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Greyhound Therapy: Symptom of a Failed Mental Health System

Commentary
Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital in Las Vegas handed out bus tickets to about 1500 gravely disabled patients, “transferring” them to states all over the country. Patients were sent to states where they had never been a resident and areas that had no mental institution prepared to receive them.

Penciled Out of Existence by Some Grand Authority

Commentary
Our society doesn't want to be inconvenienced by someone who is suffering or is impoverished. As a disabled person, it feels as if I have been penciled out of existence by some grand authority, one which expects me to disappear into nothingness, or end up jailed, homeless or just dead.

Laura’s Law Turns a Psychiatric Diagnosis into a Crime

Commentary
Laura’s Law criminalizes mental illness and is spreading like cancer across California, county by county. Those labeled “noncompliant” can be subjected to forced medication and court-ordered involuntary treatment. In essence, they become captives of the criminal justice system even though they have committed no offense.

Unethical Medical Experiments on U.S. Citizens

Commentary   Features
The United States has an epidemic of ill health due to excessive drugging. The American people are considered a giant pool of experimental subjects for massively wealthy drug companies. Many persons diagnosed with mental illness are experimented upon, often without their consent and against their own best interests.

Exposing the Untold History of Psychiatric Atrocities

Commentary
Over its history, Street Spirit has published a series of in-depth reports on many different kinds of psychiatric abuses that have been carried out in the name of healing, yet often end up damaging and disabling people for life. In light of renewed calls for forced psychiatric detention under the guise of "helping the mentally ill," we are collecting and re-publishing these stories in a new section "Psychiatric Abuses and Human Rights". 

Laura’s Law and the Danger of Forced Detention

Commentary
How much sweeter “Laura’s Law” sounds than Forced Detention or Treatment! Yet it all sounds an awful lot like the usual government arguments used to justify surveillance, control, invasion of privacy. Who is to say this new law won’t be used to punish and isolate the indigent and the ill?

Heroes in Our Midst

Commentary
Many nonprofit service providers are working to alleviate the ever-worsening symptoms of poverty by meeting the needs for shelter, food and services. But very few go the extra mile to stand up in defense of the human rights of the poor, or to take part in protests against structural injustice.

Wellness and Recovery or the Same Old Sickness?

Commentary
It is clear that for all my compassionate concern about the social injustice that is homelessness, I need to put more focus on my own wellness and recovery — physically, emotionally and mentally. The shift in mental health services delivery is to look more closely at the holistic link between mental, emotional and physical health, with a growing concern about diet, exercise, and the need to address physical ills facing the poor such as obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and asthma, often linked to issues of environmental racism.