A “campaign” to denounce the numerous abuses against those who protest or present petitions in China and because of this have been detained in psychiatric hospitals, beaten, subjected to electric shocks and sedatives. The activist Liu Feiyue explains that the campaign “SOS Mental Hospitals” wants to make public the many victims of this “system”.
This article highlights the need for CCHR’s Mental Health Declaration of Human Rights to be universally adopted. CCHR is the only organization to have drafted human rights guidelines for the field of mental health, something desperately needed as there are virtually no rights granted to those psychiatry determines, by opinion alone, are “mentally ill.”
Is nonconformity and freethinking a mental illness? According to the newest addition of the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), it certainly is. The manual identifies a new mental illness called “oppositional defiant disorder” or ODD. Defined as an “ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile and defiant behavior,” symptoms include questioning authority, negativity, defiance, argumentativeness, and being easily annoyed.
Adderall is abused mostly by college students and young adults. Estimates are that somewhere between 20-30 percent of college students regularly abuse Adderall. Adderall has the dubious distinction of being the latest addition to the rogue’s gallery of lawful drugs that have made the transition to the black market. In recent years, abuse of Adderall and its imitators has increased by nearly 200 percent.
According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA)’s survey the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, in 2008 15.2 million Americans age 12 and older had taken a prescription pain reliever, tranquilizer, stimulant, or sedative for nonmedical purposes at least once in the year. Addiction to and the abuse of prescription drugs, also known as “pill popping,” has become a national trend.