Red Collar Crimes KILL, are YOU the next victim ?

A secret drug company slush fund fuels the

campaign for forced deliveries of

psychiatric drugs to your home!!!

By David Oaks

Dendron <In depth link) editor

As superb as the investigative reporters are at Mother Jones, their December 1999 expose about psychiatric drug company funding of front groups did not go far enough. The National Alliance for the Mentally III (NAMI) has a policy of never disclosing its drug company funding. Mother Jones used internal documents to prove that NAMI received $11.72 million from the psychiatric drug industry in just two and a half years.

NAMI leaders defended the drug company money by claiming it goes into a separate bank account to fund innocent work against discrimination. But when it comes to secret funds and shell accounts, we need to follow the money. The acronyms get tricky, so stay with us, readers!

Eldon Carvey, executive director of NAMI-Vermont, told Dendron that much of NAMI's drug company money goes into a separate entity" called the "NAMI Anti-Stigma Foundation'(NASF) which he says has "pro-consumer" goals. In the Mother Jones article, Laurie Flynn, executive director, says a NAMI organization called 'NAMI Campaign to End Discrimination" (NCED) is "funded separately" by the drug industry so that drug money supposedly won't co-mingle with NAMI.

First of all, to keep this as simple as possible, please note that Carvey and Flynn are talking about the exact same thing. The NAMI Anti-Stigma Foundation (NASF) is legally identical to the NAMI Campaign to End Discrimination (NCED). So let's just call this drug company slush fund "NASF/NCED".

Let's look more close at NAMI's Slush Fund: Much of the drug company millions that arc donated to NAMI do indeed end up in the coffers of NASF/NCED. But NASF/NCED is not totally independent from NAMI. Not at all. Quite the contrary. NAMI created NASF/NCED, as its name implies. NASF/NCED is located in NAMI's office. Federal documents reveal that NASF/NCED gets huge amounts of money from NAMI. The leaders of NAMI and NASF/NCED - and many of their board members are really the same pool of people. For instance, the chair of NAST/NCED - Rona Purdy - is married to the president of NASF/NCED. And Purdy was recently the president of NAMI's board of directors. Dendron obtained the NASF/NCED 1999 Campaign Plan" and it's all about promoting NAMI.

But to really understand how NAMI is joined at the hip with its NASF/NCED slush fund, you need to know one more acronym: PACT.

PACT stands for "Prograrm of Assertive Communitv Treatment." NAMI told Congresspeople that one of One of NAMIS key core goals is to bring NAMIs PACT program into every state in the USA by 2002. PACT is already state-wide in six states. At least 20 more states have a PACT demonstration project.

What is PACT? While PACT has some features clients like, PACT has an emphasis on "medication compliance." For instance, PACT at times includes daily at-home psychiatric drug deliveries to people's doorsteps and living rooms, backed up by court orders. PACT acts as the enforcement arm of Involuntary Outpatient Commitment. PACT workers frequently will visit clients' homes daily to stand and watch as clients take their daily dose, involuntarily- in their own living room. To see animated photos of PACT 'dose drops' from the PACT training video, see Support Coalition's web site:http:www.mindfreedom.org, and click on .campaigns." Nearly every major psychiatric survivor and mental health consumer organization with a position on PACT outright opposes it. PACT inherently violates human rights and values. Support Coalition members are fighting PACT as if our lives and liberty are at stake: they are.

Put it all together. NASF/NCED is how NAMI pushes PACT. For instance, look at the front page of the main manual for PACT, and you will see NASF/INCED published it. The NASF/NCED 1999 Campaign Plan explicitly states its very first "key program activity" includes 'expansion of PACT." See NAMI's own web site wwwnami.org/about/pactstd.html, and you'll see NASF/NCED funds the PACT campaign. Another association lobbying for PACT, www.ActAssociation.com, is also funded by NASF/NCED. Note that Laurie Flynn, director of NAMI, is on the board of the "National PACT Center,' which is funded by NASF/NCED (and which also receives your taxpayer dollars through the federal Center for Mental Health Services).

The bottom line is that the psychiatric drug industry is pouring millions into a NAMI- controlled slush fund, which is then the force behind one of NAMI's central goals: To get PACT into every state by 2002. PACT can mean at home psychiatric drug deliveries into your living room, backed up by a court order. And the drug companies profit, because taxpayers foot the bill for the millions of dollars in forced drugs.

NAMI leaders claim their hands are clean of drug company money. But how can NAMI members even speak about this NAMI drug company money, or where it goes, or what it does, when NAMI has officially decided to keep this information secret from its own members? Mother Jones cracked the shell. It's up to the grasroots to finish the job.