Jim Gottstein, JD is a Harvard trained lawyer who founded PsychRights. The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights) is a non-profit, tax exempt public interest law firm whose mission is to mount a strategic legal campaign to fight forced psychiatric drugging and electroshock in the United States. Jim states that this is akin to what Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP mounted in the 40's and 50's on behalf of African American civil rights.
Jim is right on target in his perception that the public mental health system has been creating a huge class of chronic mental patients through forcing them to take ineffective, yet extremely harmful drugs. PsychRights has won four Alaska Supreme Court decisions which have held various aspects of Alaska’s adult involuntary commitment and forced drugging regime unconstitutional or otherwise illegal.
Jim recently wrote for a blog called "Mad In America" an entry titled "Diagnosing Dangers." Jim argues that people should not be locked up and forced to take psychiatric drugs against their will. He also explains that he recognizes that diagnosing, itself, can be very harmful. An obvious harm which Jim recognizes is the stigma that attaches once one is diagnosed, especially, with a diagnosis of serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia. Jim has pointed out that people with such labels can immediately lose their jobs and essentially become unemployable. These people often become social outcasts, that has been described as "social death".
Jim goes on to note that in Alaska where he practices, psychiatric respondents, "or those on the wrong side of the locked door and at the the sharp end of the needle", have the right to have commitment hearings closed from the public in order to protect their reputations. But he also notes sometimes people find getting a diagnosis comforting in order to have a name put on the trouble they are having.
Jim is right to feel that this is a false comfort. As he points out accepting that one has a brain disease, one must give up any hope of a full life, and must be ready to take debilitating drugs for the remainder of their lives which will most likely find them spending their time in a day treatment room watching television and smoking cigarettes. Jim goes on to point out that the extreme harm caused by the drugs for many is the obvious result and, indeed, he says is ultimately the purpose of most diagnoses. That and of course also to allow the psychiatrists to get paid well for their effort.
Jim takes an emotionally relevant position that the diagnosing of mental disorders in foster children and youth and associated drugging should be replaced with offering them help in dealing with the natural emotions they are experiencing and most importantly, they should be given help to become successful.
Jim discusses how at the end of a meeting he once had with the Alaska Commissioner of Health and Social Services when he was suing the State of Alaska over drugging children and youth in PsychRights v. Alaska, he said, “so what you are telling me is we should do a better job of diagnosing.” Jim replied, “No, we should do a better job of not diagnosing.” He raises the significant point that whether it is adults or children, or seniors, for that matter, "is it moral to give people dubious, harmful psychiatric diagnoses in order to get paid?"
I have corresponded with Jim often online about his work and I am looking forward to meeting with him someday. He appears to be genuinely sincere about his work. Mandkind worldwide would be a lot better off if there were more lawyers with the legal aptitude, warm feelings, and deep insights in dealing with PsychRights which Jim Gottstein has developed and shares with us.
