USA: Pennsylvania Prisons Allegedly Bribed Judges to Sentence Kids

"Spread over two years of court cases, Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan are accused of taking more than $2.6 million in payoffs to sentence minors to detention centers.

Dealing exclusively with private institutions, as Conahan had helped shutter the county-run center in 2002, the judges are alleged to have received bribes from detention facilities that were paid by the county on a daily basis.

Though they had agreed to contracts with the county, the centers would ultimately receive payment according to the number of offenders they housed.

The high number of incarcerations, the fact that many underage offenders were presented without an attorney and the excessive punishments doled out for small, often first-time offenses raised suspicions among the local legal community.

Both judges have been removed from the bench and are expected to plead guilty.

Although the Wilkes-Barre case is exceptional for the high number and value of the bribes paid, it is hardly an isolated case on the international stage.

According to a 2007 study conducted by Transparency International, of 62 nations surveyed, 25 found that 1 in 10 households reported having paid a bride to access their court system."

We ask: How many of these kids were put on psychotropic drugs?

To read the rest of the article and to access important documents regarding the case, please go to this link.

To read our previous entries on the prison industry, go here.

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.”

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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
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