Canada: Police and jail guards will get more training to recognize mental illnesses

From Nova Scotia, Canada:

"Police and jail guards will get more training to recognize mental illnesses and how to deal with people afflicted with them, Justice Minister Ross Landry said Friday.

The province commissioned an expert panel last year to look at the phenomenon called excited delirium and what role it could play in in-custody deaths, to examine the risks of using stun guns and other restraints on people in that state, and to recommend how law enforcement officials should deal with those people.

Mr. Landry said the most significant recommendation in the eight-member panel’s new report is ensuring that front-line justice workers are trained to recognize people with symptoms of excited delirium, or as the panel suggests calling it, autonomic hyperarousal state."

Link to PDF report:
http://gov.ns.ca/just/public_safety/_docs/Excited%20Delirium%20Report.pdf

New Report Examines the Effect of Severe Mental Illness and Capital Punishment on Families

ACLU releases details on and links to a new report from NAMI which tells the stories of the effects of lack of proper treatment and inappropriate criminal conviction on the mentally ill and their families. Great - but we'd like them to go further....

"The report details several examples in which people who were clearly ill murdered someone and were found incompetent. It also tells the stories of those who were still tried, convicted and eventually executed, despite their mental illness.

For example, Larry Robison was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. His parents checked him into a few facilities. Each time he was about to be released, his parents asked the physicians to retain him. One psychiatrist stated that Robison needed long-term care, but when the hospital learned that Robison was not covered by insurance, his parents said the hospital "could not wait to get him out of there." His parents were told he could not get help because he was not violent, but if he became violent, he would be placed in a mental hospital.

Robison began to self-medicate and was admitted to a rehabilitation center for his drug use, but was not treated for schizophrenia. Robison was arrested for the murder of five people just four years after his first diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. His first violent act was murder. Robison was executed, without ever receiving the treatment he needed."

Link

Pharmaceuticals Anonymous comments:
We wish that the mentally ill would get justice, but we know that won't happen without proper diagnosis and treatment. Schizophrenia can be reversed when proper examination for its 29 medical causes is done, and other disorders that cause antisocial and criminal tendencies can similarly be screened and treated, generally with supplements and appropriate foods. We wish NAMI had led the way on this, but they have made many deals with Big Pharma so it is unlikely that proper screening and diagnosis will be allowed on their agenda. Link
Until proper diagnosis and right treatment are common, suffering will continue, and enforced, often damaging drugging which curtails cognitive and personal freedoms will continue.
See PDF.

Link - Wikipedia on orthomolecular/nutritional treatment of mental illness

No Escape - Prison Rape

MATURE SUBJECT MATTER
Too many of the incarcerated are mentally ill, and institutional treatment in both prisons and hospitals - crowded conditions, bad nutrition, poor or nonexistent medical treatment, indifference and violence - will not improve their health. Rape happens in asylums and mental hospitals as well.

Found at
http://arch1design.com/blog/?p=1571