Psychiatric Rehabilitation Quotes

No death, no suffering. No funeral homes, abortion clinics, or psychiatric wards. No rape, missing children, or drug rehabilitation centers. No bigotry, no muggings or killings. No worry or depression or economic downturns. No wars, no unemployment. No anguish over failure and miscommunication. No con men. No locks. No death. No mourning. No pain. No boredom. No arthritis, no handicaps, no cancer, no taxes, no bills, no computer crashes, no weeds, no bombs, no drunkenness, no traffic jams and accidents, no septic-tank backups. No mental illness. No unwanted e-mails. Close friendships but no cliques, laughter but no put-downs. Intimacy, but no temptation to immorality. No hidden agendas, no backroom deals, no betrayals. Imagine mealtimes full of stories, laughter, and joy, without fear of insensitivity, inappropriate behavior, anger, gossip, lust, jealousy, hurt feelings, or anything that eclipses joy. That will be Heaven.

1:THE “CRISIS”: Although Chief Judge Bazelon said in 1960 that “we desperately need all the help we can get from modern behavioral scientists”69 in dealing with the criminal law, the cold facts suggest no such desperation or crisis. Since the most reliable long-term crime data are on murder, what was the murder rate at that point? The number of murders committed in the United States in 1960 was less than in 1950, 1940, or 1930—even though the population was growing over those decades and murders in the two new states of Hawaii and Alaska were counted in the national statistics for the first time in 1960.70 The murder rate, in proportion to population, was in 1960 just under half of what it had been in 1934.71 As Judge Bazelon saw the criminal justice system in 1960, the problem was not with “the so-called criminal population”72 but with society, whose “need to punish” was a “primitive urge” that was “highly irrational”73—indeed, a “deep childish fear that with any reduction of punishment, multitudes would run amuck.”74 It was this “vindictiveness,” this “irrationality” of “notions and practices regarding punishment”75 that had to be corrected. The criminal “is like us, only somewhat weaker,” according to Judge Bazelon, and “needs help if he is going to bring out the good in himself and restrain the bad.”76 Society is indeed guilty of “creating this special class of human beings,” by its “social failure” for which “the criminal serves as a scapegoat.”77 Punishment is itself a “dehumanizing process” and a “social branding” which only promotes more crime.78 Since criminals “have a special problem and need special help,” Judge Bazelon argued for “psychiatric treatment” with “new, more sophisticated techniques” and asked: Would it really be the end of the world if all jails were turned into hospitals or rehabilitation centers?79

Our correctional practices prioritize vengeance and suffering over justice and rehabilitation. Incarceration in America routinely makes mentally ill people worse. And just as routinely it renders stable people psychiatrically unwell. Our system is quite literally maddening—a truth that categorically undermines our stated goals of safe and secure communities.

Abolitionist knowledge reconceptualizes notions like “crime” or “innocence” (what gets to be defined as crime, and who gets defined as criminal); disability or madness (as an identity and politics, not only a medical diagnosis) and rehabilitation (which is seen as a form of assimilation and normalization, not just as benign “treatment”); ideas of punishment (transformative justice vs. revenge or retribution); notions of freedom and equality (whether we can feel free and safe without locking others away); and, on the other hand, concepts of danger and protection (Whom do we protect by segregating people behind bars in psychiatric hospitals and prisons? Is it for “their own good”?).

My medical expertise is in mental health—specifically in acute cases of danger and distress. And what I found once I began working in the prisons was a system that runs counter to every principle of human flourishing that I know. Our correctional practices prioritize vengeance and suffering over justice and rehabilitation. Incarceration in America routinely makes mentally ill people worse. And just as routinely it renders stable people psychiatrically unwell. Our system is quite literally maddening—a truth that categorically undermines our stated goals of safe and secure communities.

When Kilmer got back home he married Marie immediately and the Army arranged for medical and psychiatric treatment at a prisoner-of-war rehabilitation center in Miami Beach. He was eased back into a normal life in time to use the GI Bill and attend the fall term at Creighton University in Omaha in 1946. For a young man who was proud of his high school diploma just four years earlier, this was an unexpected opportunity.

Many if not the vast majority of the individuals in the psych unit were subjected to extremities of violence themselves as children. If there is a laboratory experiment in how to create people at the margin of functionality by eliminating all resources and social supports, education, medical care, and community involvement, these are the guinea pigs who have been dumped out of their cages and turned loose on the streets. The prosecuting attorneys lock them up in the city’s penitentiaries, and we treat them for the medical and psychiatric problems that flourish in the hothouse atmosphere of a prison system. In forty years, that system has gone 180 degrees from rehabilitation to punishment, without regard for the long-term self-inflicted collateral damage.

Why is she in there?” “Demi, she’s in there by choice. The caged girls sound worse than it is. These are all women who signed up for an experimental study. They are all psychiatric patients of Dr. Ivory’s friend, Dr. Decker Sterling, who were unable to do well with treatment. Now, they are here to be rehabilitated through The Ivory Experiment.

16 Restak RM (1979) The Brain: The last frontier. Warner Books ISBN 0446355402. Basmajian JV, Regenes EM, Baker MP (1977 Jul) Rehabilitating stroke patients with biofeedback. Geriatrics 32(7):85–8. Olson RP (1988 Dec) A long-term single-group follow-up study of biofeedback therapy with chronic medical and psychiatric patients. Biofeedback and Self-Regulation 13(4):331–346. Wolf SL, Baker MP, Kelly JL (1979) EMG biofeedback in stroke: Effect of patient characteristics. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation 60:96–102.