NYT: Mystery Shoppers Check Out Conditions in Psychiatric Ward

EDE, the Netherlands

Surrounded by manicured greenery, the closed-off ward of the complex, known as De Riethorst, recalls a suburban dental clinic, and its sunny gymnasium and carpeted hallways do little to suggest that it houses up to a dozen acute psychiatric patients, many of whom are there involuntarily.

And that is why the undercover participants were all experienced psychiatric nurses. “You couldn’t have done it otherwise,” said Edo De Vries, the director of De Gelderse Roos, which released the results of the project last summer.

It and Clearfields are working on a project for 2010, most likely to involve five to eight psychiatric hospitals in the Netherlands.

Mr. De Vries said the impetus for the project came in part from a pair of patient deaths last year in psychiatric facilities in Amsterdam — one involving a suicide, the other a man who choked on food while locked in an isolation cell. Several managers and staff members were fired as a result, and others were suspended.

“Of course, incidents can happen anywhere,” Mr. De Vries said. “But what if there is something structurally wrong that we don’t know about? We have to be more transparent, and I think this method is a good tool for that.”

Link
The Rosenhan "Thud" Experiment

Canada's NAMI Publishes a Document

And it doesn't mention NUTRITION or VITAMINS anywhere. What do they think our brains need to be nourished with - PR*ZAC? We say Proceed with caution...


"The Mental Health Commission of Canada
Announces a Framework for a Mental Health Strategy for Canada:
We are extremely pleased to provide you with a link to the Mental Health Commission of Canada document Toward Recovery and Wellbeing: A Framework for a Mental Health Strategy for Canada.

The framework is truly the product of a remarkable amount of input from all corners of Canada over the past year and half. It draws on the wide diversity of experiences, voices and thinking of thousands of people like you or your organization for what a mental health strategy for Canada must achieve. It has also built on the efforts undertaken by so many over the years to champion the importance of a mental health strategy for Canada.

Seven interconnected goals are presented to point the way to a comprehensive and person-centred mental health system for our country: one that both promotes the recovery of people living with mental health problems and illnesses, and fosters the mental health and well-being of everyone living in Canada.

This document is not yet a strategy - it is the framework to help us create one. The ongoing input from people like you from every part of the country will be essential to the success of the next phase of developing a Mental Health Strategy for Canada. We are confident that working together we will be able to define practical solutions and develop action plans to achieve our shared vision for the long awaited mental health strategy for Canada.

In the coming months we will be communicating more details about how the next phase of our work will be structured."

Here is the PDF - and it's a big one -
http://www.mentalhealthcommission.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/boarddocs/15507_MHCC_EN_final.pdf

The Mental Health Commission of Canada has been given both charity and governmental status. Health Canada is a source of concern because of corruption (see Shiv Chopra) and compliance to lobbyists and the FDA (Terence Young). How much of the funding of the MHCC comes from Big Pharma? We'll be watching...

"This Is Bad Enough"

Elspeth Murray recites the poem that was included at the International Initiative in Mental Health Leadership Conference in Edinburgh in 2006, where she conducted poetry workshops.

Video: How Cults Work

British Government Tries to Censor Bonkers Institute

A Fawlty Towers of embarassment!

For OpEdNews: Martha Rosenberg - Writer

"Your medicine is called Olanzapine. Pronounced 'o-lan-za-peen,'" says the lime green kids' brochure for the antipsychotic Zyprexa, published by Britain's National Health Service (NHS). "Many children, teenagers and young people need to take medicines prescribed by doctors to help them stay well and healthy," says the text amid cartoons of happy children skating, roller blading and playing soccer.

Similar brochures educate children about "ris-perry-done" (Risperdal), another antipsychotic and "ato-mox-e-teen" (Strattera), an ADHD drug. But when mental health advocate Ben Hansen tried to "educate" US children further by posting the brochures on his web site bonkersinstitute.org, he got a love letter from the NHS.

"I have been informed that you are using our leaflets on your web-site," wrote Deputy Chief Pharmacist with the Central and North West London NHS Trust Sue Eccles in an email this month. "Our objective is [sic] provide written materials to support the verbal counselling given by healthcare professionals -- they are not meant to stand alone as sources of information," says Eccles requesting that only the "front page and our contact details," be shown.

LINK
The Bonkers Institute

Clinical Trials and Scientific Studies - How Credible Are They?

From Organic Lifestyle Magazine online
Link

Pill Head

http://thetyee.ca/Books/2009/11/23/PillHead/?utm_source=mondayheadlines&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=231109

'Pill Head'
Addiction to painkillers is rampant. Part of the cure is this honest, informative true story.
By Bess Lovejoy, 23 Nov 2009, TheTyee.ca

The more you take, the more you want.

Pill Head: The Secret Life of a Painkiller Addict
Joshua Lyon
Hyperion (2009)
Joshua Lyon, a Brooklyn-based journalist, first bought prescription painkillers over the internet in 2003 as part of an assignment for Jane magazine. Like everyone else at the time, his inbox was flooded with offers of "Cheap Rx!" (many from Canadian pharmacies), and he was curious to know just how easy ordering these drugs could be. Pretty easy, it turned out. Within 48 hours of ordering a bottle each of Vicodin, Xanax, and Valium from the internet, Lyon was staring at the bottles on his desk. A brief, fib-filled phone conversation with the website's "doctor" served as his only screening.

While Lyon promised his editor that he would flush the contents of his new orange bottles down the toilet after finishing his assignment, curiosity and an anti-authoritarian streak led him to try a few instead. And that was it -- he was in love. After downing his first three Vicodin, Lyon decided that "this is what I've been waiting for my whole life." He describes the pills as curing depression, social anxiety and physical pain all at once, producing a feeling akin to lounging in a sauna, or a constant, low-grade orgasm.

Less stigma, same risks

Lyon wasn't alone in his newfound chemical romance. Statistics show that about 33 million Americans have used prescription painkillers like Vicodin, Oxycontin, and Percocet non-medically, while Canadian research estimates that between 300,000 to 900,000 in the general population are abusing prescription opioids (as much as three per cent). Research has yet to uncover the full picture in Canada, although Professor Benedikt Fischer of Simon Fraser University's faculty of health sciences recently got a multimillion-dollar grant to study the problem.