If you contacted your Senators and Representative about the dangers of the 21st Century Cures Act, thank you very much.
Unfortunately it passed — 392 to 26 in the House, and 94 to 5 in the Senate.
While some of the $6.3 Billion funded by this legislation is not controversial and may even be beneficial, a large chunk of the money will go to fund suicide-prevention programs, mental health services for children, and programs for court-ordered psychiatric outpatient treatment. It reinforces current laws that require insurers to treat mental illness as they do any other illness in terms of benefits (“parity“). And it creates a new position in the US Department of Health and Human Services called the Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use for coordinating mental health programs across the federal government.
The bill also lowers the regulatory bar of the Food and Drug Administration, which may result in less safe and effective products reaching the market by putting less emphasis on clinical trials, which has caused some critics to label it the 21st Century Quackery Act. The FDA insists it will not compromise safety and efficacy; but they have already shown their fake reliance on safety and efficacy by approving psychotropic drugs and trying to make it easier to approve electric shock machines.
How concerned should we be? Very concerned. Proliferation of coercive and abusive mental health “care” by the current psychiatric industry is a waste of lives and funding.
Instead, here is what we should be doing:
1. Mental health hospitals must be established to replace coercive psychiatric institutions, where appropriate medical diagnostics and treatments can be performed. Proper medical screening by non-psychiatric diagnostic specialists could eliminate more than 40% of psychiatric admissions.
2. Establish rights for patients and insurance companies to receive refunds for harmful and abusive mental health treatment.
3. Clinical and financial audits must be done for all psychiatric facilities to uncover and correct fraud and abuse.
4. All mental disorders in the DSM should be validated by scientific, physical evidence.
5. Abolish mental health courts and mandated community mental health treatment.
6. Citizens groups and responsible government officials should work together to expose and abolish psychiatry’s hidden manipulation of society.