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NAMI Santa Cruz Expresses Deep Sadness at Horrible Death of Sean Arlt
NAMI joins our community in expressing our deepest sadness at the horrible death of Sean Arlt, a beautiful young man who was struggling with a mental illness.
Our hearts go out to Sean's family, the police and the community. NAMI members who rely on law enforcement are especially shaken. Those who are living with mental illness deserve non-lethal interventions to help in a psychiatric crisis. Very special skills are required when helping a person in an altered state of extreme fear and agitation. Officers deserve the best possible tools and many non-lethal options. We hope for a thorough investigation with clear recommendations that will include best-practice trainings. The community must also address the shortages of care provided by the mental health care system. NAMI expects to be a part of that comprehensive reform process. NAMI will provide further information as this situation progresses.
- NAMI Santa Cruz County Board
NAMI Santa Cruz
http://www.namiscc.org/
https://www.facebook.com/namiscc
Mission and Vision
NAMI (The National Alliance on Mental Illness) of Santa Cruz County exists to educate, advocate and support those affected by mental illness, their families, friends and our community.
Millions of Americans face the day-to-day reality of living with mental illness. We get it. We've been there. We offer help. We offer hope. NAMI embraces people living with mental illness and their families, who are often isolated. We offer understanding and support unique to those who are affected by these conditions.
We know that the path to recovery lies with individual, family and community education, peer and family support, and the promotion of public understanding. Through our free classes we educate families, providers and those living with mental illness, we educate the community through our presentations, tabling, Positive Postcards, Student Leadership Council. We offer support through our Warm Line and Support Groups. We advocate for better and increased access to services for people in our county.
- NAMI Santa Cruz County Board
NAMI Santa Cruz
http://www.namiscc.org/
https://www.facebook.com/namiscc
Mission and Vision
NAMI (The National Alliance on Mental Illness) of Santa Cruz County exists to educate, advocate and support those affected by mental illness, their families, friends and our community.
Millions of Americans face the day-to-day reality of living with mental illness. We get it. We've been there. We offer help. We offer hope. NAMI embraces people living with mental illness and their families, who are often isolated. We offer understanding and support unique to those who are affected by these conditions.
We know that the path to recovery lies with individual, family and community education, peer and family support, and the promotion of public understanding. Through our free classes we educate families, providers and those living with mental illness, we educate the community through our presentations, tabling, Positive Postcards, Student Leadership Council. We offer support through our Warm Line and Support Groups. We advocate for better and increased access to services for people in our county.
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...especially considering the recent police murder of Deborah Danner in NYC. See http://abc7ny.com/news/protest-held-over-nypd-shooting-of-deborah-danner-in-the-bronx/1562150/ .
We need accountability not apologetics.
We need accountability not apologetics.
While I appreciate the solidarity with a victim of police violence expressed here, it is disheartening to see the remark about NAMI members relying on law enforcement, though it's not exactly surprising, considering the attachment to the mental illness myth.
Psychiatry has been debunked by science for a long time, and most recently even the government's National Institute of Mental Health has criticized the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used by psychiatrists as unscientific. That should have been the deathblow for psychiatry, but instead new diagnostic criteria are being promoted, for illnesses that simply don't exist.
Until the 1970's homosexuality used to be listed as a mental illness in the DSM, and even though it's been removed since, many queer youth still end up locked up on mental wards. The invention of ever new psychiatric labels has become something of a bad joke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvXfAawgSqE
Once upon a time doctors diagnosed physical ailments they observed, not made up medical labels for people's personal expressions. There have never been any diagnostic tests in psychiatry. Diagnoses are based on superficial personal judgements and arbitrary check lists. Go to three different psychiatrist and you're likely to walk away with four different diagnoses.
Psychiatry has always been more a wing of law enforcement than medicine, judging emotional expressions and behaviors that make people uncomfortable as medical problems instead of socio-political ones. People feel and act according to their experiences, and most people who are diagnosed with psychiatric labels have experienced severe trauma from abuse, both systemic and individual, that has them confused, disoriented, pissed off, and in emotional agony.
There are no pills that cure injustice and its effects. Psychiatric interventions do nothing to solve the problem, only perpetuate the abuse, and let the abusers get off unnoticed and even validated and legitimized. While the lives of victims of abuse spin out of control, their pain pathologized, the real problems and perpetrators are ignored, and when they act on their confusion and pain, it's often the cops who deliver them to closed wards that are jails masquerading as hospitals, where they lose their right to say no to brain damaging and otherwise harmful drugs, and other violent interventions. Electroshock is still used in so-called hospitals around the country.
Neither the police nor psychiatrists have ever been our friends. They have always been in the service of the establishment to control dissent. The police forces were first established to crush slave rebellions and strikes, and psychiatry silenced women who exposed rapists and fought for their autonomy.
This is not at all to say that people's psychological problems should be shrugged off, but psychiatry is not the answer. Helping community members who are struggling is not achieved through force, but first and foremost requires solidarity and empowerment of individuals to control their own lives.
Highly recommended books:
Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, by Judith Herman
The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement, by Thomas Szasz
The Assault on Truth: The Suppression of Freud's Seduction Theory, by Jeffrey Masson
Psychiatry has been debunked by science for a long time, and most recently even the government's National Institute of Mental Health has criticized the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used by psychiatrists as unscientific. That should have been the deathblow for psychiatry, but instead new diagnostic criteria are being promoted, for illnesses that simply don't exist.
Until the 1970's homosexuality used to be listed as a mental illness in the DSM, and even though it's been removed since, many queer youth still end up locked up on mental wards. The invention of ever new psychiatric labels has become something of a bad joke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvXfAawgSqE
Once upon a time doctors diagnosed physical ailments they observed, not made up medical labels for people's personal expressions. There have never been any diagnostic tests in psychiatry. Diagnoses are based on superficial personal judgements and arbitrary check lists. Go to three different psychiatrist and you're likely to walk away with four different diagnoses.
Psychiatry has always been more a wing of law enforcement than medicine, judging emotional expressions and behaviors that make people uncomfortable as medical problems instead of socio-political ones. People feel and act according to their experiences, and most people who are diagnosed with psychiatric labels have experienced severe trauma from abuse, both systemic and individual, that has them confused, disoriented, pissed off, and in emotional agony.
There are no pills that cure injustice and its effects. Psychiatric interventions do nothing to solve the problem, only perpetuate the abuse, and let the abusers get off unnoticed and even validated and legitimized. While the lives of victims of abuse spin out of control, their pain pathologized, the real problems and perpetrators are ignored, and when they act on their confusion and pain, it's often the cops who deliver them to closed wards that are jails masquerading as hospitals, where they lose their right to say no to brain damaging and otherwise harmful drugs, and other violent interventions. Electroshock is still used in so-called hospitals around the country.
Neither the police nor psychiatrists have ever been our friends. They have always been in the service of the establishment to control dissent. The police forces were first established to crush slave rebellions and strikes, and psychiatry silenced women who exposed rapists and fought for their autonomy.
This is not at all to say that people's psychological problems should be shrugged off, but psychiatry is not the answer. Helping community members who are struggling is not achieved through force, but first and foremost requires solidarity and empowerment of individuals to control their own lives.
Highly recommended books:
Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, by Judith Herman
The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement, by Thomas Szasz
The Assault on Truth: The Suppression of Freud's Seduction Theory, by Jeffrey Masson
the names of all the officers involved in this incident, including the shooter, should have been released immediately.
the entire incident and situation seem highly manipulated.
the entire incident and situation seem highly manipulated.
For more information:
http://talltalk.info
This is a police murder problem. The SCPD's stalling public information release goes a long way to support that hypothesis. Two big burly cops with tasers and mace couldn't disarm one man with a STICK (and THEY HAVE STICKS TOO...) and they took twenty Seconds to figure out one of them might get bruised or even GASP, a laceration!
The mental illness here is Cowardice.
Is THAT classified in your Dee-Ess-Em, NAMI?
It should be. It should also be a disqualifier for being a cop, just like Schizophrenia or any other severe personality 'problems', psychosis... Not in touch with reality. Killing someone over a stick is ample proof whoever did this wasn't seeing the world correctly..
STOP USING "MENTAL ILLNESS" TO APOLOGIZE FOR KILLER COPS!
But I expect it because NAMI appears to be very closely affiliated with Santa Cruz government. Hard to say for sure though. There's no information at all about who oversees the local chapter on the site. But I can see the agencies in the fine print at the bottom of the web page
Mental Health Client Action Network (MHCAN)
(exists to milk government mental health grants and ended up becoming the county's defacto homeless service complete with funding to market the idea that there's something psychologically wrong with you if you're homeless as opposed to county and city mismanagement of housing and job development... Attracts more mentally ill people to the area to pad their grants)
Santa Cruz County Health (the county itself)
The mental illness here is Cowardice.
Is THAT classified in your Dee-Ess-Em, NAMI?
It should be. It should also be a disqualifier for being a cop, just like Schizophrenia or any other severe personality 'problems', psychosis... Not in touch with reality. Killing someone over a stick is ample proof whoever did this wasn't seeing the world correctly..
STOP USING "MENTAL ILLNESS" TO APOLOGIZE FOR KILLER COPS!
But I expect it because NAMI appears to be very closely affiliated with Santa Cruz government. Hard to say for sure though. There's no information at all about who oversees the local chapter on the site. But I can see the agencies in the fine print at the bottom of the web page
Mental Health Client Action Network (MHCAN)
(exists to milk government mental health grants and ended up becoming the county's defacto homeless service complete with funding to market the idea that there's something psychologically wrong with you if you're homeless as opposed to county and city mismanagement of housing and job development... Attracts more mentally ill people to the area to pad their grants)
Santa Cruz County Health (the county itself)
A rake really? A mentally disturbed man was killed because he was about to swing a rake? And 4 cops were at the scene who could have tackled him.
Killed for swinging a rake?
Prosecute the cop and fire immediately!
Cops are out of control!
Prosecute the cop and fire immediately!
Cops are out of control!
Independent Audits
From July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2016, there have been:
• 34: Complaint cases reviewed.
• 7: Complaints originated internally.
• 27: Complaints originated externally.
• 14: Excessive force complaints.
• 15: Complaints sustained.
• 4: Officers suspended.
• 2: Officers resigned.
• 4: Officers directed to counseling.
• 1: Officer received additional training.
• 2: Officers received written reprimand.
Source: Santa Cruz City Manager’s Office.
From:
Community responds to Santa Cruz police-involved shooting
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/article/NE/20161025/NEWS/161029749
From July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2016, there have been:
• 34: Complaint cases reviewed.
• 7: Complaints originated internally.
• 27: Complaints originated externally.
• 14: Excessive force complaints.
• 15: Complaints sustained.
• 4: Officers suspended.
• 2: Officers resigned.
• 4: Officers directed to counseling.
• 1: Officer received additional training.
• 2: Officers received written reprimand.
Source: Santa Cruz City Manager’s Office.
From:
Community responds to Santa Cruz police-involved shooting
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/article/NE/20161025/NEWS/161029749
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