CCHR offensive in Brighton, UK

[secretiveoldfag]

http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/1071...t_by_Scientology_group_outside_Brighton_Dome/

"Their ignorance and refusal to engage in debate or discussionwas shocking.When we tried to explain our opinions, some protesters literally put their fingers in their ears and refused to listen.

“The protesters denied our experiences and attempted to intimidate us. They asked intrusive questions such as ‘I’m looking at your scars, are they self-inflicted?’ and ‘What’s your diagnosis?’ “Their actions contributed to the very stigma that we are trying to challenge.”

More at the link.

 

[scooter]

CCHR are offensive wherever they gather.

And I notice that they're still pursuing former Australian of the Year, Prof. Pat McGorry, who was at this conference.

Stupid freak culties

 

[JohnMccMaster]

Knowing the abuses carried out daily by Psychiatry and that they far outweigh the importance or damage done by a few otherwise deluded, unemployable crackpots living on the edge of reality - I'd say they make a fair point. They really need some new signage though. Of the 2 opposing groups I don't think anyone has the right to tell anyone else what to think or how to behave. However I do believe we'd all be a lot better off without either.

Psychiatry's DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and Scientology's DMSMH are equally fraudulent.

Also of note is the fact that the word Psychopathy isn't in the Psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

CCHR's their attendance was seriously off target since the main speakers were the patients, not the Psychiatrists themselves. And where the f did they drum up as many as 60 supporters. I bet most were hired by the CoS, not members.

 

[AnonKat]

Knowing the abuses carried out daily by Psychiatry and that they far outweigh the importance or damage done of a few otherwise deluded, unemployable crackpots living on the edge of reality - I'd say they make a fair point. They really need some new signage though.

http://katcormack.wordpress.com/201...ntology-anti-psychiatry-movement/#comment-472

My run in with the Scientology Anti-Psychiatry movement
3 Oct

Something happened at the conference this week that i need to talk about. It’s not the most positive thing which is perhaps why it stood out so much, and to me in particular. The conference itself was fantastic, i cannot express how much i got out of it.

Unfortunately we had some unwelcome visitors.

We had Scientologists.

Well okay not full blown Xenu worshipping Scientologists but rather members of the anti-psychiatry movement set up by them and Thomas Szasz. The ironically named Citizens Commission of Human Rights.

Image

Thomas Szasz was a psychiatrist that believed that mental illness doesn’t exist and had some very strong views on the matter. As a psychology undergraduate i had a lecturer who was a big fan of Szasz and i remember leaving those classes shaking with anger after long arguments. Eventually i complained to another lecturer who managed to get him to tone down his classes-obviously he was unaware that several of his students were struggling with some pretty heavy mental health issues (20% of students experience depression so no surprise). The last thing we needed or wanted to hear was that mental illness didn’t exist and it was very distressing for me in particular as someone who has a long, painful history of mental health problems.

This may sound oxymoronic but i’m quite a lucky crazy person. I am out of the mental health closet to just about everyone and am lucky enough to have the support of a wonderful partner, my family, friends and my place of work.

I have worked with YoungMinds, the NHS, The Royal College of Psychiatrists and many more and have an incredible platform to speak out about young people’s mental health-the conference this week is a great example.

It’s not that i forget that stigma exists, god no. I still experience it from time to time, i have done in the past too. I’ve seen the devastating effects in friends and family and i know that stigma is a big part of the reason that 70% of people with a mental health problem don’t get treatment.

But perhaps i live in a bit of a bubble. I forget sometimes that some people don’t even believe mental illness exists. That blows my mind to be honest both as a service user, a professional and as a human being.

So the conference was going well. A meeting of like minded people from across the world. We came together to find solutions and to try and help young people.

Someone clearly didn’t get that message to the CCHR.

So they turn up, thankfully get barricaded by security at the Brighton Dome (you guys were wonderful, thankyou) and start shouting.
A really rubbish photo-i wasn't meant to be taking one at all!

A really rubbish photo-i wasn’t meant to be taking one at all!

To sum up briefly their arguments:

Mental illness doesn’t exist
Children do NOT get mental health problems
Psychiatry is just about drugging children and turning them into zombies.

When they turned up at first there were just three of them, i approached them, the acronym (CCHR) on their tshirts was familiar but i couldn’t remember why.

Me: “Hi, where are you from then?”
Them: “We’re from the CCHR, we’re here to protest this conference”

We had a remarkably civil conversation. They stated their views. I countered every point they gave with statistics and my own experiences.

Them: “We don’t believe that mental illness exists, these people are drugging children and turning them into zombies. Where is the evidence?”

I calmly disagreed.

Me: “I’m sorry but i can’t agree. You see i was a mentally ill child. I had problems from the age of 6. I didn’t get treatment until i was 14 and i did have medication but i had to fight for it and you know what some of it helped”

I went to walk off and then stopped dead in my tracks. Something had clicked. I suddenly knew where i had heard that acronym before.

Me: “You’re not Scientologists are you?”
Them: “Well no. Our organiation was set up by Scientology and Thomas Szasz”.
Me: “Ahh i see”

And i walked off.

Then the others arrived and there were a lot of them. They shouted at the delegates, hurling abuse. They chanted “we don’t need n o thought control” and other slogans and intimidated everyone including the young people attending the conference.

I went back into the building to warn my friends not to go outside and promptly had a bit of a breakdown.

I ended up upstairs in the chill out area shaking uncontrollably and close to tears.

“How dare they?” i asked. How dare they question and dismiss my pain? How dare they tell me that the last 18 years of my illness didn’t happen.

Also, how misguided they are. I was at the conference for three days. Not ONE talk was pro-medication or pro-restraint. We talked about using technology to help young people, about participation and co-production.

My favourite moment however was this:

I went outside to get away from the protest and went for a cigarette with a friend. As we walked back my confidence surged. I wasn’t going to take this any more.

I saw two children standing apart from the protest. They can’t have been more than 10 years old and they were chanting the same ridiculous slogans as the adults. Something about this really struck me. These were the children we may end up helping in the future. They deserve better than Scientology’s lies.

I walked up to a young boy, put my hand on his shoulder and said to him

“You know, you should check out the YoungMinds website when you get home. They will educate you better than these people will”

And walked off.

The crowd was furious and started shouting at me, demanding to know what i had said. I held my head high and walked past back into the conference and didn’t look back.

 

[Cat's Squirrel]

Knowing the abuses carried out daily by Psychiatry and that they far outweigh the importance or damage done of a few otherwise deluded, unemployable crackpots living on the edge of reality - I'd say they make a fair point. They really need some new signage though.

Nonsense. Psychiatry admittedly isn't perfect but it's about 100x more ethical than Scientology right now. A psychiatrist in the UK who behaved the way an average Sea Org executive does wouldn't last a week.

 

[La La Lou Lou]

Knowing the abuses carried out daily by Psychiatry and that they far outweigh the importance or damage done by a few otherwise deluded, unemployable crackpots living on the edge of reality - I'd say they make a fair point. They really need some new signage though. Of the 2 opposing groups I don't think anyone has the right to tell anyone else what to think or how to behave. However I do believe we'd all be a lot better off without either.

Psychiatry's DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and Scientology's DMSMH are equally fraudulent.

Also of note is the fact that the word Psychopathy isn't in the Psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

CCHR's their attendance was seriously off target since the main speakers were the patients, not the Psychiatrists themselves. And where the f did they drum up as many as 60 supporters. I bet most were hired by the CoS, not members.

My guess is they were staff and public having a day out, before being screamed at for stat crashing by not being on post.

 

[AnonKat]

It has been renamed or known under different names. Psychopathy, Sociopathy and recently you will find it under the heading Anti Social Personality Disorder with some nice recognizable underlings as Narcissism. Both are gradïent scales

Psychiatry's DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and Scientology's DMSMH are equally fraudulent.

Also of note is the fact that the word Psychopathy isn't in the Psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

 

[FlunkYou]

I don't ever wish a mental illness on anyone, but if that were the only way to show these idiots that auditing and scientology don't work.

"Show me the anxiety or depression rundown." "At what level on the bridge do people stop feeling anxious and/or depressed? And can you put that in writing for me?" "How did your program work out for Elli Perkins?"

 

[johnAnchovie]

Knowing the abuses carried out daily by Psychiatry ...


You betray an ignorant and blinkered view. It might be worth facing the possibility that the lingering effect of Hubbard's twisted indoctrination still has you in its grip.

Did you know that Bowlby was a psychiatrist? I wonder if you might pop outside of your uninformed stance for a moment and take in this biographical excerpt.

In a couple of short paragraphs It defeats any of the volumes of regressive and hysterical posturing CCHR and their ilk put out to disguise their nefarious ends.

Bowlby studied psychology and pre-clinical sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge, winning prizes for outstanding intellectual performance. After Cambridge, he worked with maladjusted and delinquent children until, at the age of twenty-two, he enrolled at University College Hospital in London. At twenty-six, he qualified in medicine. While still in medical school, he enrolled himself in the Institute for Psychoanalysis. Following medical school, he trained in adult psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital. In 1937, aged 30, he qualified as a psychoanalyst.

During World War II, he was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Royal Army Medical Corps. After the war, he was Deputy Director of the Tavistock Clinic, and from 1950, Mental Health Consultant to the World Health Organization.

Because of his previous work with maladapted and delinquent children, he became interested in the development of children and began work at the Child Guidance Clinic in London, which was also known as the East London Child Guidance Clinic. Located in Islington, it was founded by the Jewish Health Organisation in 1927 and was the first children's psychiatric facility in the UK and possibly Europe.[5] His interest was probably increased by a variety of wartime events involving separation of young children from familiar people. These included the rescue of Jewish children by the Kindertransport arrangements, the evacuation of children from London to keep them safe from air raids, and the use of group nurseries to allow mothers of young children to contribute to the war effort.[6] Bowlby was interested from the beginning of his career in the problem of separation, the wartime work of Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham on evacuees, and the work of Rene Spitz on orphans. By the late 1950s, he had accumulated a body of observational and theoretical work to indicate the fundamental importance for human development of attachment from birth.[3]

Bowlby was interested in finding out the patterns of family interaction involved in both healthy and pathological development. He focused on how attachment difficulties were transmitted from one generation to the next. In his development of attachment theory, he proposed the idea that attachment behaviour was an evolutionary survival strategy for protecting the infant from predators. Mary Ainsworth, a student of Bowlby’s, further extended and tested his ideas. She played the primary role in suggesting that several attachment styles existed.

The three most important experiences for Bowlby’s future work and the development of attachment theory were his work with:

Maladapted and delinquent children.

James Robertson (in 1952) in making the documentary film A Two-Year Old Goes to the Hospital, which was one of the films about ”young children in brief separation“.[citation needed] The documentary illustrated the impact of loss and suffering experienced by young children separated from their primary caretakers. This film was instrumental in a campaign to alter hospital restrictions on visiting by parents. In 1952 when he and Robertson presented their film A Two Year Old Goes to Hospital to the British Psychoanalytical Society, psychoanalysts did not accept that a child would mourn or experience grief on separation but instead saw the child's distress as caused by elements of unconscious fantasies (in the film because the mother was pregnant).[3]

 

[suspiciousperson]

CCHR offensive

yup