste
winter arrives!
the christmas tree adventure
"Outsider" ArtGo to: obligatory photo page rondak.org web essayists Media / Journals / e'Zines site index search engines
since 12 June 1999
about "Short Notes"
"Short Notes" was the title of a column I wrote while
working for a newspaper in the Adirondack Mountains some years ago.
The format was similar to what you'll find here, except augmented
with pictures and maps. The subject matter shall sometimes be personal,
at other times comments on events or situations of which I am aware. Comments,
suggestions welcomed but not always acted upon.
LEGAL & DISCLAIMER NOTICE: © 2000 / Will Brady I hope you've found this site interesting, even thought provoking || Occasionally some images come from commercial sources and are reproduced here under fair use guidelines of US Copyright law || Please don't write to me about the content of other peoples' sites linked from here || On the other hand, please let me know of any inactive links || Constructive comments, suggested links to add, are welcome. This website is maintained by Will Brady / wbrady@connix.com / Last update: see most recent entry |