Why I Left the United States

I am a 62 year old, child-and-adolescent psychiatrist, single mother, political activist and the author of The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee. This memoir recounts my decision to close my 25-year Seattle practice and begin a new life in New Zealand.

My decision to leave the US was largely influenced by 15 years of covert harassment that started in 1987, when I supported two former Black Panthers to convert an abandoned school into an African American Heritage Museum.

Apparently, some people in high places found it quite threatening that I would use my income and social status as a physician to support such a project. What started as unrelenting phone harassment and illegal break-ins at my home and office progressed to attempts on my life and an affair with an undercover agent who railroaded me into a psychiatric hospital.

Fortunately, the attempts on my life ceased in July of 1989. I adjusted to living with a tapped phone, constant prank and hang-up calls and visits from undercover operatives posing as patients.

In one way, my close encounter with US intelligence served me well when I later launched an (ultimately unsuccessful) petition campaign to place a single-payer initiative on Washington State’s 2000 ballot. My experience with covert operations prepared me to cope with the continual parade of undercover informants (sent by private insurance companies) who attempted to infiltrate and derail the Washington single-payer coalition.

In the end, my decision to emigrate in 2002 was as much economic as political – the significant cutbacks in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements that resulted from the rising cost of funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of my psychiatric colleagues had gone bankrupt as a result of plummeting insurance reimbursement stemming from the “managed care” revolution. I wasn’t quite bankrupt myself, but I soon would be if funding for public programs continued to be sacrificed to pay for the Middle East wars.

Although the promotional material for my book focuses mainly on my own experiences, my main motivation for writing it was the murder of a postal worker and union activist, Oscar Manassa. 

As I recount in my book, prior to his death, Manassa also experienced extensive covert harassment. The Seattle police were blocked from undertaking a homicide investigation when the US Postal Inspectors (who unbeknown to many Americans are actually an intelligence arm of the federal government) seized the evidence file.

It has been my lifelong dream to pressure Congress into launching an investigation into Oscar Manassa’s murder, as well as those of 20-plus other postal workers who died of violent and suspicious “suicides” in the late eighties and early nineties.

Stuart Jeanne Bramhall invites you to visit her blog. 

In July, the Washington Post reported that Corporate America is hoarding a record $1.8 trillion in cash while it waits for profit-making opportunities. At the same time, record numbers of American children are being prescribed toxic psychiatric drugs at earlier ages. These two facts are connected.

      Book Review: SICK and SICKER

                               by Patricia Campbell - Northern Ireland

Colm O’Gorman, executive director of Amnesty International - Ireland, has condemned our mental health services as inhumane and grossly inadequate. Riot police have been deployed to quell violence in under-serviced, overcrowded facilities.

O’Gorman exclaims, “We can’t pretend this is not happening. We know. There would be outrage if this happened in cancer care and there should be outrage now.”

These problems are systemic and cannot be blamed on individual staff, most of whom are committed to providing quality care.

Susan Rosenthal’s new book, SICK and SICKER: Essays on Class Health and Health Care,  exposes the class roots of such problems.

Rosenthal argues that the primary cause of poor mental and physical health is lack of social power, and she backs this claim with international research.

As a front-line community psychiatric nurse in Belfast, a post-war zone that is one of the most deprived areas in Europe, I found the chapter, “Mental illness or Social Sickness?” particularly resonant.

Rosenthal insists that mental illness is not an individual defect but a reasonable response to unreasonable social conditions. She observes, “Those who rule society make the rules. The ruling class defines orderly behavior as that which serves its interests and disorderly behavior as that which threatens its interests.”

She concludes, “Psychiatry is...ideology disguised as science to meet capitalism’s need for social control.” Her analysis explains why riot police and security personnel are used to quell discontent in mental health facilities.

As Rosenthal observes, “Psychiatry doesn’t question the class system that generates mental distress; it targets the victims of the system and those who protest against it. Mental distress becomes the problem to be treated, not the social conditions that create distress.”

We see evidence of this statement in Belfast, where a staggering 40 percent of the population were prescribed antidepressants over the course of one year, while glaring social problems continue to be ignored.

In “The Myth of Scarcity,” Rosenthal demolishes the claim that there aren’t enough resources to resolve social problems. She explains that cries of scarcity have only one purpose; to justify not sharing the wealth. This is difficult to dispute in the context of governments bailing out banks and corrupt politicians squandering public funds.

Rosenthal encourages us to learn from what happened in Chile in the 1970s. She describes how Chilean workers began to democratize their health service and how the ruling class staged a coup to dismantle this and other working-class achievements. Many feel disheartened by such defeats, but Rosenthal sees it differently, “The achievements of Chile’s workers can inspire our own struggle. By learning the lessons of their defeat, we can go the full distance to finish what they began.”

Credit to O’Gorman for highlighting the reality we live in. Rosenthal’s book not only explains this reality but inspires a fight back and provides direction. I urge everyone, and especially health workers, to read this book.

Patricia Campbell works as a community psychiatric nurse in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She is also president of the Independent Workers Union and a co-founder of its affiliate, Universi, a health workers’ union.

   NEWS...

Minnesota nurses fight hospitals’ attacks

On July 6, the day 12,000 nurses in the twin cities of St. Pauls and Minneapolis were set to strike, the nurses ratified a three-year contract by 90 percent. The deal fought off steep pension and health-care concessions and included modest raises but fell short of winning the MNAs chief goal: enforceable nurse-to-patient ratios.

"ObamaCare" sacrifices abortion rights

The new health-care reform bill restricted the use of federal funds to pay for abortions. Not satisfied with these restrictions, the Obama administration added more on July 15. Unless  woman in the new high-risk insurance pools can prove rape, incest, or life-endangering medical conditions, they will be denied abortions. Women with AIDS and other medical conditions that increase the dangers of pregnancy, and women who aren't ready to be mothers for whatever reason - all are denied access to abortion, even if they offer to pay out of their own pockets! This is a giant step backwards for womens' rights and, as usual, working-class women will suffer the most.

Fight for public services!

Send messages of support to DEMPEUS

Is Canada more physician-friendly?

If the American medical system is "the best in the world," why are record numbers of doctors moving to Canada? Some US doctors make astronomical incomes, but the average American family doctor makes less than his or her Canadian counterpart. Canadian doctors can count on being paid by their provincial governments, while American doctors must jump over bureaucratic hurtles to collect from penny-pinching insurance companies. Malpractice insurance is much lower in Canada, which also offers better job security. Most American family doctors work for Health Management Organizations (HMOs) that keep cutting staff to raise profits.

Don't solve social problems, make them disappear

Canada has discovered a novel way to cut social programs - don't collect information that would reveal a need for them. Citing privacy issues, the Conservative Harper government has scrapped the mandatory "long-form" census over the objections of hundreds of national organizations. According to one Canadian economist, this is  an "appallingly stupid idea" because "there is simply no way any useful data will emerge from this exercise." Precisely!

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