DID THE TREATMENT ADVOCACY CENTER (TAC) CAUSE THE VIRGINIA TECH MASSACRE?

When I began my first blogspot, "Torture and Totalitarianism", in January of this year, I was very concerned about the threat to civil liberties posed by the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and with good reason. Its denial of habeas corpus represented a novel and dangerous departure from constitutional law. On June 12 of this year, the Supreme Court's ruling in Boumediene v. Bush struck a blow against this law, although it is unlikely that the executive branch will abide by the court's decision, as the constitution requires. The MCA remains a serious threat to civil liberties. But through my research concerning the ways that psychiatry has been enlisted to help the CIA develop methods of coercing false confessions from detainees (especially as detailed in Colin Ross' book, The CIA Doctors), I have become aware of a still greater threat to civil liberties. It stems from an unholy alliance between government insiders and the psychiatric profession with the pharmaceutical and electronics industries. Under the guise of helping the mentally ill and saving the lives of innocent people who are supposedly threatened by them, it seeks to mandate measures which can only harm the former and place the latter in more danger. And I have come to believe that the accusation of involvement in terrorist activity is not likely to be the way in which the emerging totalitarian government will consolidate itself. After all, only a tiny minority of people can be even remotely associated with such activities. Although law-abiding Muslims will no doubt continue to be harrassed by such spurious accusations and suspicions, for the majority of Americans-- especially dissenters-- the worst threat stems from psychiatry. The leader in this effort is TAC, The Treatment Advocacy Center, founded by E. Torrey Fuller and Mary Zdanowicz in 1998. It advocates above all what it calls "Assisted Outpatient Treatment" or AOT. Nothing is more conducive to both the spread of totalitarianism and violence.

To understand why TAC constitutes such a threat, one must realize first of all that the definition of "mental illness" which applies to the majority of mental patients rests solely upon nonconformism. Thus the American Psychiatric Association defines "personality disorder" as "an enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectations of the culture of the individual who exhibits it." This is obviously not a definition of an illness and one would think that the APA would be embarrassed to put forward a position so much at odds with traditional American respect for individuality. Psychosis is defined much more narrowly as being characterized by delusions and hallucinations, but an influential school of thought holds that those diagnosed with a personality disorder may easily become psychotic-- that for instance, all schizotypal personality "disorders" are stages on a continuum leading to schizophrenia. One can see how in this view, people who have unorthodox political or religious beliefs may first be categorized "schizoid" and ultimately "schizophrenic", simply because they are dissenters. Obviously, opposition to government policies, such as the War on Terror, and prevalent religious beliefs such as monotheism, represent "an enduring pattern of deviant behavior". And when such individuals express their beliefs that, for instance, the threat of foreign terrorism is a fiction invented by our government (enhanced by state-sponsored acts of terrorism such as 9/11), or that the world is not governed by one all-powerful and righteous God but rather an evil one at odds with the true God of Righteousness, opinions which in fact represent merely political and religious dissent can come to be labeled "delusions" and "hallucinations" which prove that their advocates are psychotic. The link between "Assisted Outpatient Treatment" and government repression is made explicit in an interview with Mary Zdanowicz, director of TAC: "Since 9/11, authorities have linked approximately 5,000 murders in the U.S. to people who suffer from the most severe mental illnesses. That's more than have been attributed to our most feared terrorist enemy, Al Qaeda... solving this problem is one of the most urgent Homeland Security policy issues facing the nation today." (http://www.podtech.net/home/search/Treatment+Advocacy+Center). But that these 5,000 deaths were truly committed by people who are mentally ill is even more uncertain than the question of whether 9/11 was really the work of Al Qaeda.

The threat here is not just to civil liberties, as if that is not bad enough. It is to life itself. Consider the fact that the treatments advocated by TAC are harmful and hideous. Every day, groups which act as advocates for the mentally ill, such as Mind Freedom International, receive more and more complaints of court-ordered outpatient treatments with neuroleptic drugs and ECT from people who are perfectly peaceful and law-abiding, and they are quite clear about why they are complaining-- the treatments are horrendous. Neuroleptic drugs cause tardive akathisia, a condition in which the patient cannot sit or lie still and suffers from continual and severe mental torture. ECT causes mental confusion and permanent memory loss-- for one specific group of people, to be discussed later, it may destroy creativity (for more information on this, see the writings of Peter Breggin). No one who is ordered to have such treatments, which do not help and in fact cause immense suffering, is going to do so without protest-- not because they are unable to recognize that they are ill, but because they are perfectly able to recognize that the treatments are making them ill. It is to be assumed that peaceful and law-abiding citizens will pursue their grievance through organizations such as Mind Freedom, which to its credit has organized rescue missions to transport the victims out of the county in which the treatment was mandated. But what about those who are not peaceful and law-abiding? What about that tiny minority who may indeed be psychotic? What does it do to such a person to be threatened with treatments which are horrible while they are still living in the community? An answer may be found in a notorious tragedy which occurred in TAC's home state, The Virginia Tech Massacre.

On April 16, 2007, a 23-year-old student named Seung-Hui Cho murdered 32 people on the campus of Virginia Tech and then turned the gun on himself. In 2005, a Virginia Special Justice had declared Cho mentally ill and ordered him to seek outpatient treatment. Living so close to TAC, Cho no doubt knew what was coming. As he said in his suicide note, "You pushed me into a corner and left me no option". And what if he had been forced to have "Assisted Outpatient Treatment" as TAC advocates? As is well known, there is no form of psychiatric treatment which is guaranteed to work immediately. In the case of neuroleptics, it may be weeks before the incapacitating stupor overcomes one completely to the point that, if one were a student, one would neither be able to commit violent acts nor continue in one's studies. In the case of ECT, it may take several treatments before the deceptive euphoria caused by brain damage "kicks in". That leaves plenty of time for rage to build up. Someone suffering from the immediate effects of such "treatments", especially if they have genuine psychiatric problems to begin with, would not just sit and wait for the next one. If he or she has the slightest inclination toward violence, AOT or the threat of it is likely to be the trigger which unleashes such violence. And perhaps that is exactly what TAC and Homeland Security, with which it is obviously working closely, wants. Anyone examining the events of the Virginia Tech Massacre would have to be psychotic himself not to realize that Cho could not have been allowed to escape from the scene where he murdered the first two victims, change his clothes in the dorm next door, sign on to his computer to erase an e-mail and remove his hard drive, spend two hours in an unknown location, then go to the post office and mail a package to NBC News, before he returned to kill his remaining 30 victims (and himself) without official connivance. Could TAC have been part of this connivance?

Most murders are committed by psychopathic, not psychotic individuals. While often confused in the public mind, the two categories could not be more different. Psychosis is the most severe form of mental illness and is considered treatable. Psychopathy is a state of mind in which the person has no sense of right or wrong and delights in criminal acts-- it could simply be called moral depravity, and is not considered treatable. Being sane, psychopaths are clever and hard to catch-- their killing sprees can continue for years, as is the case with serial killers. By contrast, it is easy to prevent a person who is psychotic from killing and, if one cannot, to apprehend them afterwards. That is because, being completely out of touch with reality, psychotic individuals often give signs of their intentions before they ever commit their crimes, and make no attempt to conceal themselves afterwards. Both of these facts were true of Cho. So what should be done with such people? First let me say that such killing sprees are extremely rare and (unless someone deliberately allows them to continue as at Virginia Tech) inevitably short-lived, so worrying about their incidence is like worrying about an asteroid crashing into planet earth-- it can happen but most likely it won't. In November, 2004, voters in my home state, California (not including myself, of course) approved "Laura's Law", named after a victim of one of these rare killings. They had obviously been persuaded by one of TAC's unscientific but loud media campaigns that a new law was needed to address a problem for which we already have remedies. It says that Assisted Outpatient Treatment may be forced upon someone if they meet certain criteria: the individual must have a history of non-compliance with such treatment that has either "Been a significant factor in his or her being in a hospital, prison or jail at least twice within the last thirty-six months" or "Resulted in one of more acts, attempts or threats of violent behavior toward oneself and others within the past forty-eight months." That means that if a peaceful, law-abiding person were to refuse to have "treatments" for the excellent reason that they are making him worse, and has suffered forced hospitalization for that reason, he would be subjected to still more horrible and dangerous forced treatments. This could implant a desire to kill, in self-defense, even in someone who has no history of mental illness.

Of course if the violence is senseless and real-- even only an attempt-- or accompanied by such obvious indications of seriousness as the accumulation of weapons-- then something must be done. But AOT is not the answer. Faced with "treatments" which are not only genuinely harmful to himself but also extremely unpleasant to undergo, a genuinely psychotic and violent person would almost certainly be driven by this law to precisely the actions it was intended to prevent. I hesitate to advocate forced commitment, because it has so often been abused and because mental hospitals utilize the very "treatments" which as I have said, make a person worse. But if we could only outlaw such treatments, the thing to do would be to place such a person in a hospital. There are sedating drugs which do not have the harmful side-effects of the neuroleptics. Since such commitment must be regarded as a serious infringement of personal liberty, it should be difficult to accomplish legally, as indeed it is. But it has two great advantages over AOT: it does not leave the person at liberty to commit violent acts against innocents, and it does not break down the barrier between freedom and coercion which has heretofore existed in our society. People have long been held without good reason by in CIA prisons and mental institutions. But at least such incarceration left the realm of liberty clear-cut. The old Anglo-Saxon adage says that a man's home is his castle; TAC says that people should not be allowed freedom even in their own homes. This is just one step away from the Orwellian state in which a "telescreen" is installed in every dwelling to make sure that all citizens obey Big Brother. Has not President Bush called for mental health screening of all citizens? One can predict with confidence that President Obama will too. The reason is obvious: not only does it bring more profit to the pharmaceutical and electronics firms in which politicians and increasingly psychiatrists have an interest, but it strengthens the power of government to interfere in people's lives. NOthing could better serve these purposes than to take the focus off of the real threat to the safety of citizens-- the psychopathic killer who can only be dealt with by law enforcement-- and direct it instead at the mentally ill.

One thing is for certain: although the average man and woman in the street might be deceived, no professional who has dealt with the truly psychotic or violent individuals would ever advocate AOT, for the reasons I have enumerated. Anyone who does must be presumed to want such violence to occur, in order to serve ends which have nothing to do with public safety. Someone besides Seung-Hui Cho was responsible for the Virginia Tech Massacre. I accuse TAC of being the agency responsible.