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The liberal obsession with “mental health care” could be a serious threat to the basic freedoms of average Americans. This is exemplified by the recent efforts to make it illegal for the “mentally ill” to purchase guns— in other words, strip them of their Second Amendment Rights.
On the surface, this doesn’t sound so bad; nobody likes the idea of crazy people running around with guns. Yet a close examination of the concepts of mental illness and mental health care proves that the entire argument for such laws is based on hysteria and, in some cases, pseudoscience.
President Obama and other advocates of “mental health care” are playing on widespread ignorance about mental health, the human brain, psychology, psychiatry, and history. These advocates of public safety want to give authorities the power to strip average citizens of their basic rights based on some very questionable criteria. In other words, the argument for restricting the freedom of the mentally ill is based on emotion, not science.
What Science Really Says About Psychology and Psychiatry
The main reason we should be worried about efforts to use “mental health” as a criteria to strip people of their rights is the questionable science behind psychology and psychiatry. In recent years it has been determined that there is no scientific basis for most popular notions about psychology and psychiatry.
Neurologists (scientists who actually study how the human brain works) have determined that most human behavior is determined by the functioning of the brain. They have found little or no evidence to support Freudian psychology (the basis of most “therapy”) or such ideas that dreams and childhood experiences are at the root of behavioral problems and mental illness. Instead, as football fans know, they’ve discovered that a lot of mental illness is actually caused by brain damage or physical or biological problems with the brain.
Scientists have not determined how the human brain works or the cause of a lot of human behavior. Instead, they have some suspicions that contradict most of the theories of Sigmund Freud and other famous psychologists. Even President Obama himself admits freely that we don’t know a lot about the human brain, as his BRAIN Initiative to spend $100 million to map the brain shows.
How It Could Threaten Second Amendment Rights
Science cannot define what mental illness is or what causes it. Yet liberals want to use it as an excuse to restrict our freedoms. Who would lose the right to carry a gun under these restrictions?
One bothersome answer is anybody who might have suffered a brain injury or post-traumatic stress disorder. This could include anybody that was in a car accident, played high-school football, participated in boxing or wrestling, or any veteran that saw combat in the armed forces. Recent research indicates all of those people might have suffered brain damage that could lead to mental illness. Will you need to pay for an expensive MRI scan of your brain to get a hunting license at some point in the future? That’s where the liberal talk about mental illness is leading.
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There are calls for a national mental health registry, a list of anybody that has ever seen a psychologist. This list could include anybody whom a psychologist or psychiatrist thinks is dangerous or potentially violent. Those on the national mental health registry would be deprived of basic rights such as owning a gun.
What’s even more frightening is that it could lead to even worse violations of our freedoms. One of these could be the forced drugging of people branded mentally ill by bureaucrats. Persons that think this scenario sounds far-fetched should remember that overactive children are now routinely dosed with Ritalin, Prozac, and other psychiatric drugs in the public schools. The drugs are often recommended or prescribed by poorly trained school psychologists—yes, in some states, psychologists (who are not physicians) can prescribe medications.
Could You Be Forced to Take Psychiatric Drugs?
The abuse of mental health could lead to an even greater nightmare than the loss of second amendment rights. Average citizens could be forced to take “psychiatric drugs” such as Prozac and Ritalin to “cure” their mental illness. In other words, the practices in the public schools could be extended to the rest of society.
This is a particularly frightening scenario because the psychiatric profession is deeply divided on the use of such drugs. Some psychiatrists, including former Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Peter Breggin, actually contend that psychiatric drugs cause mental illness and violence. In September 2011 a judge in Winnipeg, Saskatchewan, Canada, ruled that Prozac caused a teenager to murder an acquaintance. The judge’s ruling was based on Breggin’s testimony.
So there is strong evidence that the most popular method of treating mental illness—psychiatric drugs—might not work and could make the problem worse. Yet there is strong pressure to increase funding for mental healthcare. Obama has issued an executive order requiring states to use Medicaid funds to pay for “mental healthcare” for the poor.
How Big Pharmaceutical Companies Could Profit From Rights Violations
Not only could people be forced to take psychiatric drugs, your tax dollars could be used to pay for the drugs. That’s particularly frightening because it could lead to huge profits for big pharmaceutical companies. Get the picture of who is really behind this concern about mental health care?
Big drug companies have a disgusting history of using fraud to sell psychiatric drugs. Last year the Food and Drug Administration fined GlaxoSmithKline $3 billion after it determined the pharmaceutical company literally paid doctors to prescribe its antidepressant Paxil to patients. Doctors that prescribed large amounts of the drug got such rewards as all-expense paid trips to Jamaica. The New York Times reported that GlaxoSmithKline paid a Harvard professor to publish an article that showed how Paxil “helped” children as part of its marketing efforts.
It isn’t hard to imagine such companies trying to get psychologists or psychiatrists to diagnose poor people as mentally ill and prescribing psychiatric drugs to them. Medicaid would pay for the drugs. In other words, Obama wants to expand Medicare and Medicaid fraud into mental health care. People that want health insurance for their children could be forced to sign up for mental health care. The mental health care will consist of a quack prescribing pills in exchange for a kickback from a drug company.
One has to wonder how much of the Obama administration’s interest in mental health care is motivated by the pharmaceutical industry. The real agenda is to increase the market for “psychiatric drugs,” not to help the mentally ill.
A Double Standard That Will Make Life For The Mentally Ill Worse
There is one final problem with the liberal mental healthcare agenda: it will probably keep many mentally ill people from actually seeking treatment. Since people will be afraid of losing basic rights, such as owning guns, and of being forced to take questionable drugs; nobody will want to go to a psychologist or psychiatrist.
We’ll have a situation where the truly mentally ill are not getting the help they need while many average people will be receiving questionable treatment at taxpayers’ expense. Worse, many physicians will be afraid to diagnose anybody with mental health problems out of fear of lawsuits. Persons whose names get placed on the registry will probably sue doctors, making it difficult or impossible for psychiatrists to practice.
The liberal mental healthcare agenda is not only a threat to our rights. It is another reason to be very afraid of government-administered healthcare.
