Submitted by Charlton Stanley, guest blogger
(Otteray Scribe)
What is mental illness? It’s a hot topic in the news recently, because of proposed gun control legislation. I saw a photo yesterday of people holding up a huge sign saying, “Keep guns out of the hands of mentally ill.”
There is far more to the demonization of the mentally ill than just the firearms issue. It spills over into the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Transportation. It is not just guns; it is airplanes and trucks as well. This brings us to the core question of, “What is mental illness?” The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR) is the current handbook for classifying mental disorders. DSM-V is in the final stages of development and will be published in May 2013. That is only next month.
Which brings us back to the original question of what exactly is mental illness? In New York, a man’s home was raided, his Concealed Carry Permit revoked and guns confiscated because someone told the police he was taking an anti-anxiety medication. I have received emails in the past week from several friends about this issue. One of them is a vet, M→F transgendered. She is concerned about being able to renew her own Concealed Carry Permit (CCP). As a veteran and avid target-shooting hobbyist, she is well trained in gun safety and use. As a transgender woman, she is a target and prey according to FBI statistics. Hate crimes against LGBT people are at a 14-year high.
According to the DSM-IV-TR, “Gender Identity Disorder” is one of the mental illnesses. In the DSM-V, it is renamed “Gender Dysphoria.” While claiming it is not a mental illness, the fact that Gender Dysphoria is in the DSM-V in the first place makes it suspect in the eyes of many. Two days ago, she sent this excerpt from a local outlet:
The enforcement action started on March 29th when New York State Police asked the Erie County Clerk’s Office to pursue revoking the man’s pistol permit because he owned guns in violation of the mental health provision of New York’s newly enacted guns law called the SAFE ACT.
The allegation turned out to be untrue and his guns returned to him. As it turned out, the police, sua sponte, initiated the action. The only lawyer involved in the matter was the man’s own attorney.
Erie County Clerk Chris Jacobs said, “When the State Police called to tell us they made a mistake and had the wrong person…it became clear that the State did not do their job here, and now we all look foolish.”
Flaws in the mental health reporting provisions of the NY SAFE Act were blamed for the misunderstanding. The county clerk added, “Until the mental health provisions are fixed, these mistakes will continue to happen” (source: WKBW-TV)
The bigger issue is how come taking an anxiolytic prescribed by one’s family doctor disqualifying? It would be interesting to know just how many of those raiding officers, and their supervisors, are taking medication for anxiety, depression or sleep.
Is mild anxiety a reason to stigmatize someone, and possibly violate his or her civil rights? It gets better. The FAA Medical Examiner will not allow psychiatric medications for any class of Medical Certificate. If a psychiatric medication, it is an automatic disqualification. Several non-psychiatric medications are disqualifying as well. When Tagamet (cimetidine) was first released to treat ulcers and hyperacidity, it disqualified one from holding an FAA Medical Certificate in order to fly. I first heard about that from a friend who was an Aviation Medical Examiner at the time. He told me the FAA put Tagamet on the list because, “It acts on the central nervous system.”
What is mental illness? Some say it is anything that is in the DSM. However, as I have pointed out in court many times, the DSM is a handbook put together by a committee. Everyone has heard the old joke about what a committee produces: “An elephant is a mouse designed by a committee.”
The new DSM-V will be expanding the definition of ADHD. The definition of PTSD is supposed to be clarified in the final definition. Homosexuality was removed from the DSM-IV. If it was a mental illness, the why was it removed? The answer to that is simple. It is not a mental illness.
Let’s look at posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a single example of a single disorder. PTSD is classified as an anxiety spectrum disorder. Symptoms include feeling anxious, vivid dreams or memories of a traumatic event, and avoidance of situations that might remind one of the traumatic event. Those are called “triggers.” Some claim that only combat veterans can suffer PTSD. That is nonsense. The original trauma can be anything causing one to fear for their own life or safety, or that of others. No one knows how many Americans suffer from PTSD, but the NIMH estimates 7.7 million adults have diagnosable PTSD. That is about 3.5% of the population. 22% of Vietnam veterans returned with PTSD. My personal impression is that number is too low by a significant margin. Many people with PTSD have never been diagnosed. Why? Because they are afraid to talk to a doctor or clinical social worker.
How many rights should be taken from all those citizens and veterans, simply because they have PTSD?
When some of the most prominent mental health experts in the world cannot agree what mental illness diagnoses are, how are lawmakers, judges and law enforcement officers supposed to know? Is being transgendered a mental illness? How about homosexuality—oops, never mind, they took that out of the DSM-IV. There are many people with bipolar disorder walking around and you will never know it, especially if they are taking their medication. Should a person with well-controlled bipolar disorder be allowed to drive an 18 wheel truck, fly a light airplane, or own firearms?
It is interesting that the FAA has created a new class of aircraft, call Light Sport Aircraft” or LSA, which do not require an FAA medical certificate to fly. A light sport pilot may fly with a valid and current driver’s license. Glider pilots can exercise the privilege without a medical certificate.
This brings us to driver’s licenses. If a person, who is taking Xanax or some mild anti-depressant is not allowed to own firearms or fly a Cessna 172, why can they drive? An average automobile or pickup truck weighs almost two tons. They drive on two-lane roads at 55 or 60 mph. That means on a two-lane road, they are passing within two to four feet of each other with a closing speed of about 120 mph.
Just what is mental illness, and where is that bright line drawn for different activities and privileges of ownership? Think about it. Your physician has to give you a formal diagnosis in order to write a prescription for any medication. Almost any Primary Care Physician, especially family doctors, will tell you that a large percentage of their patients are receiving medications for diagnosed psychiatric conditions. The most common are depression and anxiety, either situational or endogenous.
Alcohol, in my opinion, is much more dangerous than any antidepressant or anxiolytic on the market. Yet, alcohol is legal in most areas. The individual is responsible for keeping their alcohol level under the legal limit, without any government official monitoring them. The rule for pilots is, “eight hours from bottle to throttle.” In other words, if you intend to fly, there should be at least eight hours between the last drink and flying. My rule was always 24 hours just to be on the safe side. Alcohol is involved in far more assaults, shootings, auto crashes, and suicides than any psychiatric medication I know of. That is because alcohol is a disinhibitor.
It is unfortunate that Congress saw fit to suppress data collection on firearms violence back in 1996. I see many pronouncements on violence related to firearms, but without real science, those pronouncements are meaningless. Last January, President Obama lifted the 17-year drought on data gathering. Some members of Congress and the NRA are demanding that the data not be used to promote or advocate any position on violence. Fine. That is the way data should be gathered—content neutral. That honors the null hypothesis approach to research. However the results of the data fall, it should be accessible to other researchers. It must not be buried.
Legislation and administrative rules that limit rights are already having negative effects on people with mental health issues. They do not get treatment, or ask their doctor for advice. Sometimes they lie. Sometimes a patient will show up, insist on paying cash, register under a John Doe alias, give a vacant lot as an address and use 888-88-8888 for a Social Security number. Most people who need mental health medications or treatment refuse to seek help. If anyone thinks that is a good thing, they are not paying attention.
As my father used to say, “Anybody with one eye and half-sense could have seen that one coming.”
HIPAA is supposed to keep your records private, but they are accessible with a court order. Alternately, any agency issuing a license or certificate can insist on the applicant signing a HIPAA complaint medical release form. Sign the form or you do not get your license. One must always beware the Law of Unintended Consequences.
Here are a few tidbits to chew upon. Please discuss. Where is that bright line?
Bettykath, NSA is military and that’s a problem with CISPA, there are supposed to be limits t the kind of information the military can collect on citizens. Obama has threatened a veto if that isn’t reconciled. We’ll see.
Bron: Regarding HowlinDog. We do have a dog we named HowlinWolffDog. He is more wolff than dog and his bark does not translate on the Dogalogue Machine into American typewritten lingo. We can understand him but the Machine needs some work. A similar machine translates the dolphines which are owned by the NSA and it wont translate other fish. CheatinDog is new to the pac and he has chimned in on this blog a few times. A few of these dogs in the pac were humanoids in prior incarnations and were granted dog status at their request for good behavior in the prior life, whether as dogs or humanoids. Most of the dogs in the dog pac are guide dogs for the blind guys who live in the blind guy state residence across from the marina where we live or hang out. I live on a boat with a half blind guy who does not know that I can communicate with humans on this blog. So keep it under your hat. Or collar.
Elaine:
I wonder if all those little children singing the Obama song back in 2008 are signing that song now?
betykath:
why dont they just call it a lottabyte and be done?
Big brother is watching for real now, eh?
RWL:
I have seen many of the Prof’s stories and the attending comments made end up on news shows, some almost word for word. It could just be coincidence but who knows.
It’s time to distract advocates of gun controls but in the Congressional emotion of the moment expect to see Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) voted on soon, maybe even this week.
“NSA insiders have told WMR [WayneMadsenReports] that the Bluffdale facility, which is the size of two football fields, cost $2 billion, and can store a yottabyte of data (a million billion gigabytes) is designed to monitor all transactional data on the Internet, as well as all forms of messaging, including tweets, e-mail, instant messages and text messages.”
OS,
Seems like Megyn Kelly read your comment, regarding the explosion, and brought an expert on to say exactly what you stated:
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/america-live/index.html#http://video.foxnews.com/v/2305715186001/what-can-authorities-learn-from-boston-bomb-fragments/?playlist_id=87651
War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and The National Security State — Official Trailer
Sadly Elaine….Sadly….I am saddened….and I know sad….from the inside out….and I am saddened….. I was too busy at the time of the World Trade Centers to really feel anything except shock and awe….But, I think I am almost as saddened by this foolish act of some wreckless soul…. whoever it may be….I am of the opinion that if you wanna take yourself out….that is fine….but let others make their own choices….
AY,
Obama’s dangerously contradictory stance on whistleblowing
Despite having signed historic whistleblower protection laws, the president is gagging all federal employees with ‘national security’
By Tom Devine
guardian.co.uk,
Tuesday 16 April 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/16/obama-contradictory-stance-whistleblowing
Excerpt:
In a film out this week, War on Whistleblowers, the New York Times’ David Carr says:
“The Obama administration came to power promising the most transparent administration in history … and began prosecuting [whistleblowers] every which way.”
The transparency administration’s legacy is being erased by an out-of-control national security bureaucracy. As this important documentary exposes, so far the tactic has been prosecuting or harassing national security whistleblowers. And there’s danger the full-scale crackdown could expand to canceling the independent job rights of nearly all government workers in the name of national security. Ironically, the threats are from an administration that championed historic whistleblower protection laws.
This contradictory circumstance has produced the best and worst of times.
The Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (WPEA) provides unprecedented employment protections. No other president has come close to President Obama on strengthening whistleblower job rights. Thanks to him, even national security workers now have in-house free speech rights. These breakthroughs last year were enormous wins after decades of resistance.
Simultaneously, the Obama administration has attacked more national security whistleblowers as Espionage Act criminals than all previous administrations combined, lumping them in with spies. The WPEA provides on-the-job protections, but does nothing against retaliatory prosecutions.
While they are the fewest in numbers, we need national security whistleblowers the most. They expose the worst abuses of power: blanket illegal wiretapping, human rights abuses, military murder of journalists and war crimes.
They keep us safer, too. Senior Marines science adviser Franz Gayl blew the whistle and freed delivery of life-saving MRAPs (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles) to Iraq, overcoming delays responsible for thousands of unnecessary casualties. Then came nightmarish years climaxed by loss of security clearance to finish him off. He was eventually reinstated in a still-pending legal case.
Whistleblowers like Gayl first tried institutional channels and did not leak any classified information, yet were treated as potential traitors. That sends a strong message: if you see something wrong, keep quiet. Tailing cars and families, surveillance of homes and communication, criminal investigations, and FBI gunpoint raids increasingly are the tactics to silence national security whistleblowers.
Far from accidental or random, this reflects the calculated, sustained campaign by a rapidly expanding national security bureaucracy that is winning a war within the administration.
AY,
Can’t let the people know what’s really going on…right?
Elaine,
Drake is correct…..No longer do people agree to disagree….they try and bury you because you disagree….FOIA used to be one of the strongest tools to deter governmental corruption…..Now, try and FOIA something……
Leej,
You never know….Do I think that this government is capable of manipulating someone to do something like this…..Yes…..
Do you think that we would ever find out the truth? Not in our lifetime…..I think in George Washingtons’ farewell address he mentioned something about unsavory alliances with powers in Europe….. and Jefferson warned about folks not being able to distinguish between principles and beliefs…..that we all may agree to disagree…..(liberal license in paraphrasing)……
AY, (; sadly.
I wonder if home grown person with animus towards the runners/marathon for some reason. Heard some news report(s) that targeted lower limbs based on placement of the bombs
bettykath,
Obama Whistleblower Prosecutions Lead To Chilling Effect On Press
By Michael Calderone & Matt Sledge
Posted: 04/16/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/16/obama-whistleblower-prosecutions-press_n_3091137.html?utm_hp_ref=media
Excerpt:
NEW YORK -– On April 9, McClatchy’s Jonathan Landay reported that the Obama administration has “targeted and killed hundreds of suspected lower-level Afghan, Pakistani and unidentified ‘other’ militants” in drone strikes, a revelation that contradicts previous administration claims of pursuing only senior-level operatives who pose an imminent threat to the United States.
It was an investigative story clearly in the public interest, shedding new light on the government’s long-running targeted-killing program in Pakistan. But now Landay, a veteran national security reporter for the McClatchy newspaper chain, is concerned that the Obama administration could next investigate him in hopes of finding the sources for “top-secret U.S. intelligence reports” cited in the story. “Do I think that they could come after me?” Landay asked, in an interview with The Huffington Post. “Yes.”
“I can tell you that people who normally would meet with me, sort of in a more relaxed atmosphere, are on pins and needles,” Landay said of the reporting climate during the Obama years, a period of unprecedented whistleblower prosecutions. The crackdown on leaks, he added, seems “deliberately intended to have a chilling effect.”
Landay isn’t alone in that assessment, as several investigative journalists attest in “War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security State,” a timely documentary directed by Robert Greenwald of Brave New Foundation that premieres this week in New York and Washington. The film details the ordeals of four whistleblowers who turned to the press in order to expose waste or illegality.
“The Obama administration’s been extremely aggressive in trying to root out whistleblowers within the government,” NBC News investigative reporter Michael Isikoff says in the film. The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, describing the secrecy required in her reporting for a profile of whistleblower Thomas Drake amid government prosecution, said the experience didn’t “feel [like] America, land of the free press.”
Drake, a former senior executive of the National Security Agency, says in the film, “it’s extremely dangerous in America right now to be right as a whistleblower when the government is so wrong.” He adds: “speaking truth to power is now a criminal act.”
bettykath,
I don’t have a clue who set off the bombs in Boston yesterday. There are many crazy and/or hateful people in this world who appear to get some kind of perverse pleasure from killing innocent people.
*****
Expanding CIA Drone Strikes Will Likely Mean More Dead Innocents
President Obama the agency extraordinary authority in Pakistan. Now it wants these powers in Yemen too.
Conor Friedersdorf
Apr 19 2012
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/expanding-cia-drone-strikes-will-likely-mean-more-dead-innocents/256106/
Excerpt:
An eye-opening report published last November in the Wall Street Journal revealed that the Obama Administration was permitting the CIA to kill people in Pakistan without even knowing who they were: “Signature strikes target groups of men believed to be militants associated with terrorist groups, but whose identities aren’t always known. The bulk of CIA’s drone strikes are signature strikes.” As I noted at the time, this is the same CIA that is known to have jailed innocent people, subjecting them to harsh interrogation tactics and years of wrongful imprisonment. Despite those errors, and the CIA’s lack of transparency and accountability, the Obama Administration loosed it in Pakistan, where we’ve killed lots of innocent people. And while it’s been operating in Yemen for some time, the CIA now wants official permission to kill people whose identities it can’t confirm in that country either.
Elaine, Why in the world would you interject articles about the drones terrorizing the people in other countries? Those other people don’t count, you know. They’re just collateral. [sarcasm]
I almost threw up listening to Obama spouting about what happened in Boston. If only he could use some of that empathy for the people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and wherever else he let’s the CIA commit war.
I’m more inclined to think the Boston bombing was caused by one lone person who was making a statement about the government on tax day.
The latest news from The Boston Globe:
Investigation of Boston Marathon bombings continues
Bombs were packed with shrapnel, officials say
By John R. Ellement, Chelsea Conaboy and Martin Finucane
Globe Staff
April 16, 2013
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/04/16/some-areas-downtown-boston-reopen-today-boston-marathon-bombing-investigation-continues/qTROe6L0b98qRl9W7dnWiJ/story.html
Seems like all the other news stations are following FoxNews in calling this an act of ‘international terrorism.’ All news agencies are refusing to address the fact that the FBI has a list of over 200+ domestic terrorist groups & individuals who are capable of perpetrating such acts.
Study Finds U.S. Drone Strikes in Pakistan Miss Militant Targets and “Terrorize” Civilians
Democracy Now!
9/26/12
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/9/26/study_finds_us_drone_strikes_in
Summary:
A new report on the secret U.S. drone war in Pakistan says the attacks have killed far more civilians than acknowledged, traumatized a nation and undermined international law. In “Living Under Drones,” researchers conclude the drone strikes “terrorize men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities.” The study concludes that most of the militants killed in the strikes have been low-level targets whose deaths have failed to make the United States any safer. Just 2 percent of drone attack victims are said to be top militant leaders. We’re joined by report authors James Cavallaro, director of the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford University, and Sarah Knuckey, professor at New York University School of Law and former adviser to the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions.