Notable Quotes

"...any deprivation of liberty, incarceration, or physical detention is, in reality, a form of punishment," Hamilton v. Love, 328 F.Supp. 1182, 1193 (E.D.Ark 1971).

"Incarceration may not seem 'punishment' to the jailors, but it is punishment to the jailed."  Cross v. Harris, 418 F.2d 1095, 1101 (D.C. Cir. 1969)

both of the above quoted in: Bruce J. Ennis & Paul R. Friedman, Legal Rights of the Mentally Handicapped - Volume I (Practising Law Insitute - The Mental Health Law Project, 1973), p. 401

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"Speaking of crime, there isn't a shred of evidence that the incidence of crime among ex-mental hospital patients is any higher than for the general population, and there is some evince that it may be less."

This statement appears in the "Position Statement on the Medical Treatment of the Mentally Ill" by the American Psychiatric Association and the National Association for Mental Health submitted to the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Righs during hearings on the "Constitutional Rights of the Mentally Ill" in March 1961.  The statement was written by Francis J. Braceland, M.D., and Jack R. Ewalt, M.D.; reprinted in The Age of Madness: The History of Involuntary Mental Hospitalization Presented in Selected Texts, edited by Thomas S. Szasz, M.D. (Anchor Books - Garden City, New York - 1973).

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Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense and former U.S. Representative from Illinois:

"The United States of America represents something so important to the world - our free way of life. If you care about human beings, you have to care that the U.S. model, which benefits not just the people in our country but across the globe, succeeds.  ...  Free people are free to be wise and unwise. That's part of what freedom is."

quoted in "We Have to Defend Our Way Of Life," by Lyric Wallwork Winik, Parade Magazine (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Atlanta, Georgia, Sunday, November 18, 2001, pages 7 & 9

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President Abraham Lincoln in his famous "Gettysburgh Address," November 19, 1863:

"FOURSCORE and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon, this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. ... It is for us, the living ... to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us ... that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom..."

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U.S. Vice-President Richard B. Cheney (also a former U.S. Representative and former U.S. Secretary of Defense), in his address accepting the Republican Party's nomination for vice president on August 2, 2000:

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are so privileged to be citizens of this great republic.  I was reminded of that time and again when I was in my former job as secretary of defense.  I traveled a lot, and when I came home, my plane would land at Andrews Air Force Base and I'd return to the Pentagon by helicopter.  When you make that trip from Andrews to the Pentagon and you look down on the city of Washington, one of the first things you see is the Capitol...  And just before you settle down on the landing pad, you look out upon Arlington National Cemetery, its gentle slopes and crosses row on row.  ...  I never made that trip without being reminded of how enormously fortunate we are to be Americans and what a terrible price thousands have paid so that all of us and millions more around the world might live in freedom." (italics added)

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"That government being instituted for the common benefit, the doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind."  Tennessee Constitution, Article I - Declarartion of Rights, Section 2

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Unjustified psychiatric commitment - Why?
"...clinicians' increasing liability for the violent actions of their patients has forced evaluators to err on the side of commitment..."
Robert D. Miller, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Psychiatrist, Colorado Department of Corrections & professor of psychiatry, Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver, Colorado, in his article "Grievances and Law Suits Against Public Mental Health Professionals: Cost of Doing Business?," Bull Am Acad Psychiatry Law, Vol. 20, No. 4, 1992.

See "Psychiatrist Held Liable for Failing to Predict the Future" in Antipsychiatry News Clips.

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"Nothing has harmed the quality of individual life in modern society more than the misbegotten belief that human suffering is driven by biological and genetic causes and can be rectified by taking drugs or undergoing electroshock therapy.  ...  If I wanted to ruin someone's life, I would convince the person that that biological psychiatry is right - that relationships mean nothing, that choice is impossible, and that the mechanics of a broken brain reign over our emotions and conduct.  If I wanted to impair an individual's capacity to create empathetic, loving relationships, I would prescribe psychiatric drugs, all of which blunt our highest psychological and spiritual functions."  Peter R. Breggin, M.D., in the Foreward to Reality Therapy in Action by William Glasser, M.D. (Harper Collins, 2000), p. xi (underline added).

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"Advocates of psychiatric drugs often claim that the medications improve learning and the ability to benefit from psychotherapy, but the contrary is true.  There are no drugs that improve mental function, self-understanding, or human relations.  Any drug that affects mental processes does so by impairing them."  Peter R. Breggin, M.D. & David Cohen, Ph.D., in their book, Your Drug May Be Your Problem: How and Why to Stop Taking Psychiatric Drugs, Perseus Books, Reading, Massachusetts, 1999, p. 97-98.

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"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." - Martin Luther King, Jr. (quoted by Governor Jesse Ventura in his book Do I Stand Alone?, Pocket Books, New York, 2000, p. 128)

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"Is NAMI [National Alliance for the Mentally Ill] a health care advocate as it would have the public believe?  Having accepted $11.72 million from eighteen drug firms between 1996 and mid-1999, it is no less an arm of the pharmaceutical industry than is psychiatry itself." - excerpted from "Fraud or Calling Psychiatric Disorders Diseases: A Letter to the Surgeon General," by Fred A. Baughman Jr., M.D.

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"Contrary to what is often claimed, no biochemical, anatomical, or functional signs have been found that reliably distinguish the brains of mental patients." Elliot S. Valenstein, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Michigan, in his book Blaming the Brain: The TRUTH About Drugs and Mental Health (Free Press, New York, 1998, page 125).

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