Wessely Challenges Government to Ring-Fence Mental Health Spending

[Luther Blissett]

This kind of shock therapy is outlawed in many places for dogs. It was previously used to control barking. Its considered inhumane.

Inhumane for dogs, OK for children?

It's OK @alex3619 , It's only autistic children. (sarcasm)

The founders of ABA didn't consider autistic people to be really human.

"In any case, what one usually sees when first meeting an autistic child who is 2, 3, or even 10 years of age is a child who has all the external physical characteristics of a normal child—that is, he has hair, and he has eyes and he has a nose, and he may be dressed in a shirt and trousers—but who really has no behaviors that one can single out as distinctively ‘human’. The major job then, for a therapist—whether he's behaviorally oriented or not—would seem to be a very intriguing and significant one, namely, the creation or construction of a truly human behavioral repertoire where none exists."—Ivar Lovaas, 1976

(emphasis added)

 

[alex3619]

Sociologically I think that inhumane behaviour toward a group is often preceded by some form of demonizing, or creating on out-group. So these children are not deserving of anything better according to how the poerpetrators think. So its all OK.

My opinion of people who do that is best not expressed on a forum.

 

[Hip]

Although JRC claims that the intention is to stop self-harming or violent behaviors, it also has shocked students for many other things, including: involuntary body movements, waving hands, blocking out sound overstimulation by putting their fingers in their ears, wrapping their foot around the leg of their chair, tensing up their body or fingers, not answering staff quickly enough (xxx), screaming while being shocked, closing their eyes for more than 15 seconds, reacting in fear to other students being shocked, standing up, asking to use the bathroom, raising their hand (Miller), popping their own pimple, leaving a supervised area without asking, swearing, saying “no” (Ahern and Rosenthal 13), stopping work for more than 10 seconds, interrupting others, nagging, whispering, slouching, tearing up paper, and attempting to remove electrodes from their skin (Ahern and Rosenthal 20-21).

Well that is much more of a damning indictment. If the above is true, then the Judge Rotenberg Center should be considered for closure.

Although the alternative to their approach may just be drugging these kids up to the eyeballs, and letting them sit around all day in a drugged stupor. And they may still need to be restrained if they are self harming. It was mentioned earlier that this center gets some of the worst cases: "Some of our students have been expelled from 20 or more programmes, and we take all of our students off the drugs they are on when they come here."


Looking at the references for the above statement, it comes from this document:

Torture not Treatment: Electric Shock and Long-Term Restraint in the United States on Children and Adults with Disabilities at the Judge Rotenberg Center, by Laurie Ahern and Eric Rosenthal of Mental Disability Rights International.

It says in the document that the center was investigated in 2006 by the New York State Education Department (NYSED).


On page 20 it says something rather disturbing:

Employees must also sign a confidentiality agreement at the beginning of their tenure with JRC, effectively barring them from ever talking about what they observe or participate in at the school – including the use of GEDs – or face legal action against them by the school.

You are sworn to secrecy. It is like a secret society. We had to sign a paper that if we said anything that would harm their reputation, they would prosecute you. If you talked bad about the school, everything is taped. If we needed to talk, we had to go outside. – MDRI interview with former JRC employee

 

[Hip]

The founders of ABA didn't consider autistic people to be really human.

I don't know who the ABA are, but I think you have misinterpreted the paragraph you quoted.

 

[Luther Blissett]

Well I do, and I haven't.

 

[Hip]

Well I do, and I haven't.

Autistic children generally find normal human social interaction extremely difficult to understand. They have little natural intuitive ability to pick up on social cues, and little natural intuitive understanding of appropriate behavioral or verbal responses in social situations.

With the right therapists, however, they can learn what social responses are appropriate, and in a sense simulate normality. Although these simulations are not really intuitively or emotionally understood; it's more like they learn to act out the appropriate response.

 

[Luther Blissett]

Autistic children generally find normal human social interaction extremely difficult to understand. They have little natural intuitive ability to pick up on social cues, and little natural intuitive understanding of appropriate behavioral or verbal responses in social situations.

With the right therapists, however, they can learn what social responses are appropriate, and in a sense simulate normality. Although these simulations are not really intuitively or emotionally understood; it's more like they learn to act out the appropriate response.

That's a spectacularly bigoted statement, but I know you won't know why.

 

[chipmunk1]

In addition, staff members are prohibited from having casual conversations with each other. They cannot, for example, say to a coworker, "Hey, did you see the Red Sox game last night?" "We don't want them discussing their social life or the ball games in front of the students or while they're on duty," Israel says. "So we'll sometimes actually have one staffer deliberately start a social conversation with another and we'll see whether the other—as he or she should—will say, 'I don't want to discuss that now.'" Monitors watch these setups on the surveillance cameras and punish staffers who take the bait.

 

[Undisclosed]

Is this thread about:

• Psychopaths?
• Soldiers?
• Skinner?
• Kant?
• Quantum reality?
• Corporal punishment?
• Autistic Children?

No, it's supposed to be about -- Wessely Challenges Government to Ring-Fence Mental Health...

This thread is now closed permanently.