By Allen Frances - March 1, 2010

This wholesale medical imperialization of normality could potentially create tens of millions of innocent bystanders who would be mislabeled as having a mental disorder. The pharmaceutical industry would have a field day -- despite the lack of solid evidence of any effective treatments for these newly proposed diagnoses.

Since solitary confinement has been shown to cause severe psychological trauma in prisoners without underlying psychiatric conditions, it would be difficult to imagine a more damaging place to incarcerate the mentally ill.

"A Conservative government will stand up for full and fair compensation to persons exposed to defoliant spraying during the period from 1956 to 1984."

- Stephen Harper

haiti
In the past 24 hours Russian doctors have performed surgery on 12 patients at the hospital that this country’s Emergencies Ministry has established in Haiti’s quake-stricken capital city Port-au-Prince. Over the period the Russian doctors have provided medical aid for a total of 57 patients, including 17 children. The Russian air-borne hospital started operation on the 15th of this month. It boasts all the equipment needed.

Freedom is a Constant Struggle TV show featuring Raj Patel, who is a writer, activist and academic. He has degrees from the University of Oxford, the London School of Economics and Cornell University, has worked for the World Bank and WTO and been tear-gassed on four continents protesting against them.

By ETHAN WATTERS - January 10, 2010

...[W]e may have yet to face one of the most remarkable effects of American-led globalization. We have for many years been busily engaged in a grand project of Americanizing the world’s understanding of mental health and illness. We may indeed be far along in homogenizing the way the world goes mad.

By MARTHA ROSENBERG - January 5, 2010

It's no secret [anti-psychotic medications are] an institutional goldmine for the drug industry who exacted $5 million for one year of atypical drugs at Western State mental hospital in Tacoma, [Washington]. Many states have sued over the cost of atypical [anti-psychotics], especially the cost of treating the diabetes and metabolic disorders they cause, which has decimated Medicaid budgets.

By MARTHA ROSENBERG - December 24, 2009

High profile suicides...occurred in 2009 prompting the [US Food & Drug Administration] to add black box warnings to the asthma drugs Singulair, Accolate and Zyflo, the anti-smoking drugs Chantix and Zyban and authorities to question the antidepressants given to 80 percent of Iraq war veterans with post traumatic stress disorder...The open secret of industry subsidized journal articles...came under Congressional investigation in 2009--as did the drug industry ties of faux grassroots groups like the National Alliance on Mental Illness...

Freedom is a Constant Struggle TV show, November 06, 2009, featuring Phavia Kujichagulia, a Griot/Djialli (Oral Historian), musician, writer, poet, dancer who utilizes music, poetry and dance to heal and reveal history -- was a professor of Ethnomusicology and African Civilizations at World College West and Stanford University’s Workshop on Political and Social Issues.

Check out part two of our interview with Robert King and Terry Kupers. They were interviewed in Oakland, California in October, 2009, when King was in town for Black Panther History Month.

By BRUCE E. LEVINE - December 4-6, 2009

When people become broken, they cannot act on truths of injustice. Furthermore, when people have become broken, more truths about how they have been victimized can lead to shame about how they have allowed it. And shame, like fear, is one more psychological way we become even more broken.

Kiilu Nyasha is a San Francisco-based journalist and former member of the Black Panther Party (BPP). Kiilu hosts a weekly TV program, "Freedom Is A Constant Struggle." This new video interview conducted in November, 2009 in San Francisco, is based on a recent article by Nyasha, entitled “America’s Supermax Prisons Do Torture.”

These conditions are a flagrant violation of article 6 of the U.S. Constitution which affirms that treaty law (i.e. international law) is the “supreme law of the land.” Thus, article 10 (3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights stipulates that “The penitentiary system shall comprise treatment of prisoners the essential aim of which shall be their reformation and social rehabilitation.”

Play aims to reduce stigma of mental illness one show at a time. Courtesy Digital Journal by KJ Mullins