Death in Sarah Palin's Alaska

The ADN published a list of homeless people who died in the past few months in Anchorage.

Twelve people who were homeless or familiar with life on the streets have died outdoors in Anchorage this spring and summer, most of them in woods and parks. Only one death has been classified as a homicide. (Click here for the full list)

Another article asks: What's killing the homeless in Anchorage?

The city's homeless alcoholics are struggling with a complicated disease and can't see the consequences of their actions, said Melinda Freemon, director of the Homeward Bound residential program that helps them get off the streets. Many are in emotional tatters. They can't think beyond getting the next bottle of booze, the next meal, a place to camp.

Freemon says they are dying because of the "long-term health effects of chronic alcoholism ... the cumulative effect of years of living in unsafe conditions."

Anchorage, she said, is sorely lacking in help. People must wait months for a treatment bed. The number of detox spots in the area has dropped from 35 to 10.

This is the story in Anchorage. I would like to know about the rest of Alaska.

Another thing I would like to know is if the deaths of homeless people in Alaska, who clearly have mental health problems, are in any way related to the $650,000 "lost" and recently found in Sarah Palin's last budget.

Housing programs for the homeless received a $650,000 boost after it was discovered the money had been incorrectly deleted from then-Gov. Sarah Palin's budget proposal.

The board of directors for the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority approved the money and it was included in a budget forwarded to Palin's office.

There, the money was apparently compressed into a smaller sum with another pool.

David Teal of the Legislative Finance Division says the lapse escaped everyone's attention until after the session.

Most of the deaths in Anchorage ocurred before the quitter governor resigned.

A lot of deadly stuff goes on in Alaska. The figures for suicides and alcoholism are staggering.

The tally of deaths during Sarah Palin's short time in office is mounting. Some deaths (254) were the result of mismanagement of Medicaid and Medicare state programs (funded by bad, bad federal money). Now it seems that money destined for the homeless with mental health problems has been lost then found again. In the meantime, 12 people died in Anchorage alone.

How many more examples of mismanagement and inefficiency have yet to surface? How many more people have paid with their lives for Sarah Palin's inability to govern? She's no longer the governor, but the effects of her 31 months in office continue to be felt by the most vulnerable among Alaskans.

These things make any speculation about her teeth, facelifts, hair extensions and all the rest of it seem very trite indeed. But such speculation serves to highlight Sarah Palin's priorities in and out of office. How could such a shallow person cause so much damage in such a short time?

I will have to continue to write about her frivolous side together with the more serious issues or my head would explode.
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Does this explain Sarah Palin's whining?

Someone believes Sarah Palin's problems may be simpler than we thought.

WWW. GOP12.COM a republican website attacked Dr. Burton S. Schuler, a foot specialist of Panama City, Fl about a comment he made concerning Gov. Sarah Palin and a medical condition she has, known as the Morton's Toe.

According to Dr. Schuler the website eeemusings.com, published a photo, on June 11, 2009 showing Gov. Palin having an long second toe, which according to Schuler is the hallmark of a Morton's Toe.

Dr. Schuler knows what he is taking about. He is a leading expert on the Morton's Toe and it complications and the author of the new book Why You Really Hurt: It All Starts In The Foot, the story of the Morton's Toe. He feels that Gov. Palin, just like anyone else with a Morton's Toe maybe hurting, and under some abnormal stress because of it.

"It has been well documented, in numerous medical journals, and textbooks, for over 80 years, that a Morton's Toe can cause many painful conditions of not only the foot but the whole body. The larger question is can the pain and suffering caused by a Morton's Toe be so severe that it causes a person to temporary loose perspective. Schuler states this is in response to Palin reaction to David Letterman's bad joke about her daughter."

OK, so her toes cause problems. But I think her main problem lies much further up...

(H/T to Dianne)
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Sarah Palin's Disorders

Histrionic Personality Disorder

-Constant seeking of reassurance or approval.
-Excessive sensitivity to criticism or disapproval.
-Inappropriately seductive appearance or behavior.
-Excessive concern with physical appearance.
-A need to be the center of attention (self-centeredness).
-Low tolerance for frustration or delayed gratification.
-Rapidly shifting emotional states that may appear shallow to others.
-Opinions are easily influenced by other people, but difficult to back up with details.
-Tendency to believe that relationships are more intimate than they actually are.
-Making rash decisions.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

-Has a grandiose sense of self-importance
-Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
-Believes that he or she is "special".
-Requires excessive admiration
-Has a sense of entitlement
-Is interpersonally exploitative
-Lacks empathy
-Is often envious of others or believes others are envious of him or her
-Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

Antisocial Personality Disorder

-Persistent lying or stealing
-Superficial charm
-Apparent lack of remorse or empathy; inability to care about hurting others
-Inability to keep jobs or stay in school
-Impulsivity and/or recklessness
-Lack of realistic, long-term goals -- an inability or persistent failure to develop and execute long-term plans and goals
-Inability to make or keep friends, or maintain relationships such as marriage
-Poor behavioral controls -- expressions of irritability, annoyance, impatience, threats, aggression, and verbal abuse; inadequate control of anger and temper
-Narcissism, elevated self-appraisal or a sense of extreme entitlement
-A persistent agitated or depressed feeling (dysphoria)
-A history of childhood conduct disorders
-Recurring difficulties with the law
-Tendency to violate the boundaries and "rights" of others
-Substance abuse
-Aggressive, often violent behavior; prone to getting involved in fights
-Inability to tolerate boredom
-Disregard for the safety of self or others
-People with a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder often experience difficulties with authority figures.

Dissocial Personality Disorder

-Callous unconcern for the feelings of others and lack of the capacity for empathy.
-Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules, and obligations.
-Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships.
-Very low tolerance to frustration and a low threshold for discharge of aggression, including violence.
-Incapacity to experience guilt and to profit from experience, particularly punishment.
-Marked proneness to blame others or to offer plausible rationalizations for the behavior bringing the subject into conflict.
-Persistent irritability.
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Sarah Palin's defective governing

Ten girls who were heavily sedated while living at a care home during the 1970s and 1980s went on to have children with a range of birth defects, an investigation revealed.

As teenagers at the Church of England-run Kendall House home in Gravesend, Kent, the ten were restrained with huge doses of tranquillisers and other drugs, according to BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

It is feared hundreds of other girls who were in UK care homes during the same period and suffered the same mistreatment may also be at risk of having children with birth defects. (Daily Mail, UK)

The lawsuit PsychRights vs Sarah Palin concerns the forceful drugging of young people in care and in state institutions in Alaska.

Doesn't Alaska have a higher than average incidence of birth defects?

I wonder if this practice of controlling young people's behaviour through drugs adds to the problem of toxic waste dumping, which is already considered a contributing factor to the high numbers of babies born with defects in Alaska.

I suppose it's just another level in the game Sarah Palin plays with people's lives...

PsychRights v Sarah Palin

On March 6 I wrote about a lawsuit in an Alaska Superior Court seeking to stop the de facto forced medication of children under the state's care - foster kids, juvenile detainees - and children covered under state health programs with psychiatric medications. Named as defendants are the State of Alaska, Governor Sarah Palin and a host of officials with various state agencies. Things have moved on.


Here's the latest:


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 31, 2009

CONTACT: Jim Gottstein 907-274-7686 jim.gottstein@psychrights.org

Alaska Admits It Is Incapable of Protecting Children and Youth in Its Care from Harmful Psychiatric Drugging

Today, responding to the State of Alaska’s admission in PsychRights v. Alaska that it was incapable of protecting the children and youth in its care from improper and harmful psychiatric drugging, the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights®) told the court it must step in.

PsychRights v. Alaska was filed last Fall to halt the State of Alaska’s practice of administering and paying for psychiatric drugs being given children and youth without safeguards being in place to make sure proper decision making occurs. In trying to get PsychRights v. Alaska “thrown out of court” the State admitted it was incapable of protecting the children and youth in its care as follows:

A reading of the Complaint makes obvious that the true subject of plaintiff’s grievances is not the Department, but prescribers of psychotropic pharmaceuticals, the pharmaceutical companies which produce and market them, and the overall culture of pediatric psychiatry. The implication that the Department possesses meaningful authority and control over these matters-or is in any realistic position to administer the relief requested even if the court were to order it-is a fiction.

“The point is the State has the responsibility to properly care for the children and youth in its care regardless of the ‘culture of pediatric psychiatry,’” according Mr. Gottstein. Today’s court filing tells the court, “It is shameful the State is abdicating its responsibility when it should be working to correct the problem.”

In the absence of the State being willing to address the problem without court intervention, the lawsuit seeks to solve it by obtaining a court order prohibiting the psychiatric drugging of children and youth by the State unless and until

(i) evidence-based psychosocial interventions have been exhausted,

(ii) rationally anticipated benefits of psychotropic drug treatment outweigh the risks,

(iii) the person or entity authorizing administration of the drug(s) is fully informed of the risks and potential benefits, and

(iv) close monitoring of, and appropriate means of responding to, treatment emergent effects are in place.

Practically every day brings revelations that pediatric psychopharmacology is the result of illegal drug company actions to improperly influence psychiatrists to prescribe extremely harmful drugs to children and youth, in spite of there being no real evidence of their efficacy. “Rather than meeting its mandate to properly care for and protect these children and youth from harm, the actions of the State are reprehensible,” Mr. Gottstein declared, adding “The State is also trying to hide its complicity by stopping the discovery process.”

The defendants in the lawsuit are the State of Alaska, its Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS), and responsible officials, Sarah Palin, Governor, William Hogan, Commissioner of DHSS, Tammy Sandoval, Director of the Office of Children’s Services (OCS), Steve McComb, Director of the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), Melissa Stone, Director of the Division of Behavioral Health (DBH), Ron Adler, CEO of the Alaska Psychiatric Institute (API), and William Streur Deputy Commissioner and Director of Medicaid. All of the substantive filings in the lawsuit are available on the Internet at right here.


I obtained this information from Beyond Meds and they include numerous contacts so people can take action. It is vital that the people involved are aware of the importance of this precedent-setting lawsuit and respond in a more co-operative fashion.

Sarah Palin at (907)465-3500 Office of the Governor or sarah.palin@alaska.gov

Department of Human and Health Services Commissioner:
William Hogan at (907)269-7800 or william.hogan@alaska.gov

The other defendents worth contacting are:

Tammy Sandoval, Director of the Office of Children’s Services (907)269-3440
or tammy.sandoval@alaska.gov

Melissa Stone, Director of the Division of Behavioral Health (907)269-3410
or melissa.stone@alaska.gov

Ron Adler, CEO of the Alaska Psychiatric Institute (907)269-7100 or ronald.adler@alaska.gov

Steve McComb, Director, Alaska Division of Juvenile Justice (907) 465-2212
or DJJ@health.state.ak.us

PsychRights website
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Sarah Palin and the rights of children, part 2

I feel that the topic about the forced medication of children in care needs to be discussed further. There are fundamental questions which have been overlooked.

The issue of the forced medication of mentally ill people in state institutions is not new. It has been going on for ages in just about every country. It is a lot cheaper to drug people to their eyeballs rather than offer adequate treatment. Mental health is an area still riddled with taboos and misconceptions. The rich won't normally admit to being afflicted by mental illness, but have access to the best care and are able to make informed decisions about their treatment. If they are unable to take responsibility for their own wellbeing, they will probably have relatives or other advocates to act on their behalf.

That is not the case of vulnerable people who find themselves cared for by the state. They are the individuals in correctional facilities, psychiatric hospitals and children in care. People don't end up in these circumstances by choice or because their lives are fantastic but they happen to make some mistake and oops, find themselves locked up somewhere! More often than not they come from problematic families and carry with them some very heavy baggage. How many of them are in a position to make informed decisions about anything, let alone about their mental health? How many have advocates when the need arises?

I am going to focus on children because I have experience in dealing with "difficult" children. I spent twenty five years fighting for their rights. What do I consider to be the rights of children?

• The right to be loved, to have their emotional needs met.
• The right to grow up in a safe environment, to be free from fear.
• The right to have their basic requirements addressed in the areas of education and health.
• The right to be recognised as our future and to have some investment made in order to fulfil their potential.
• The right to be supported when having difficulties.
• The right to be treated and respected as human beings.
  

I believe ALL children are entitled to all of the above.

Over the years I have seen many professionals in children's services and the medical profession take the easy way out. Diagnosing children as suffering from some condition and prescribing drugs is easier than investigating and addressing the reasons behind their difficult behaviour. Many social workers and teachers are very quick to label children as this or the other and to put them in categories where they remain, their labels following them from school to school and they are rarely given a chance to shake them off.

The majority of children who are treated in this way come from deprived backgrounds, with uneducated or abusive parents. Of course there are children with loving parents who are misdiagnosed and labelled, they are at the mercy of the medical professionals and the large pharmaceutical companies, but that's another story.

Children do not choose to have a social worker, they do not choose to go into foster care or to live in an institution. Through no fault of their own, they end up having all decisions about their lives being made by people who have no emotional investment in them. The professionals. The people who act on behalf of the state.

Deciding that children in care will have their needs met through medication is to take the shortest of short cuts. There will be a percentage who might benefit from specialist treatment and appropriate drugs. Unfortunately, the trend is to make difficult - but not mentally ill - children docile through drugs to make life easier for the adults involved in their care. It is also a lot cheaper than treating them as individuals and making provision to solve their problems effectively.

Children are taken into the care of the state because somebody failed them. If their real needs are not addressed, they are very likely to find themselves in one of the other state institutions mentioned earlier - as adults.

My question is: are children taken into care so they can be failed again?
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Sarah Palin and the rights of children under state care

There is an ongoing lawsuit in an Alaska Superior Court seeking to stop the de facto forced medication of children under the state's care - foster kids, juvenile detainees - and children covered under state health programs with psychiatric medications. Named as defendants are the State of Alaska, Governor Sarah Palin and a host of officials with various state agencies. The suit was filed by Psych Rights, the Alaska-based mental health law project, which has vigorously fought the forced drugging of adults in the state's psychiatric hospital.

In 2006 Psych Rights succeeded in a lawsuit regarding the administering of drugs to adults in state psychiatric institutions against their will. In a historic and precedent-setting decision, the Alaska Supreme Court affirmed that the forced administration of psychotropic drugs to patients is unconstitutional. The Court made this recommendation:

"In order to make informed decisions possible, the law requires treatment facilities to give their patients certain information concerning their situation and need for treatment, including advice about: their diagnosis; proposed medications, including possible side effects and interactions with other drugs; their medical history; alternative treatments; and a statement describing their right to give or withhold consent."

In February 2008, before filing the present lawsuit, Jim Gottstein wrote to Sarah Palin on behalf of Psych Rights:

"It is a huge betrayal of trust for the State to take custody of children and youth and then subject them to such harmful, often life-ruining, drugs. They have almost always already been subjected to abuse or otherwise had very difficult lives before the State assumes custody, and then saddles them with a mental illness diagnosis and drugs them. The extent of this State inflicted child abuse is an emergency and should be corrected immediately. Children and youth are virtually always forced to take these drugs because, with rare exception, it is not their choice. Psych Rights believes the children and youth, themselves, have the legal right to not be subject to such harmful treatment at the hands of the State of Alaska. We are therefore evaluating what legal remedies might be available to them. However, instead of going down that route, it would be my great preference to be able to work together to solve this problem. It is for this reason that I am reaching out to you again on this issue."

Gottstein got a mealy-mouthed answer to this letter from an agency head, but there's no indication that Palin ever saw the letter. There was no response from her office.

In his filing, Gottstein notes that over 4,500 Alaska children and teens were being given various psych meds under the state's Medicaid program. The filing consists of 73 pages and I'm not going to go into the fine details here.

What bugs me is that Sarah Palin and all the other co-defendants didn't accept Gottstein's offer to work together to resolve the matter and chose to defend a lawsuit instead.

Taking into account Gottstein's victory in 2006, I would say this is an open and shut case. Or is it?

Choosing to defend the suit says a lot about the defendants. They must see children under state care as not having the same rights as adults, if any, and hope to be able to continue the abhorrent practice of dispensing powerful drugs to an extremely vulnerable group without any form of consent.

It remains to be seen what status these young people will be accorded under Alaskan law.

Links
Article about lawsuit here.
2006 Court ruling here.
Article about 2006 case here.
Present case filing here. (It takes a while to load, be patient if you're curious)
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