#Kaiser Medical Center

[kp777]

By Jake Johnson

Common Dreams

Sept. 5, 2023

"We are prepared to do whatever it takes, even get arrested in an act of civil disobedience, to stand up for our patients," said one Kaiser Permanente worker.

Dozens of healthcare workers were arrested in Los Angeles on Monday after sitting in the street outside of a Kaiser Permanente facility to demand that providers address dangerously low staffing levels at hospitals in California and across the country.

The civil disobedience came as the workers prepared for what could be the largest healthcare strike in U.S. history. Late last month, 85,000 Kaiser Permanente employees represented by the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions began voting on whether to authorize a strike over the nonprofit hospital system's alleged unfair labor practices during ongoing contract negotiations.

The current contract expires on September 30.

"We are burnt out, stretched thin, and fed up after years of the pandemic and chronic short staffing," Datosha Williams, a service representative at Kaiser Permanente South Bay, said Monday. "Healthcare providers are failing workers and patients, and we are at crisis levels in our hospitals and medical centers."

"Our employers take in billions of dollars in profits, yet they refuse to safely staff their facilities or pay many of their workers a living wage," Williams added. "We are prepared to do whatever it takes, even get arrested in an act of civil disobedience, to stand up for our patients."

Kaiser Permanente reported nearly $3.3 billion in net income during the first half of 2023. In 2021, Kaiser CEO Greg Adams brought in more than $16 million in total compensation.

According to the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, the hospital system "has investments of $113 billion in the U.S. and abroad, including in fossil fuels, casinos, for-profit prisons, alcohol companies, military weapons, and more."

Healthcare workers, meanwhile, say they're being overworked and underpaid, and many are struggling to make ends meet amid high costs of living.

"We have healthcare employees leaving left and right, and we have corporate greed that is trying to pretend that this staffing shortage is not real," Jessica Cruz, a nurse at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center, toldLAist.

"We are risking arrest, and the reason why we're doing it is that we need everyone to know that this crisis is real," said Cruz, who was among the 25 workers arrested during the Labor Day protest.

A recent survey of tens of thousands of healthcare workers across California found that 83% reported understaffing in their departments, and 65% said they have witnessed or heard of care being delayed or denied due to staff shortages.

Additionally, more than 40% of the workers surveyed said they feel pressured to neglect safety protocols and skip breaks or meals due to short staffing.

"It's heartbreaking to see our patients suffer from long wait times for the care they need, all because Kaiser won't put patient and worker safety first," Paula Coleman, a clinical laboratory assistant at Kaiser Permanente in Englewood, Colorado, said in a statement late last month. "We will have no choice but to vote to strike if Kaiser won't bargain in good faith and let us give patients the quality care they deserve."

A local NBC affiliate reported Monday that 99% of Colorado Kaiser employees represented by SEIU Local 105 have voted to authorize a strike.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

#california #kaiser permanente #health care workers #understaffed #unions

[mandsleanan]

The Affordable Care Act covers sterilization at no-cost if you're in the US.

Article text under cut.

Sitting in the living room of her Cleveland home, 30-year-old Grace O’Malley reflects on when she ruled out having kids of her own.

O’Malley has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic condition that weakens the body’s connective tissue, and can get much worse postpartum. About three years earlier, when she was in her mid-twenties, her condition worsened. O’Malley’s doctors told her that if she did get pregnant, her uterus could rupture and her child would be more likely to be born prematurely.

O’Malley was on hormonal birth control up until last May. But after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, she knew an abortion ban was likely coming in Ohio and she might not be able to end a pregnancy if her birth control failed. She booked an appointment with her gynecologist.

“I went in that day and I knew right away I wanted a more permanent solution,” said O’Malley. “I was like, ‘I actually want to talk about getting surgery.’ And the nurse was surprised, and she was like, ‘Oh, okay.’”

Dr. Clodagh Mullen, an obstetrician-gynecologist at MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, said since the Dobbs v. Jackson decision — which took away the constitutional right to abortion and returned the issue to state governments — many of her patients have been increasingly worried about access to reproductive healthcare and seeking more permanent solutions.

“Some patients will say, ‘Oh, could you stash some IUDs for me?’” Mullen said. “They get very nervous that [birth control] is just going to go away overall. Nobody can re-implant your tube once it's been taken out, so I think that they have that comfort of there's no way anybody can take this part away from me.”

Legislators in some Midwest states have floated bans on birth control, which, so far, haven’t gone anywhere. Mullen doesn’t anticipate that access to contraception will disappear.

“But I get why people have that fear, as I also probably didn't really think that Roe was going to get overturned, if you had asked me this four or five years ago,” she said.

What Mullen is seeing in Cleveland is mirrored across the country. The Kaiser Family Foundation surveyed more than 500 gynecologists across the U.S. in the spring and about half of doctors in states with abortion restrictions reported the number of patients seeking sterilization has increased since Dobbs.

That includes states like Indiana and Missouri - where abortion is banned with very limited exceptions, and states like Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin where bans are currently being disputed, or where residents feel they may lose the right to an abortion. Ohio voters just approved an amendment to the state constitution, which guarantees access to abortion.

Three Ohio health systems that track contraception — MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, University Hospitals in Cleveland, and Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus — reported a sharp rise in the number of patients seeking tubal sterilization.

Contraception decisions

There aren’t many big health risks to the type of sterilization procedure Mullen performs. Doctors mostly worry about regret. Most studies found that when doctors followed up, a small percentage of women wished they hadn’t gone through with the procedure.

The majority are like O’Malley, who had some complications post surgery, but said she never second guessed her decision.

“I've never really thought about it, honestly,” said O’Malley. “It’s become kind of a fact of my daily life. It’s like, ‘Hi, I'm Grace. I have red hair and I can't have kids.’”

O’Malley is happy her doctor respected her choice. She believes the political climate helped.

She shared the story of her best friend who sought sterilization in her late 20s, about five years ago. She said her friend had to meet with several doctors before one agreed to do the procedure, and even then, made her wait another year in case she changed her mind.

“My friend did not have that kind of grace,” O’Malley said. “Her doctor probably thought, ‘You would have other options. If you got pregnant and decided that it's really not what [you] wanted, then you could get an abortion.’ Whereas for me, that might not be the option.”

Men decide, too

Men’s contraception patterns are also changing, according to physician reports.

Dr. Sarah Sweigert, a urologist at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, said doctors at her office performed double the number vasectomy consults and procedures as they had before the ruling.

She points to a Cleveland Clinic study, which showed that, in the summer following the court decision, the average age of men getting the procedure has dropped from late 30s to mid-30s compared to the same period the year before. The study also showed there was a significant increase in the number of men under 30 and men without children seeking vasectomy consultations post Dobbs. Sweigert has seen that trend first-hand in her practice.

“I think as more women speak out about perhaps not wanting to be on various forms of birth control for decades, I think that men are more aware of vasectomies and perhaps are doing their part,” she said.

Vasectomies are generally safer than female sterilization and have a much quicker recovery.

But Mullen isn’t surprised that so many women want the procedure themselves – they are the ones who would have to carry the pregnancy and handle the ensuing health impacts.

O’Malley feels that acutely. She had been in vulnerable situations in the past. She was sexually assaulted in college and went through a period where she was homeless. O’Malley said her choice was an act of self-protection.

“It’s not like I sit around thinking that the worst case scenario is going to happen,” she said. “But I would want to know that I was going to be safe and I wasn't going to end up in a situation where I was pregnant and I would have no path to go.”

#Childfree #Reproductive rights #Sterilization #Roe was only the first domino

[ebookporn]

Because wire fraud and money laundering are now also book terms

Books have always played a role in politics as a way to get to know the candidate, outline their vision, and set the record straight after they have left office but political books can also be weaponized and not always in the way you might think. Recently Harper accidentally released metadata on a James Comer book called ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MONEY due to release on September 10th, strategic timing for a close election. Comer quickly denied he has a contract for a book but Harper wouldn’t have this data in their system if they weren’t already working on it. The ONIX feed is now been refed listed as UNTITLED by Anonymous. Shopping a book deal at the same time that he is leading the Biden impeachment probe, is obviously not a good look for Comer. Sure this is a way to throw chum the water and try and smear the other candidate but I live in Baltimore and another concern comes to mind. With a bankrupt Republican Party, it might be very important to watch just who is buying these books.

In 2019, just before Covid, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and two counts of tax evasion in what has become known as BookGate. Pugh and her long-standing legislative and campaign adviser, Gary Brown fraudulently sold self-published Healthy Holly children's books to local nonprofit organizations in order to obtain more than $800,000 to fund her campaign and enrich herself. These were cheap and poorly written books riddled with errors and spelling mistakes. Holly, the main character’s name, was spelled differently throughout the series. Tens of thousands of books sold to organizations and intended to be distributed to children ended up piled in warehouses and were never delivered. They were however resold multiple times. Significantly more books were sold than were ever printed. But this wasn’t just about selling crappy kids books. The buyers didn't care, they bought anyway.

CNN reported that during BookGate the University of Maryland Medical Center spent $500,000 to fund the purchase of some 100,000 books from Pugh’s company, Healthy Holly LLC. The former mayor also received about $114,000 from healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente for some 20,000 books from 2015 to 2018 and an additional $80,000 from the public foundation Associated Black Charities, which said it bought some 10,000 copies of Pugh’s between 2011 and 2016. All of these groups worked with and lobbied the city. 

Catherine Pugh was sentenced to 3 years in prison and ordered to pay $411,948 in restitution and to forfeit more than $600,000, including a property in Baltimore and nearly $18,000 from her campaign account.

Sound familiar? It is openly acknowledged that this is precisely what is going on with Donald Trump’s self-published bible. High-velocity sales of an objectively poor product are hard to hide and easier to subpoena and trace as people notice. Now if you can put a legitimate business between you and the questionable product all the better. We can see that with Trump’s media company now listed on the New York Stock Exchange. 

In the post-Trump world, it is no longer just monitoring institutional sales and people trying to game the bestsellers lists. Trade Publishers and retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Barnes & Noble need to be extra careful and pay attention to just how and to whom these books are being sold lest they get caught up in an FBI investigation because wire fraud and money laundering are now also book terms.

~eP

#political books #money laundering #bookgate #book publishing #bookstores #retailers

[allthingsfern]

Pigeon deterrent II; Kaiser Medical Center. Vacaville, 06-30-23.

#photographers on tumblr #Black and White

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Christina Buttons

Published: Feb 17, 2023

A young detransitioned woman is seeking justice from the medical group and hospital that facilitated her medical transition between the ages of 12 to 17, which included puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and a double mastectomy at just 13 years old. 

The plaintiff, Layla Jane, is represented by the Dhillon Law Group and LiMandri & Jonna LLP in conjunction with the Center for American Liberty. On Wednesday, a letter of intent to sue was sent to the Permanente Medical Group and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals alleging “gross negligence” on behalf of their client, and accusing Kaiser of allowing “radical, inadequately studied, off-label, and essentially experimental treatment to occur on minors.”

The Intent to Sue further alleges that Layla’s doctors medically “affirmed” her without meaningful evaluation, failed to adequately disclose the health risks associated with puberty blockers and cross-sex hormone treatment, and emotionally manipulated her parents by proposing the false dilemma: “would you rather have a live son, or a dead daughter?” 

When Layla was a child, she experienced significant mental health and behavioral challenges. At the age of 11, she started to believe that her unhappiness was due to being "born in the wrong body," which she discovered through online research, and she began identifying as transgender. She was only 12 when she was prescribed puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and was evaluated for surgery. She underwent a double mastectomy to remove her breasts shortly after her 13th birthday. However, Layla eventually came to the realization that she was not, in fact, transgender. She stopped receiving testosterone injections and instead sought proper mental health treatment for her anxiety and mood-related issues.

Layla's transition story bears striking similarities to that of Chloe Cole. Both of them are now 18 years old and are taking legal action against Kaiser Permanente and the doctors who facilitated their chemical and surgical transitions as minors, two of whom they shared.

Layla Jane stated:

Many people have already seen Chloe Cole’s story and the emotional and physical damage she had to go through at the hands of “medical professionals.” I’m ready to announce that these so-called professionals did the exact same thing to me, but at an even younger age. At 12-years-old I began testosterone and puberty blockers and at age 13, I had a double mastectomy. These are decisions I will have to live with for the rest of my life. I’m ready to join the growing group of detransitioners so that no other child has to go through the torment I went through at the hands of doctors I should have been able to trust.

Layla Jane and her lawyer, Harmeet Dhillon, appeared on the Fox News program “The Ingraham Angle” last night to make the announcement. Dhillon stated that she has been contacted by many detransitioners who are seeking justice but, due to the short statute of limitations, she can only represent clients who fall within the specified time period. Experts believe that it may take 5-10 years for young people who have undergone a gender transition to realize that they may have made a mistake.

The Intent to Sue cites a 30-year follow up study conducted in Sweden that found post-operative transgender patients were 19 times more likely to commit suicide as evidence that “gender-affirming care” does not necessarily improve the mental health of recipients. Also cited are 11 studies that found gender dysphoria appears to resolve on its own when children are not socially and medically transitioned between 60-90 percent of the time.

Layla Jane is now the 8th detransitioner worldwide to have brought legal action against the medical providers that facilitated her chemical and surgical transition. She will be seeking punitive damages, the extent of which is currently “being investigated and is not fully known at this time.” The Notice of Intent to Sue will allow the defendants 90 days to respond before an official lawsuit is filed. 

A representative from Kaiser responded to a request for comment with the same boilerplate message they gave regarding Cole’s lawsuit, which was to claim that they are following “evidence-based medicine founded on sound research,” despite the fact that no empirical evidence to date supports a biological basis for “gender identity.”

While the exact number of detransitioners is unknown, and more research is needed, cases appear to be steadily rising. A forum created in 2017 for detransitioners on Reddit is adding over 1,000 members a month, and as of this writing has over 45,000 members. 

Studies that have shown a small rate of transition regret are frequently used by activists to dismiss or diminish the experience of detransitioners. However, the studies finding that 2 percent or less regret their transition surveyed only adults, not the new cohort that most are concerned about: adolescents.

In the United States, a 2022 study found that 29 percent of 68 patients seeking medical transition care changed their requests for hormone treatment, surgery, or both. Another U.S. study from last year found that 30 percent of patients who began cross-sex hormone treatment discontinued it within four years for unknown reasons. Two smaller studies in the U.K. report that between 7 and 10 percent of patients initially assessed for gender-related medical services later detransitioned. 

Layla Jane’s allegations of medical negligence and emotional manipulation by her doctors underscore the importance of meaningful evaluation, informed consent, and comprehensive mental health support for children who believe they are experiencing gender dysphoria.

==

When they won't listen to reason, maybe they'll listen to their bottom line.

#Christina Buttons #Layla Jane #detrans #detransition #gender ideology #genderwang #queer theory #medical malpractice #medical scandal #double mastectomy #puberty blockers #wrong sex hormones #cross sex hormones #medical transition #medical corruption #that never happens #things that never happened #this never happens #religion is a mental illness

[lyranova]

Inspired by the lovely @koneko-pi ‘s recent Vampire AU question, I decided to share my thoughts on a Medical AU with the BC Captain’s 😁! If you guys have any thoughts or ideas on which Captain would be in which department, or how your ships met or if they’re in the same department, and anything like that please share them because I love hearing about them 🥺💕!

Yami Sukehiro: Chief of General/Trauma Surgery

Most people assume he’s lazy or a “bad” doctor when they first see him because of his personality, but once a Trauma case comes into the ER he immediately becomes serious and you see him *thrive* in that enviroment. He’s giving out orders left, right, and center, he’s confident and serious and he knows exactly what he’s doing. He also takes on the most serious and dangerous cases that other doctors and hospital’s have turned away, he’s good at what he does and is known as one of the best Trauma Surgeons in the country.

Fuegoleon Vermillion: Chief Oncologist/Oncology Surgery

He is known as one of the most compassionate, kind, understanding, and calm doctors/surgeons in entire hospital. He tries his best to advocate for his patients and get them the best care that they need/deserve. He’s always researching new treatments for his patients and is known as one of the brightest Oncologists in the country and is in the running to become the new Hospital Director!

Nozel Silva: Chief of Transplant Surgery

He is known for being quite cold when trying to get a family or partner to sign over their loved ones organs for donation. He gives them the facts and states why they need the donation rather bluntly. But underneath that cold, serious demanor is someone who is kind and has good intentions. He knows how hard it is for the family donating the organs, and how hard it is for the ones recieving the organs. He knows just how hard to push and when to back off. He is also in the running for becoming Hospital Director.

William Vangeance: Chief of Neurosurgery

He is know at the “shining star” of the Hospital, much to his own embarrassment. He believes that there are other doctors more deserving of that title in the Hospital, but will admit that he’s proud that his team is known as one of the best in the hospital as well. He is known as one of the best Neurosurgeons in the country and is known for being kind and understanding towards his patients, but is also known for being stern with them when he has to. Like Yami he takes on the most serious and challenging cases that other hospitals turn away.

Charlotte Roselei: Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery

She is known for being stern and serious with both her patients and her fellow doctors, but she can also be very warm, kind, and understanding with them. She is their first ever female Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery, and it’s a title that she doesn’t take lightly. She worked harder than most to get where she is and everyone around her acknowledges it. She is also known for her beauty and is constantly asked out on dates, but she always rejects them, saying that her heart belongs to surgery and her patients. But in actuality, she is in love with Yamu Sukehiro the Trauma Surgeon that saved her life a decade beforehand.

Dorothy Unsworth: Chief Anesthesiologist

Jack the Ripper: Chief Medical Examiner

Rill Boismortier: Chief Art Therapist

Kaiser: Chief of Orthopedic Surgery

I didn’t give the last four descriptions because I felt they were kind of obvious, except for Kaiser, I couldn’t quite figure out where he’d go 😆!

#black clover #lyra’s rambles #medical au #will i use these? maybe 👀 #let me know what y’all think

[follow-up-news]

Tens of thousands of Kaiser Permanente workers took to picket lines in multiple states on Wednesday, launching a massive strike that the company warned could cause delays at its hospitals and clinics that serve nearly 13 million Americans. The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, representing about 85,000 of the health system’s employees nationally, approved a strike for three days in California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington, and for one day in Virginia and Washington, D.C. Some 75,000 people were expected to participate in the pickets. “Kaiser has not been bargaining with us in good faith and so it’s pushing us to come out here and strike,” said Jacquelyn Duley, a radiologic technologist among the hundreds of picketers at Kaiser Permanente Orange County - Irvine Medical Center. “We want to be inside just taking care of our patients.”

#kaiser permanente

[seraphtrevs]

Waited on hold for 45 minutes to be told that my daughter's adhd medication was "first come first serve." But I PUT IN THE REFILL REQUEST LAST WEEK and heard nothing so like - if it's first come first serve and you refuse to tell that you have it or even received the refill request how am i supposed to know that?? And bc it's kaiser i can't talk directly to the pharmacy. They promised to connect me and it just kicked me back to the centralized call center

#'sorry you needed to win the race you didn't know you were in' #'Best of luck to your daughter!' #i will explode you with my mind! 😡

[transsextual]

absolutely no obligation to answer this at all but i saw your post abt yr hysterectomy and i was wondering if you are receiving that procedure as gender affirming care or something else ? i just have been trying to look into how to go about something like that and if it’s a gac thing i’d love to hear more about yr process ! regardless i hope the procedure goes well & am sending you good thoughts

hello!!! yes, it is considered gender affirming care. i'm getting my procedure done thru kaiser permanente, and i'm from CA. i'm also a little over a year on testosterone, and in order to start testosterone i had to get a diagnosis for gender dysphoria from a kaiser affiliated therapist (done in one 45 minute session (with a trans therapist!)). given that i already had that diagnosis, i can't say for sure that you'd need one within kaiser to be approved for a hysterectomy as GAC, but i'd imagine you probably would. my process was long & inconsistent because it consisted of mostly phone calls + appointments + reading&signing contracts, all things that almost physically pain me, but here's what it has looked like thus far:

- talked to my primary doctor about a referral to the center for reproductive health for fertility preservation + hysterectomy as gender affirming care

- she gave me a referral to the kaiser offices in the bay area, since that's where most of northern CA's gender affirming surgeries + procedures happen

- got a call from an RN to schedule an appointment with a fertility preservation specialist + a gynecologist

- gynecologist appt was first, she gave me the rundown on types of hysterectomies & told me i had the option for fertility preservation and that, because i live in CA and have non-MediCare insurance, i have partial coverage for fertility preservation services in a situation where i'm undergoing an operation that could lead to infertility.*

*we have a bill here, SB600, that basically illustrates that if you are undergoing a medical procedure that could result in infertility (like a hysterectomy or hormone replacement therapy) AND your insurance is something other than MediCal, fertility preservation care is at least partially covered by your insurance, and is treated as medically necessitated basic care.

- i said yes, I'm in the process of taking care of fertility preservation stuff & that is really valuable information to me, thank you!

- she referred me to a therapist to discuss different hysterectomy procedures + recovery time + resources for care, as well as a surgeon to have a consultation with

- few weeks after that was my appointment with the fertility preservation specialist, and we discussed how egg freezing works, what my options were in terms of continuing/stopping testosterone for a while*, and established a loose timeline we wanted to follow. she also ordered some labs (blood drawings) for me.

*the most research about egg freezing has been done on menstruating people, so while it's an option to stay on testosterone during the process, i opted to go off of it just because there are less unknown variables there, which comforts me

- met with surgeon for consultation, she read the notes my fertility preservation doc had taken, asked me some basic medical questions (re: drug use, sexual activity, etc), and we settled on a tentative date for my surgery

- had a mostly useless therapy(?) session to discuss hysterectomy recovery, settled on the operation i wanted, took notes about recovery time, etc, but most of my questions had already been answered by my surgeon + fertility preservation specialist.

- that brings us to about now. i haven't had any other appointments, but my current to do list consists of:

getting those labs done for fertility preservation

signing contracts about health+safety info, legal info, and other services related to fertility preservation

getting my birth control removed

right now, i'm aiming to have my birth control out by the middle of the month (June), egg retrieval complete by early July, and my hysterectomy is scheduled for the end of July. fertility preservation has been and will be by far the most annoying part of the process for a number of reasons, but if you're just looking into a hysterectomy it should be much more straightforward.

#hope this was helpful! #answers #speak

[redgoldsparks]

Hey, so I have kind of a personal question, so if you're uncomfortable answering it you don't have to but... Where did you get top surgery? Every surgeon I talk to wants me to go on t and I don't want to go on t.

Hello Anon, I got top surgery in the Bay Area, California, where it was 100% covered by medical. I did not pay one cent, which is still kind of shocking to me in retrospect. I have Kaiser, which is overall pretty good for trans healthcare. Folks still often get misgendered by staff, but at least they have a whole gender care center and some specific people who are knowledgeable. I was able to take an online class through the Kaiser Oakland Gender Clinic in which I was able to ask questions directly to surgeons, and talk to a nonbinary person who had had top surgery 6 months prior so could speak about the recovery process very accurately. No one, at any point, suggested that I should get on T before the surgery. All they recommended was the normal stuff you do before any surgery- get lots of sleep, take a break from drinking and smoking, eat healthy, double-check if it will interfere with any of your other regular meds, etc. I know many people who have had top surgery without being on T and have been very happy with the results!

#top surgery

[allthingsfern]

Pigeon deterrent I; Kaiser Medical Center. Vacaville, 06-30-23.

#photographers on tumblr #Black and White

[what-even-is-thiss]

Saw your ADHD post, and it’s super shitty that you’ve had to go through all that. I just wanted to share that I used Circle Medical and got tested, diagnosed, and prescribed meds within 2 visits. It’s all through an app too, and they provide care in both CA and TX. Best of luck to you! (Also, I realize this sounds like an ad. It’s not intended to be. I just recommend them when I see people who could benefit because it was so helpful to me.)

In California I can just use Kaiser which lets you do everything in the same building. I really like Kaiser. In Texas I’ve gotta use the student health insurance. And if they can’t do the thing in the student health center I’ve gotta do the merry go round of taking busses all over the city to various different businesses that all do extremely specific things.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Alastair Mordey

Published: Jun 4, 2023

You may have noticed over the last decade a steady increase in the promiscuous use of the word ‘trauma’. A word that once referred exclusively to grievous injuries of body and mind (gun-shot wounds, PTSD, that sort of thing) can now describe virtually anything. Psychotherapists and clinical psychologists are the main super-spreaders of this hyperbolic virus, though educators, politicians and of course celebrities are now getting in on the act.  

But trauma is more than just an annoying buzz word. Its inexorable creep into common parlance is the culmination of aa sustained campaign to politicise healthcare that has been going on for 30 years. Along the way it has resurrected some of Sigmund Freud’s more bizarre theories about childhood development, and married them with social justice concerns to become what is effectively a secular religion. 

Anyone who is familiar with the work of Sigmund Freud knows that his psycho-sexual theories developed in two distinct stages. The first posited that people who were mentally or emotionally unwell had repressed traumatic memories (almost always of sexual abuse in their childhood). He eventually gave up on this theory. In its stead he developed his equally infamous theory of infantile sexuality, in which children experienced sexual feelings through different erogenous zones during distinct stages of their development. It may surprise and horrify you to learn that both theories are alive and well in the current mental healthcare establishment, where they have been rebranded into a pseudoscientific theory about childhood trauma that leads to brain damage, addiction, and disease. 

This Freudian reformation began in the 1990s with the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study. The ACE study as it became known, was conducted between 1995 and 1997. The lead researcher was a physician called Vincent Felitti, who worked at Kaiser Permanente’s Department for Preventative Medicine in San Diego. Dr Felitti ran a weight loss programme at Kaiser, and he had a problem. His obese patients kept dropping out. Not only that, it was the ones who were doing well who were dropping off the most. Confused by this, Felitti conducted follow up interviews with as many of those patients as he could, and what he found was shocking. Out of the 286 interviews, a significant amount reported that they had been sexually abused as children. These revelations caused Felitti to reflect on Freud’s psycho-sexual theories. What if his patients had grown up using their obesity as a protective mechanism to deter sexual predation? Maybe that was why they were unwilling to lose too much weight. Or what if comfort eating was some kind of self-medication? An ‘oral fixation’ which compensated for the nurturing they should have received as children? 

Inspired by these hypotheses, Felitti approached colleagues at the Center for Disease Control and set about designing the ACE study. The study asked some 17,000 patients in California’s healthcare system ten questions about adverse experiences in their childhood (which they dubbed ACEs). Specifically they asked them questions about three types of abuse (physical, sexual, and psychological); two types of neglect (physical and emotional); and five different types of household dysfunction (exposure to mental illness, substance abuse, domestic violence, criminal behaviour, and divorce or separation of parents). Those ‘ACE scores’ were then mapped onto the respondents’ current health status as adults. 

The results were stark. Children who experienced four or more of these ACEs were deemed two to four times more likely to smoke, and four to 12 times more likely to become alcoholic or drug addicted as adults, compared to people with an ACE score of zero. Further, the study found that high ACE scores were strongly correlated with ischemic heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, and even skeletal fractures later in life. It seemed that childhood trauma wasn’t just causing obesity. It was causing all manner of addictions and health problems in later life. 

Over the following decade Dr Felitti became something of a hero to mental health professionals. Helping professionals like counsellors and psychologists are almost overwhelmingly left-leaning, so Felitti’s work was well received in such circles. It seemed to vindicate their convictions that social ills like health inequality and addiction had purely sociological causes, and could therefore be solved only by direct government action. 

By the end of the decade the ACE study was so lauded that organisations like the World Health Organisation were adopting the concept. In 2012, they issued their own questionnaire (the ACE-IQ) which sought to measure ACEs across the globe. The WHO noted that ACEs can ‘disrupt early brain development and compromise functioning of the nervous and immune systems.’ So not only were ACEs causing actual organic disease, they were permanently rewiring the brain. As a result, large sums of money began pouring into research which sought to isolate the specific bio-markers of adverse childhood experiences, and the idea that early life adversity might be ‘biologically embedded’ took hold. 

By the 2010s the idea that childhood trauma causes physical illness began to seep its way into popular culture. Magazine and newspaper articles ran headlines linking childhood trauma to migraines, cancer, and autoimmune disease. Numerous cities across America (such as New Orleans and Baltimore) started initiatives to protect children from trauma induced brain damage. Universities and schools ran training seminars to create ‘ACE-awareness’ in their staff. In 2018, first minister Nicola Sturgeon gave an introductory speech to welcome some 2,000 delegates to the first ACE-Aware Nation conference in Scotland. She noted that ACEs can ‘affect children’s physical and mental health’ and vowed to make sure that ‘an understanding of ACEs is embedded right across our services.’ All of these initiatives cited the ACE study as their ‘proof’ that childhood trauma causes addiction, disease and mental illness. 

As of 2023, the original ACE study has been cited more than 15,000 times and ‘replicated’ in hundreds, if not thousands of other studies. But few have seriously questioned its findings, or indeed the veracity of the idea that trauma permanently damages the brain. To my mind the ACE study was misleading, both in the way it presented its findings and the types of questions it asked. The results have proved to be disastrous for the mental health of our increasingly fragile younger generations. 

For example, one of the ACE study’s initial findings was that a child who experienced four or more ACE’s was twice as likely to become a smoker than a child with an ACE score of zero, and that those risks climbed with additional ACE’s. What the blurb emanating from the study didn’t emphasise however, was that only a minority of people with four or more ACEs go on to smoke (13.5 per cent). Even lower rates of prevalence were observed with injection drug use and alcoholism (3.4 and 16.1 per cent respectively). Surely, if childhood trauma is the main cause of addiction, and especially injection drug use (as has been portrayed endlessly by trauma advocates such as Dr Gabor Maté, who recently gained notoriety for his televised ‘trauma-focused’ therapy session with Prince Harry) then we should be seeing more than a 3.4 per cent prevalence rate in those most effected. What this tells us as much as anything else, is that 85 to 95 per cent of traumatised children do not go on to become addicts, alcoholics, or even smokers. 

The way the ACE study presented its findings wasn’t the only problem. There were multiple problems with the questionnaire itself. When we look at the wording of the questionnaire, what we find is that many of these so-called ‘adversities’ weren’t actually that traumatic at all. They were subjective, vague, and a virtual open invitation to self-indulgence and grievance. Take question one for example: 

‘Did a parent or other adult in the household often, or very often, swear at you, insult you, put you down, or humiliate you, or act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt?’ 

This is a hopelessly wide-ranging question. Given that the ACE questionnaire was quantitative, not qualitative, respondents could only answer yes or no. So if a respondent ‘felt like’ they had been frequently ‘put down’ by their parents during childhood, they could answer yes and would then be categorised as having suffered ‘psychological abuse’. 

Question two asked: ‘Did a parent or other adult in the household, often, or very often, push, grab, slap, or throw something at you, or ever hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured?’ 

Obviously a simple ‘yes’ leaves us completely in the dark as to whether the respondent was beaten up repeatedly by a brutal step father, or simply ‘grabbed’ on occasion by his long-suffering single mother who was fed up with him smoking dope in his room. Nevertheless, any affirmative answer scored a point for ‘physical abuse’. 

Question four was particularly weak: ‘Did you often, or very often, feel that no one in your family loved you or thought you were important or special – or [that] your family didn’t look out for each other, feel close to each other, or support each other?’ Surely this is describing the majority of the planet?  

As for the idea that childhood adversity is toxic to the brain, this is actually a radical claim with little in the way of real evidence. In his brilliant book The Trouble with Trauma, child psychiatrist Michael Scheeringa explains why evidence for the stress-damages-the-brain-theory is so thin on the ground. The only reliable evidence that would clearly demonstrate a link between trauma and subsequent changes in the brain, he says, would be a study that captures brain images before and after the trauma (a pre-trauma prospective study followed by another one after the event). Currently, there are very few of these studies due to the obvious fact that it is not ethical to induce trauma.  

Instead there are lots of cross sectional studies. These studies look at brains after the trauma has occurred, but have no way of knowing what the brain looked like before the trauma (e.g. whether the person had an undersized amygdala, over-active pre-frontal cortex, or other neurological disability which might predispose them to a heightened traumatic response). The few before and after studies that do exist seem to point towards pre-dispositional vulnerabilities. Predisposition has also, so far at least, been the most successful theory explaining other psychiatric conditions like depression, schizophrenia, anxiety and bipolar disorder. 

So the trauma damages the brain theory is the outlier here, and it is frankly incredible that governments, top tier universities, and entire professions have placed all their eggs into this big Freudian-hypothesis basket.  

The reasons for this bias are fairly obvious however. Pre-disposition points to genes, a less headline-grabbing area of study, and therefore not as useful for raising funds for trendy political healthcare projects.  

In the DSM-5 (The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fifth Edition) trauma is defined as a psychiatric disorder (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) which has horrendous and unmistakable symptoms. These symptoms occur (in some individuals) after being exposed to ‘actual or threatened death, serious injury or sexual violence.’ Things that are certainly outside the realm of ‘normal human experience’. Psychiatrists have known this since the Vietnam war. 

Nevertheless, since the 1990s psychiatrists under the sway of social justice politics (and bolstered by the findings of the ACE study) have been attempting to nudge a more watered-down version of trauma into the DSM. This includes ‘complex-trauma’, ‘developmental-trauma’, ‘relational- trauma’, and other snappy, made-up disorders. These ‘knock-off’ versions of PTSD have proven to be scientifically unverifiable, and have been rejected for inclusion in the DSM on multiple occasions, but nevertheless, they remain incredibly popular with clinicians and the public because they like them, and because they fit with what they believe. This concept creep around trauma is a perfect example of how bad, unscientific ideas can completely capture the zeitgeist when they peddle the right narrative. 

If this politicisation of psychology is not successfully challenged, I have grave fears for what the consequences will be. If we don’t stop using the word trauma, then those who suffer from real trauma (women who’ve been raped, children who’ve been burned, soldiers who’ve been blown up by mines) will have to share their services with those who, frankly speaking, don’t deserve them. And, people with addictions and other conditions that could be turned around with the right treatment will fail, because they are being protected and wrapped up in cotton wool by health professionals who are using them to fulfil their own professional and ideological goals. This cult of trauma must be stopped.  

#Alastair Mordey #pseudoscience #psychology #human psychology #trauma #childhood trauma #trauma informed #complex trauma #CPTSD #developmental trauma #relational trauma #cult of trauma #victimhood #victimhood culture #medical corruption #adverse childhood experiences #adverse childhood experiences study #religion is a mental illness

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

Maryanna’s eyes widened as the waitress delivered dessert, a plate-sized chocolate chip cookie topped with hot fudge and ice cream. Sitting in a booth at a Cheddar’s in Little Rock, Maryanna, 16, wasn’t sure of the last time she’d been to a sit-down restaurant. With two children — a daughter she birthed at 14 and a 4-month-old son — and sharing rent with her mother and sister for a cramped apartment with a dwindling number of working lights, Maryanna rarely got out, let alone to devour a Cheddar’s Legendary Monster Cookie. On this muggy September evening, though, she was having dinner with her “sister friend” Zenobia Harris, who runs the Arkansas Birthing Project, an organization working to reduce the odds that Arkansas women and girls die from pregnancy and childbirth. In a highchair next to her, Maryanna’s daughter, Bry’anna, spiraled sideways and backward, her arms outstretched, flying. Her eyes would settle on her grilled cheese, and she’d swoop her small hand down to pick up the sandwich. Maryanna suffered mightily during Bry’anna’s birth. (Kaiser Health News is not using the family’s last name to protect Maryanna’s privacy.) She remembers telling her mother, “I don’t want to do none of this.” Nurses routinely checked to see how far she had dilated, a painful prodding of the cervix typically done before pain medications are administered. “Nobody talks about that. I would not open my legs wide enough for them,” she said, cringing at the memory. “There were seven nurses up in there, and I was like, ‘No! Why ya’ll doing this?’” Hours later, a doctor used vacuum suction to pull the baby through Maryanna’s 14-year-old vaginal canal, ripping apart the skin and muscle of her perineum. ... Infant mortality rates in Arkansas are highest for babies born to women younger than 20, and the large number of teen births fuels the state’s third-highest infant mortality rate in the country. Arkansas women have the highest rate of pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S., according to CDC data, about double the national average. For young women who continue their pregnancies, the emotional and physical challenges can be daunting. The age at which girls in the U.S. begin menstruating has dropped in recent decades, in part due to widespread obesity, but the physiological changes necessary to birth and feed a newborn require additional years of development. “When she has her first menstruation, she is capable of becoming pregnant, but that doesn’t mean she is capable of having a child,” said Dr. Dilys Walker, director of global health research for the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California-San Francisco. Walker explained that during adolescent development, the beginning of menarche signals the start of a growth spurt that can take up to four years to complete. During that time, a girl’s uterus and bony structures, including her pelvis, remain narrow, developing slowly as she ages. It’s a precarious moment to give birth. It’s not uncommon for girls to face obstructed labor “because their pelvis is not developed enough to accommodate a vaginal delivery,” said Dr. Sarah Prager, an obstetrics and gynecology professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Going through with a vaginal birth could cause lasting damage to a teen’s pelvic area and rectum. So, teenage childbirth often ends in cesarean section, causing uterine scarring that almost guarantees she will need to give birth via cesarean section if she has more children. “Adolescents are at increased risk for low-birth-weight babies, high blood pressure in pregnancy, preeclampsia, higher complications from sexually transmitted diseases, and increased rate of infant death,” said Dr. Anne Waldrop, a maternal-fetal medicine fellow at Stanford University.

For everyone out there planning to vote for "prolife" politicians this November, just know that you are voting to hurt and possibly murder children.

#Voting #Abortion #Midterms #Pregnancy