Rescheduled Interview: “Needles on Wheels in California?”–Robert Whitaker on newly-funded IOC‏

NOTES BY NORSE:  Is Santa Cruz County likely to initiate forced  drugging?  An important question.  There seems to be the remainder of a strong patients support  and patients rights movement here.  What the current opinion of the psychiatric bureaucracy is here–I don’t know–but it will surely impact homeless people.  Like in the Drug War and the escalating Sleep-and-Property-Seizure War on the homeless in Santa Cruz, those outside are on the front lines here and most vulnerable to incarceration, forced drugging, and other abuses.

Title: “Needles on Wheels”? Involuntary Outpatient Commitment & Psychiatric Medications
START DATE: Thursday April 24
TIME: 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Location Details:
This is the rescheduled broadcast, originally intended for Sunday April 20th but cancelled on that day because of family commitments.

Broadcasts live at 101.1 FM
Streams live at http://audio.str3am.com:5110/listen.pls

Call-in number 831-469-3119
E-mail questions to rnorse3 [at] hotmail.com before, during, and after the show.

More info: 831-423-4833
Audio to be archived at http://www.radiolibre.org/brb/brb140424.mp3

Event Type: Radio Broadcast
Contact Name Robert Norse
Email Address rnorse3 [at] hotmail.com
Phone Number 831-423-4833
Address 309 Cedar St. #14B Santa Cruz 95060
The 1998 Pulitzer Prize Finalist and author of “Mad in America” and “Anatomy of an Epidemic” discusses the significance of the newly-funded Involuntary Outpatient Commitment passed by Congress and signed by Obama in early April.

The provision was slipped into the bill by Forced Drugging fans and rubber-stamped with little or no debate.

IOC is already authorized under Laura’s Law in California, but has not generally been implemented because of funding limitations and other restrictions. Standards for authorizing forced treatment are significantly relaxed giving psychiatrists much great power to coerce “treatment”.

Whitaker’s take on discusses forced drugging and Involuntary Outpatient Commitment at http://www.madinamerica.com/2012/05/e-fuller-torreys-review-of-anatomy-of-an-epidemic-what-does-it-reveal-about-the-rationale-for-forced-treatment/ ,

Whitaker has previously tracked the rise in diagnosis of mental illness in the U.S. and the proliferation of drugs to medicate various conditions.

For extensive and updated info go to http://www.madinamerica.com/ .

Some brief comments are at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/08/02/18522199.php .

Prior Interviews with Whitaker on Bathrobespierre’s Broadsides:

http://www.radiolibre.org/brb/brb110310.mp3 (26 minutes into the audio file)

http://www.radiolibre.org/brb/brb080810.mp3 (2 hours and 33 minutes into the audio file)into the file)

Another prior interview on Free Radio Santa Cruz is archived at http://www.radiolibre.org/brb/brb070527.mp3 [Download it and scroll past the first 1/3 of the show to find the full 2 1/2 hour interview and subsequent discussion]

Material around this last interview and some written material can be found at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/05/22/18419687.php

A prior Whitaker interview from 2004 is at http://www.huffsantacruz.org/brb/brb090504.mp3 .

Two lengthy and interesting earlier interviews with Whitaker from Street Spirit newspaper:
http://www.thestreetspirit.org/August2005/madinterview.htm