Here, I’m providing updates, clarifications, and corrections related to my book, Your Consent Is Not Required. If you have an update you’d like to offer on a particular story, issue, or research in the book, or a clarification to request, or a possible correction to bring to my attention, please contact me or post a comment below. Page numbers are for the 2023 BenBella Hardcover edition.
Updates
Page 29: “This suggests that lifetime prevalence [of mental disorders] for adults has climbed toward 60 or 70 percent or more.” Update: A 2020 study in New Zealand published by JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, claims to have found that 86% of people had developed at least one mental illness by age 45, and 85% of those had developed two mental illnesses.
Page 164: “In 2021, a follow-up OIG report and a separate New York Times investigation found that diagnoses of schizophrenia had been climbing tremendously in LTC facilities.” Update: In 2023, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services launched an effort to rein in psychiatrists who were doling out diagnoses of schizophrenia to nursing home residents just to legitimize coercively tranquilizing them with antipsychotic drugs.
Clarifications and Corrections
Page 64: “…at one point, she nearly died from dehydration….” Clarification: The dehydration event occurred prior to Louise entering foster care.
Pages 71-73: “in the 1950s… closer to 319,000 state hospital inpatient beds occupied by people diagnosed with mental disorders, or about 187 beds per 100,000 people at that time.” Clarification: My calculations on these pages were roughed-in from the sources identified to show that the widely replayed narrative focusing only on state hospital bed numbers from the 1950s to today is extremely misleading. That said, like there is today, there were also psychiatric beds or psychiatric patients in other types of inpatient and residential facilities besides state hospitals in the 1950s, and Lutterman et al therefore put the overall historical numbers about 25 percent higher than I did. I should have noted that. To be most accurate, all of this would require a much more rigorous formal study that included more extensive discussions about which beds from each era to include or exclude and why–as I suggested in the book, even Lutterman et al’s analysis appears to be just a starting point for such a process.
Notes and References Corrections
Page 73: 40 percent with serious mental illness: 40 percent of residents in residential care communities under age 65 have been diagnosed with “serious mental illnesses” (SMIs)–the percentage of other residents identified as having SMIs is much lower. However, the total number actually increases substantially when adding in residents of all ages identified as having various mental disorders and/or “behavioral symptoms” for which they were reportedly drugged with psychotropics for behavioral-control purposes. Khatutsky G. “Residential Care Communities and Their Residents in 2010: A National Portrait.” DHHS Publication No. 2016-1041. National Center for Health Statistics (2016). https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/ data/nsrcf/nsrcf_chartbook.pdf
Page 136 no broad consensus: “Resource Document On Involuntary Outpatient Commitment And Related Programs Of Assisted Outpatient Treatment.” American Psychiatric Association. (October 2015.) http://apapsy.ch/Involuntary